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by Jerry Uhlman
You never can tell what birds will find your backyard feeders during the winter months when the weather is cold and blustery. There have been several reports of Baltimore orioles showing up at neighborhood feeders, and pine siskins make regular visits nowadays to our wooded backyards. Both species, although not rare winter birds in central Virginia, make birders take note when they appear at the edge of their usual winter habitats.
On the Eastern Shore, a selasphorus hummingbird appeared at the syrup feeder of the Sterling House, Ned Brinkley’s bed and breakfast in Cape Charles. The term “selasphorus” is used when certain identification is impossible for three hummingbird species that look similar: Allen’s, rufous and broad-tailed. It was later tagged as an Allen’s hummingbird, a species most common along the west coast—an unusual stray and record-setter way out of range.
In Richmond, imagine Greg Coolidge’s surprise when a hummingbird zipped by as he and a hiking buddy, Jim Corsini, prepared for a trek to the mountains one chilly morning just after Thanksgiving Day. Coolidge, who keeps seed feeders out during the year, had left a syrup feeder out, too, but really didn’t expect any visitors. As they watched in amazement, another appeared and the two fed and chased each other around Coolidge’s Bon Air front yard.
They checked a field guide to identify the birds, thinking that the birds were very late ruby-throated hummers, but their throats and chests were much too tan and neither had any characteristic iridescent red marking on its throat. What kind of hummingbirds were they?
Emails to www.hummingbirds.net and several calls to local Richmond Audubon Society members brought help establishing that they were selasphorus. But, which one: broad-tailed, rufous or Allen’s?
To make certain identification, two licensed hummingbird banders from Maryland, David Holmes and sidekick Bruce Peterjohn, appeared at Coolridge’s Bon Air home in mid-December. One of the birds vanished earlier in the week, so only one hummer remained in Coolridge’s front yard, often perching in a cedar tree across the street.
The banders arranged Coolridge’s feeder inside a wire cage, its trapdoor held wide open by fishing line. Within a few minutes the bird quickly whizzed into the cage and the door was shut. Holmes stuck his hand through the door, caught the bird and put it gently into a sock. Sitting at Coolridge’s kitchen table, he began a twenty-minute examination with a jewelers eyepiece, first inspecting tail feathers, then measuring the tail length, placing a tiny metal band around one leg, and finally checking for body fat and weighing the hummer. After a second tail measurement Holmes pronounced the bird to be a rufous hummingbird.
What circumstances brought this tiny western hummingbird species, weighing just over three grams and 3.75 inches long, east to Coolridge’s front yard? There are several plausible explanations. First, winters on Virginia’s coastal plain are more moderate than decades ago, expanding the range for species. More backyard feeders are available year round to provide food for species that roam.
Adventurous birds and young, hatch-year birds (as was Coolridge’s rufous) may roam further from traditional habitats and have not yet learned from adults their customary migratory routes. Sometimes, birds have defective brain hard-wiring that causes straying and roaming outside usual species ranges. For rufous hummingbirds, though, it seems as though the species is expanding its range west to east, and more have made a winter appearance in the past few years.
In the winter of 2001, Bob Siegfried, a longtime Richmond Audubon Society member, found a rufous hummingbird at his syrup feeder. It was banded during its visit and disappeared shortly after. In early fall, out of the blue Siegfried got an email from Ned and GiGi Batchelders, a husband and wife hummingbird banding team in Red Lodge, Montana. Red Lodge is northeast of Yellowstone National Park and on the eastern edge of Custer National Forest. They had captured Siegfried’s rufous and traced its band number to him.
Even more amazing, the same rufous hummer returned to Siegfried’s feeder in December and stayed for several weeks before vanishing again. Coolridge, a general manager with Vacuum Systems of Richmond who has thoroughly enjoyed his rufous’ lengthy visit, no doubt hopes that history will repeat itself.