Saturday, August 04, 2012

Three very special hummingbirds

In a previous post I talked about the many beautiful hummingbirds that visited the house I lived in before I moved to the Tucson foothills. Of the hundreds of hummers who came to my yard, three stood out as special.

“RUFIE”

Rufie was a young female Rufous  who showed up in my yard at Thanksgiving one year, weeks after the last migrants had moved through. She seemed to like my yard—perhaps she thought she had reached Mexico—and she stayed through the winter, even though we had a long freeze that made me fear for her life. I got up before the sun for several days to put out fresh nectar for her.

RUFIE CU 12-11-1999 4-39-18 PM 262x295

When she returned the following year and the next, I got in touch with a local ornithologist and bird bander, Bill Calder, who came over to trap and band Rufie. He told me that most likely she was the same one I had seen the previous two years, because it was so unusual for a Rufous to overwinter in Tucson. He said that she might have migrated thousands of miles from wherever she spent the summer. The following year, Rufie returned and Bill confirmed that the band was the one he had placed on her. She came one more year, and then I never saw her again.

“The Ghost”

This hummingbird showed up one day in the spring. When I first saw it I couldn’t believe my eyes. It looked like a hummingbird ghost. I called the Audubon Rare Bird line, and two hours later a man showed up from Phoenix to photograph it. It was not an albino, by the way, but “leucistic,” because it did have pigment in its eyes, beak, and feet. It stayed for about a week, then continued on its migration. It never returned to my yard, but I wasn’t surprised because birds with defects in coloring often have other defects as well.

                                                                        whitebird

“Olivier”

My favorite of all the hummingbirds I’ve ever known, Olivier was a bold and beautiful broad-billed male who lived year-round in my yard for three or four years. He showed very little fear of humans, and projected an attitude that caused a friend of mine to name him after the famous actor.

Broadbillbmp

10 comments:

  1. These are wonderful stories, KL. I am fascinated with hummingbirds but we only get one species here, ruby-throated. When I was a boy we had a black-chinned hummingbird hover at our window one day, a rare sighting. When I camped at Pacific Rim on Vancouver Island in april 1987 I was thrilled to get dive-bombed by rufous hummingbirds.

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    1. I love them all, Van, but can't help being partial to the broad-billed. I admit I am very spoiled living in Southern Arizona. You ought to come visit sometime!

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  2. Anonymous4:51 AM

    I enjoyed your stories about these special hummingbirds. I hope we get lots of visitors this spring. We have had a pair of cranes on the shore for the last two weeks, I got too close the last time even though I was being careful and one of them let me know. What a call. SKF

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    1. I hope you got a picture! What kind of cranes? That is very exciting!

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  3. Anonymous6:15 AM

    Sand hill. They are not unusual here, but this is the first time I have seen them on the lake. The water is down, so there is more of a shore at the wetlands where I saw them. No camera...I had ordered a new one...S

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    1. I'm so jealous. They are so beautiful.

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  4. I envy your ability to actually identify individuals! We have at least 2-3 hummers at our house, but I can't distinguish them on site, though one seems more territorial than the other, chasing him (or her? moving too fast to tell) away from the feeders. Hummer #2 is consequently more furtive. So, I can distinguish them by behavior, but not by markings.

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    1. It's really not possible to identify individuals unless there is an unusual circumstance. I know for sure that Rufie was Rufie for the three years she wore the band. The leucistic had to be the same individual because they are so rare. Olivier, I'm pretty sure was the same bird, but it might have been another--he certainly wasn't the only broadbilled I hosted. the thing is that a lot of hummingbird behaviors are stereotypical, so just because a bird acts the way "Red-head" always acts doesn't mean that bird is necessarily "Red-head."

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  5. Great post! I had never heard the term "leucistic" before and love to learn something new. I rarely saw hummingbirds growing up in Minnesota. I grew to love watching them when I lived in Nevada. There aren't as many in Portland, but there are a few parks where I can spot them. Thanks for sharing the photos too.

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    1. Thanks for your comment, Patrick! I never tire of watching these little guys.

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