Hello all,
Lately I've been spending a bit of time daily documenting Les Eastman's Rufous Hummingbird. It used to be that you would hear the hummingbird calling before you saw it. It's a good early warning that you should stop scanning the Pine Sikins in hopes of finding another redpoll and immediately start watching the hummer. That is unless it's actually a junco making that hummingbird-esque call... Sometime between the 9th and the 24th, that changed. The hummingbird is very easy to pick out as the buzzing from his flight is a completely different sound from what it was before and almost completely drowns out his call notes. On March 9th, he had almost completely molted his back feathers, but his gorget still was mostly plain. By March 24th, he had a few more gorget feathers. Les informed me that he would like to have the hummer well documented, so we arranged that I could visit daily, but I would call beforehand. I sat out the 25th due to inclement weather (and Matt's Lapland Longspur!) and returned on the 26th to find he had half of his gorget. Today (the 27th) I called Les and was crestfallen to learn that he hadn't seen the rufous at all, but was more than welcome to visit and try for the hummer. After no more that 15 minutes the whirring greeted us and we were elated to see that he had not left us yet. His gorget is almost completely full except for a "white beard" of pin feathers at the base of his bill. Feeding was extensive at the feeders, where he would land and drink for a minute or two at a time. This is quite alarming since this is pre-migratory behavior. I'm afraid he might not be there tomorrow, but I will keep my fingers crossed. I want to see him in his breeding best before he departs. Anyway as always, here are more than enough pictures for those who would like to see him. I also have a short video I will post soon and an audio file of him flying around if I can get that up too.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/75557613@N08/
Cheers,
Josh Emm
HdG, MD
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