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Birders humming over discovery here
First of its kind ever verified in Pennsylvania   :hummer:

Scott Weidensaul, a nationally known birdwatcher and author, was in the question-and-answer portion of his talk to the Lancaster County Bird Club Friday night when a woman shot up her hand.

"I have a friend who still has a hummingbird at her feeder," the woman said.

Weidensaul, of Schuylkill Haven, was intrigued. He knew any hummingbird still in these parts in winter just might be a rufous hummingbird, a hummer that lives in Western states but sometimes strays East.

Weidensaul, a licensed bird bander, in fact, had caught and banded five rufous hummers this fall, including one in Ephrata and one in East Earl Township.

Still, Saturday was the last day of deer season and he wanted another chance to get one.

In the end though, Weidensaul drove down to Debra Raudenbush's townhouse outside Leola after the English as a second language teacher at Reamstown Elementary School extended an invitation.

Within 25 minutes of putting out a cage trap, he could not believe what he held in his hand.

It was an Allen's hummingbird, the first one ever verified in Pennsylvania.

The tiny hummer breeds only in coastal California and southwestern Oregon. At this time of year, it should be in over-wintering digs on a mountainous plateau in central Mexico.

Yet, here it was in Pennsylvania Dutch country — and had been, it turns out, happily lapping at Raudenbush's feeder with a homemade batch of sugar water since the end of August.

Now this isn't on par with the 2004 discovery of the presumed extinct ivory-billed woodpecker in an Arkansas swamp.

But the regional birding world is going pretty bonkers.

As word of the discovery spread, Raudenbush looked out her back window into a pouring cold rain first thing Sunday morning to see about a dozen birders with binoculars, spotting scopes and cameras.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the pinnacle of bird research, dispatched a team to view the healthy female hummer on Sunday.

Those who signed a logbook Raudenbush put out on Sunday showed fans had come from as far away as Pittsburgh and West Virginia.

"I was both excited and had a little trepidation because with the first state record that people have been waiting for for years, I knew it would generate a lot of interest," Weidensaul said.

"I was concerned that when it happened it would be with a cooperative homeowner. The other question is, if they commit, do they know what they're getting into."

Happily, Raudenbush, herself a birder, has extended the welcome mat to fellow birdwatchers. She allows the army to approach within a line of arborvitae trees, about 15 feet away from the feeder on her back deck.

Local police have been notified in case crowd control is needed.

"I actually had a sense that this was something unusual because she showed up after the other hummers had left," Raudenbush, 55, said of her historic feathered freeloader.

"I was expecting it was a rufous. I thought she was a little mixed up."

But she had never heard of an Allen's hummingbird, which is almost identical to the rufous in appearance and habits. Identification is made by checking the width of the outermost tail feather.

She and the unusual visitor have settled into a ritual. She takes the feeder in each night at dark so it doesn't freeze. She hangs the feeder each morning around 5 a.m. Usually, the bird is dipping her beak within minutes.

Weidensaul's theory is that the hummingbird's genetic software that tells a hummingbird when and where to migrate is more than slightly off.

Hummingbirds migrate alone so there was no other of her ilk to keep her on course.

More and more rufous hummingbirds in recent years are wintering farther east along the Gulf Coast.

Weidensaul thinks the local Allen's hummingbird will reluctantly head in that direction by Christmas.

Don't worry about the bird freezing to death in the meantime. The bird is building up fat reserves from the sugar water and insects still around, Weidensaul said.

At night, while she roosts, her body goes into a semi-torpor state, with a slow heartbeat and a body temperature lowered from 108 degrees to 50.

"They look, for all intents and purposes, as if they're dead," Weidensaul said. "They are extremely cold hardy."

And don't fret that the hummer will starve on the journey.

"With a full fat load, one of these birds can fly from here to northern Georgia in about 24 hours without stopping to rest or re-fuel," Weidensaul noted.

There also is a chance the hummer will elect to stay. After all, rufous hummingbirds are known to breed in Alaska's Denali National Park.

But staying could be dangerous.

"Cold weather is dangerous to small birds. If they stay too late and there is a cold snap, it could kill them," Weidensaul said.

Fascinating!   :2thumbsup:

now that is just too cool.