Hummingbird hangs around Alaska city

[Donna]

KETCHIKAN, Alaska - An Anna's hummingbird has been wintering at a Potter Road area home, zipping between a nearby tree and a specially warmed feeder.

Alaska Fish and Game biologist and avid birder Steve Heinl said Thursday that the birds are rare in southeast Alaska, but they do show up in the region in very small numbers. In an unusual move, Anna's hummingbirds move north, instead of south, when fall comes.

By contrast, the rufous hummingbirds normally seen in Southeast depart for warmer climes in August, he said.

Anna's hummingbirds are most common along the West Coast, but they began expanding northward in the 1960s and are now common in British Columbia, said Heinl. The first sighting around Ketchikan occurred in December 1974, he said.

Birders have counted about one Anna's hummingbird in the Ketchikan area in each of the past five years, said Heinl. Last year, he said, a dozen were counted in all of Southeast, with five of them spotted in Juneau. One was even seen in the Aleutian Islands, he said.

"If you see a hummingbird in winter, it's almost certainly going to be an Anna's," he said.

The male Anna's, with their iridescent red head and neck feathers, are easier to spot than the greenish and grayish females, said Heinl.

Lawrence "Snapper" Carson, playing host to the bird near Potter Road, has made his guest comfortable by attaching a hummingbird feeder below a red lamp to protect the sugar-water from freezing. It's not a heat-lamp, said Carson, but a red light bulb in a heat-lamp fixture.

He saw the bird for the first time, and recognized it as an Anna's hummingbird, on Oct. 1, he said. There was a frost in late October but Carson noticed that the bird was still around. He put the feeder up and the bird came to it right away. In November, the weather turned much colder and Carson then attached the feeder below the light bulb.

"It got down to 15 or 13 degrees one night, and he didn't mind a bit," Carson said.

Carson's house overlooks a portion of Knudson Cove, northwest of the marina. He also has another avian guest this winter, a pied-billed grebe. Heinl said that bird also is a rare visitor to Southeast in fall and winter months. One or two are spotted in the fall at Ward Lake, but only one was reported in the past two years, he said.