new york's wayward winter hummingbirds
mlem mlem mlem mlem (thats a hummingbird drinkin sugar water)
on friday, november 17, tim healy was scrolling through instagram when he came across a strange post: barbara davaros from the randall’s island park alliance had posted a video of a hummingbird visiting flowers the day before. there’s nothing strange about a new york city hummingbird—ruby-throated hummingbirds breed in parks throughout the city. but that’s during the summer, not in mid-november. and while this bird looked much like a ruby-throat, it was acting strange: incessantly pumping its tail, a behavior not commonly seen in that species.
tim reached out to new york birders efua peterson, adam cunningham, and brendan fogarty, who confirmed that the bird was still there. and after a close look, they agreed that the bird was instead a western bird called the black-chinned hummingbird, the first time the species had been seen in ny state. birders like myself swarmed the site in droves to ogle the cooperative sprite. though delighted, many weren’t surprised. flying astray in the winter is something that western hummingbirds do. and it’s increasingly becoming a successful survival strategy, in part thanks to humans.
many of you know that some birds fly to unexpected places—we call them vagrants. while individual vagrants often have glitched-out navigational systems or are responding to forces in their home ranges, their vagrancy can provide a species-wide benefit. if the species spends a few individuals on vagrancy, then hopefully some of those vagrants will find a new niche to exploit, causing the species’ range to expand. i feel like you could use investing as a metaphor here, though i don’t know enough about investing to write anything cogent. it’s like investing in a few risky stocks if the money was birds who die if the investment is bad. or they spend a decade alone milling up and down the california coast.
anyway. they may be small, but some of north america’s hummingbird species migrate long distances. ruby-throated hummingbirds make non-stop journeys across the gulf of mexico in fall. the most northern-breeding hummingbird, the rufous hummingbird, annually migrates between mexico and the pacific northwest, as far north as alaska. some of those birds go astray.
let’s focus on the rufous hummingbird. though a western bird, it has become a regular vagrant to the midwest and eastern united states, starting on the gulf coast in the 1970s and spotted for the first time in new york in 1980. today, if you see a hummingbird in new york in the winter, it’s most likely a rufous hummingbird.
and this species’ investment in vagrancy may be starting to pay off, thanks to humans. a wayward hummingbird to the east coast would have once starved from lack of food. but today, habitats are changing, the globe is warming, and many vagrant hummingbirds are instead finding ornamental flowers in manicured gardens or hummingbird feeders. and i know that hummingbirds are stereotypically tropical, but some species—rufous hummingbird and calliope hummingbird—regularly survive frigid temperatures on their wintering grounds. some banded calliope and rufous hummingbirds have returned annually to sites in the southeastern us that record temperatures below 0 degrees F, according to a paper by shai mitra and michael bochnik.
in his awesome book a world on the wing, scott wiedensaul suggests that this might be “the leading edge of a newly evolving migration route” for western species like the rufous hummingbird. today, rather than being lost, many of these birds are intentionally heading eastward, sticking around at feeders and in gardens for a bit, then heading to the gulf coast before returning back to their breeding grounds in spring. during warmer years, they might stay in the midwest and northeast so long as there’s food. some banded birds have followed these new routes annually. and though not nearly as numerous in the east as rufous hummingbirds, perhaps the same thing is happening with other migratory hummingbirds, like the black-chinned hummingbird.
so, while a historic first-ever for new york, the randall’s island black-chinned hummingbird isn’t an unexpected occurrence. instead, it’s part of an ongoing trend of hummingbirds exploring new ways to exploit the human-altered world. and maybe we’ll soon see other new hummingbird species in the state.
as of today, the manhattan bird remains in the same spot, in perhaps the must human-altered place around. rather than the end of the line for a doomed bird, this might be the start of a new story for intrepid black-chinned hummingbirds.
pre-postscript: an often-asked question in the eastern untied states is “when should i take my hummingbird feeder down.” as mitra and bochnik wrote, it doesn’t seem like leaving your feeder up late is keeping ruby-throated hummingbirds from migrating—by december, they’re even rarer in new york than rufous hummingbird or calliope hummingbird. some birders will keep their feeders up long into the winter with the hope of attracting vagrant hummers.
postscript: i got my book edits back last month at the same time as my biggest work thing of the year, so i’ve not had time to do very much of anything. but finally, i am free and can begin focusing more on other projects, like posting more frequently here and doing other freelance writing.
on top of the work, i just got back from minnesota. it was very nice to see all of my in-laws and get christmas presents. i also saw a lot of birds (see list here). my favorite things that i saw were 1. the northern lights during the geminid meteor shower and 2. red crossbills, my favorite bird. not only that, but it was a population of red crossbills i’ve never seen before; there are 12 “types” of red crossbills in the united states, discernible only by the chip notes they make in flight. i’d previously seen type 1, 2, 3, and 12, and have now added type 4 to that list.
