{"id":41641,"date":"2025-11-22T13:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T13:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/41641\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T13:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T13:44:08","slug":"rufous-hummingbirds-in-pennsylvania-fall-migration-brings-rare-visitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/41641\/","title":{"rendered":"Rufous hummingbirds in Pennsylvania: Fall migration brings rare visitors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The temperature the morning I wrote this column was 30 degrees and the three hummingbird feeders I still have out were partially frozen. To most people, it seems strange to expect to see a hummingbird when it\u2019s almost Thanksgiving, but it happens more often than you\u2019d think.<\/p>\n

By early October almost all the ruby-throated hummingbirds<\/a> are gone from this part of the country. However, around this time each year vagrant western species often show up. And in this past week three have been discovered in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Back when I started birding more than 40 years ago, no one ever thought any hummingbirds other than ruby-throats would be seen east of the Rocky Mountains. But all that changed due in large part to Nancy Newfield in Louisiana finding a rufous hummingbird<\/a> on her property. And then eventually this led to the establishment of trained hummingbird banders.<\/p>\n

These vagrant hummers breed in the western part of North America but, for whatever reasons, some of them go more east than south when they\u2019re migrating in the fall. Occasionally one will actually spend most of the winter in the Northeast, but most of them don\u2019t stick around long.<\/p>\n

I well remember how excited I was back in 2001 when I looked out the kitchen window a few days before Thanksgiving and saw what turned out to be a female rufous hummingbird there on a feeder. I screamed so loud for David to come take a look that he thought I had hurt myself.<\/p>\n

So all of this was fresh in my mind on that 30-degree morning because the night before a bander contacted me to say that she was coming to my area the next day to band a hummer about a mile from my home. And around 10:30 that morning, she caught and banded a juvenile male rufous hummer that I temporarily held before she released it.<\/p>\n

At the same time that this was happening at the host\u2019s house, a young fellow was doing some kind of repair work there. Like most people he knew nothing about vagrant fall hummingbirds, so there was a look of incredulity on his face when the bander also let him hold the bird for a few seconds. And then after being released, the bird continued to go back to the feeder.<\/p>\n

Through the years, due to the efforts of dedicated banders, five species besides ruby-throated have been documented in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Rufous is the one most commonly found, but other species have been Allen\u2019s, Anna\u2019s, black-chinned, and Calliope. And no doubt others will be found in the future.<\/p>\n

Hummingbirds are so tiny that it\u2019s hard to imagine a bird weighing only 3 or 4 grams can successfully migrate thousands of miles, but they can. On the other side of the scale, though, it\u2019s not too hard to believe that eagles are able to do the same thing because they\u2019re so physically big. But in fact they only weigh up to around 14 pounds in spite of them looking like they should weigh a lot more.<\/p>\n

The month of November is when most eagles \u2014 both bald and golden \u2014 migrate along our geographic ridges. So, if you want to see any, now is the time to go to a hawk watch site.<\/p>\n

more lehigh valley outdoors news<\/p>\n

Read the original article on lehighvalleylive.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The temperature the morning I wrote this column was 30 degrees and the three hummingbird feeders I still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[25051,28,30,29,25050],"class_list":{"0":"post-41641","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-hummingbird","9":"tag-pennsylvania","10":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","11":"tag-pennsylvania-news","12":"tag-rufous-hummingbird"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}