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At first, she mistook him for a native ruby-throated hummingbird\u00a0\u2014 one that had maybe lost some of its colorful plumage in old age.<\/p>\n \u201cHe would not leave my house,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know he was anything special.\u201d<\/p>\n Bob the Costa’s hummingbird getting acclimated in a Tucson backyard after being rescued from a Nebraska winter.\u00a0<\/p>\n Julia Lehman, Southern Arizona Hummingbird Rescue.<\/p>\n After watching him for a couple of weeks and seeing no other hummingbirds that looked quite like him, though, she snapped his picture and shared it with her friend, Dina Barta, a retired game warden.<\/p>\n Barta thought the bird might be something rare and suggested a call to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission<\/a>. That prompted a visit from the agency\u2019s nongame-bird program manager, Joel Jorgensen, who confirmed the backyard visitor as just the fourth Costa\u2019s hummingbird ever recorded in the Cornhusker State.<\/p>\n What about Bob?<\/p>\n Munson and her husband nicknamed him Bob, as in Bob Costa\u2019s, a tiny, feathered version of the famous sportscaster.<\/p>\n Word soon spread through the region’s bird-watching community. Bob was famous.<\/p>\n Munson said hundreds of birders flocked to her house, including some who drove in from out of state to catch a glimpse or maybe a photo of the Costa\u2019s. They were eager and polite and came armed with telephoto lenses and parabolic microphones to record Bob\u2019s song.<\/p>\n \u201cIt looked like the press line at an NFL game,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was all day, every day for about two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the birders were so thrilled by the experience, they left gifts for Munson\u00a0\u2014 a jar of honey, some homemade jam. One group gave her a hummingbird-themed photo album filled with their best close-ups of Bob. Someone else sent her a drawing of the bird in colored pencil with a nice note on the back.<\/p>\n Munson said Bob was a welcome ray of light for her in an otherwise dark year, marked by the sudden death of her father in April. The hummingbird would swoop down to see her every day when she arrived home from work, she said, \u201cand he was constantly singing.\u201d<\/p>\n But Munson began to worry as the days shortened, the temperature dropped, but Bob continued to hang around.<\/p>\n \u201cIt got bad fast,\u201d she said. \u201cAfter that first freeze, I was convinced he was dead. The frost zapped everything that was a food source for him.\u201d<\/p>\n On a particularly cold day soon after that, her retired game warden friend called her at work to tell her that her feeders had frozen and the bird was in distress. Munson rushed home to \u201cheat up some warm Bob soup\u201d\u00a0\u2014 warm water with extra sugar in it to give him an energy boost.<\/p>\n \u201cHe started hitting the feeder while I was still carrying it\u201d back outside, she said.<\/p>\n That\u2019s when Munson knew that the only way to save Bob was to get him back to where he belonged. \u201cI spent so much time agonizing over this bird. I just wanted to help him,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Finally, on Nov. 17, Munson and Barta brought Bob in from the cold and got him into the hands of a licensed rescue organization.<\/p>\n Rehab road trip<\/p>\n Nebraska Wildlife Rehab<\/a> executive director Laura Stastny has been rescuing animals for the past 25 years, and she said Bob certainly fit the bill.<\/p>\n \u201cHe toughed out a couple of nights when I think it bottomed out at about 16 degrees,\u201d Stastny said, but he wouldn\u2019t have lasted much longer, especially with no nectar or insects around for him to eat.<\/p>\n \u201cHe doesn\u2019t belong anywhere near Nebraska. Not even close,\u201d she said. It\u2019s shocking he showed up there in the first place and \u201ceven more shocking that he stayed,\u201d as the seasons began to change.<\/p>\n Tucson bird rehabilitator Julia Lehman was answering the hotline for Southern Arizona Hummingbird Rescue<\/a> when the call came in from Omaha. She was \u201cjust giddy with excitement\u201d as soon as she heard about Bob, she said.<\/p>\n It was Stastny who ended up driving the bird to Tucson, a round trip that covered more than 3,000 miles with a few other stops along the way.<\/p>\n She left Nebraska on Nov. 21 with a carload of wayward wildlife. Her first stop was Fort Worth, Texas, where she handed off a pair of Mississippi kites that were headed to a raptor rehab in San Antonio. Then she continued southwest with the hummingbird and a juvenile big free-tailed bat<\/a>, destined for a rescue in the Phoenix area, that Stastny said was the first of its kind ever recorded in Nebraska.<\/p>\n Bob was active in his carrier for much of the drive and seemed to be \u201chaving a great time,\u201d she said, though \u201che didn\u2019t like it when we hit bumps.\u201d<\/p>\n The bird\u2019s buzzing increased as they crossed from Texas into New Mexico.<\/p>\n Stastny rolled into Tucson on the night of Nov. 22 and dropped off Bob at Lehman\u2019s house, along with the cage she brought him in and an expensive container of special hummingbird food.<\/p>\n The next morning, Lehman carried the travel cage outside so the bird could get acclimated. She said he grew very still as he listened to the sounds of other hummingbirds racing around her backyard.<\/p>\n Release day<\/p>\n No one is quite sure how Bob wound up in Nebraska.<\/p>\n \u201cThe animals that end up in weird predicaments are usually juveniles,\u201d Stastny said. \u201cI have a feeling this had to do with the weather.\u201d<\/p>\n She doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s a coincidence that a rare hummingbird and an extremely rare bat both showed up in Nebraska at about the same time and right after a series of strong storms that swept across the Plains from west to east.<\/p>\n Bob the Costa’s hummingbird hangs out in an outside aviary at the home of Patricia Coghlan, of Southern Arizona Hummingbird Rescue, before he was released back into nature in Tucson on Nov. 26. Bob was found in Nebraska and brought to Tucson to escape the frigid winter temperatures.<\/p>\n Mamta Popat, Arizona Daily Star<\/p>\n According to eBird<\/a>, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology\u2019s popular online database for bird observations, there have been a handful of Costa\u2019s sightings in such unusual places as Michigan, South Dakota, Kansas and Oklahoma in recent decades. And at about the same time Bob was hanging out in Munson\u2019s yard last month, a female Costa\u2019s was spotted and photographed by more than a dozen birders in Calgary, Alberta.<\/p>\n \u201cTo have been seen that far north is really kind of crazy,\u201d Lehman said.<\/p>\n Costa\u2019s are among the most common hummingbirds in Tucson, though Lehman said she doesn\u2019t handle that many of them, because they tend to live on the outskirts of the community or out in the desert.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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