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FeederWatcher Spots Winter Rarity
One Buff-bellied Hummingbird prefers Florida over Mexico While taking an after-dinner stroll Thanksgiving Day 1995 on his property in Cantonement, Florida, near Pensacola, FeederWatcher Don Kenney noticed an odd hummer at his still-blooming red salvia flowers. The bird was bigger and greener than the usual Ruby-throated Hummingbird, and its calls sounded much more shrill. Kenney ran inside the house and quickly brought out the hummingbird feeder that already had been put away for the season. After getting good close-up looks at the bronze-green bird slurping the sugar-water, he consulted his bird-watching friends and identified the bird as a Buff-bellied Hummingbird, a bird you would expect to find overwintering in Mexico or even farther south. This hummingbird has been returning to Kenney's feeders each September since that first visit. Licensed bird-bander Bob Sargent of The Hummer/Bird Study Group in Trussville, Alabama, banded Kenney's Buff-bellied Hummingbird that November and has recaptured it and checked its bands the past two years. Kenney says he now leaves his hummingbird feeders up year-round because you never know what might show up. Last September 21, he and his wife, Beverly, were out on their patio, when Beverly said, "That buff-bellied is back. I can hear it." Thirty seconds later they saw the bird at their feeders. It stayed until March 25, 1998. |
