Hummingbird flocks back to the Wiregrass

By Kelly Tabor

Published: September 29, 2008

Beth Behar loves birdwatching, but when she first spotted a Rufous Hummingbird in her own backyard, it really ruffled her feathers.

“I knew she was different than the others,” said Behar, who along with her husband Ike, has identified several birds near their home such as Sharp-shinned Hawks, Pileated Woodpeckers, cardinals, mockingbirds, purple finches and Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. “She was smaller, buff colored on the sides with a white chest.”

The bird, caught and banded each year since 2002 by hummingbird expert Fred Bassett, has retured to the Behar’s same sugar-and-water feeder in the Macedonia community near Level Plains for the past seven years.

“She’s a little stinker,” said Behar. “So much fun to watch. I try to grow things she like like tubular flowers.”

The Rufous is one of the more common hummingbirds in the U.S., but until recently was seldom seen this far east. They are known to be particularly aggressive and territorial, especially at feeders.

“The way they make a living in nature is they find a feed source and they defend it,” said Bassett, who has caught and banded Rufous Hummingbirds as far south as Pensacola, Tallahassee and Gainesville. “They’re genetically imprinted with these phenomenal memories. They can remember within an inch where a feeder was located the year before. It’s something we don’t understand at all.”

An article on the Web site for the Hummer/Bird Study Group calls the Rufous Hummingbird “beautiful and hateful” with a personality like a “junkyard dog”, aggressively driving off other, larger hummingbird species. Behar said despite weighing just over three grams, her “Rufous” brings a lot of attitude.

“I have three feeders out here, but that one next to the camellia tree is hers,” said Behar. “She chases off the others all the time!”

Behar said she other bird-watchers remove their feeders by October, but the Rufous Hummingbird is so hardy, it can withstand the south Alabama winter.

Rufous Hummingbirds have a migration route of about 3,900 miles, longer than any other U.S. hummingbirds, and migrate from Alaska to Mexico, according to the Web site. The birds have begun the trend of visiting Alabama and Florida due to the increased presence of year-round feeders.

“The migratory pattern is an elliptical shape,” said Bassett, who reports his findings to the National Bird Banding Lab. “We can’t be sure where this particular bird comes from, but they’ve been known to cross Texas, reach the California-Oregon border, and visit Alaska starting in April.”

Bassett said the birds rarely live longer than seven years and the Behars will be “amazingly lucky” if the bird returns again.

“People with wintering hummingbirds find that they literally become like family members,” he said.

Bassett said if Southeast-area residents would like to leave feeders out between November and March and have their birds banded or identified free of charge, to contact him via email at .