In preparing for a business trip I typically check the local listserves to see if any rarities are being seen nearby. In advance of my November trip to Houston I noticed that both a Calliope and a Broad-Billed Hummingbird were being seen in Russ Pitman Park right in Houston – both would be new for my TX list. After a little internet searching I found that the park was only 10 minutes from my hotel, and was quite tiny. And with good local information from the listserve it seemed like a no-brainer to give it a try before work one morning.
I arrived at the park at 6:40 AM – about 20 minutes before dawn but definitely bright enough to see if any hummingbirds were around. A cold front had come through the day before and it was in the mid 40’s which was quite cold for Houston. I only had until about 8:00 before heading off to work, so I was a bit worried that the hummers wouldn’t start their visits in the cold morning temperatures before I had to leave. Nonetheless, I situated myself close to a bed of shrimp plants near the entrance of the park where the Calliope was apparently most reliable, and waited. As the time passed I picked up a few good birds like a flyover Pine Siskin, a calling Bobwhite, a Wilson’s Warbler, and a calling Monk Parakeet, but no hummingbirds. Finally at 7:40 I heard sharp chip notes of a hummingbird coming from a short distance away. [Many of the wintering hummers I’ve seen have been quite vocal.] It took me a couple minutes to finally find the Calliope perched in a small tree just a few feet from the flowers - a stunning adult male! Over the next several minutes it visited the flowers a couple times, always returning to the same perch. Since it was being so cooperative, I spent a couple minutes trying to take some photos of the bird holding my iPhone up against my binocs. The best of my miserable pictures is pasted in below – probably would have turned out better if it had perched in the sun.
A short time later another birder arrived and I was able to get him on the Calliope. He mentioned that the Broad-billed was most reliable at other patches of shrimp plants in the tiny park, and he gave me directions to those spots. I decided to head to one patch that was likely in the warm early morning sun, and as soon as I arrived I heard an unfamiliar double-note chattering sound – it was the Broad-Billed! The bird looked gigantic compared to the tiny Calliope. It was a young male bird – grayish below with a little blue color in the throat, broad white eye stripe, and only restricted red at the base of the bill. A long way from adult plumage, but still an attractive bird. I watched it feed there for a couple minutes, at which point it flew low directly over my head in the general direction of a second patch of shrimp plants. So I walked over to that garden and I instantly found the bird chipping away there too. I looked at my watch – it was exactly 8:00. Perfect timing to add 2 statebirds to my TX list and still be at my first work meeting on time.
My statebird maps for these hummingbirds are starting to show the pattern of vagrancy that these and most of the other hummers exhibit. I’ve seen Calliope in 10 states – 7 are in its normal range in the west and now 3 are in Gulf Coast or Eastern states.
And I now have Broad-billed in 6 states –only 1 is in its normal range (AZ).
That gives me 12 species of hummingbirds in Texas – 1 more than for my Arizona list. And my total Texas statelist is 412 which is my largest single state total. However, a better way to rank the statelists is to compare them by their relative percentages of the ABA reporting thresholds. In that regard, I have 8 statelists that are a higher percentage of the ABA reportable limits, led by NH at 175% of reportable compared to TX at 131% of reportable.
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