It was late in the afternoon on a slow Sunday when I got a call that a Calliope Hummingbird had been coming to a feeder in Manchester, NH. Amazingly it was an adult male, and the first state record for NH! But although this location was just 45 minutes from my house, sunset was only 30 minutes away, so not quite enough time to try for the bird that day. Then the details began to filter in – the bird first appeared at the feeder 2 weeks earlier, though word first got out to the birding community that afternoon. And it was seen by many NH birders that afternoon, though I got the word just before dark – ugh! But hopefully it will stick around at least one more day for me to try for it the next morning. That is unless it would get too cold for the little bird – temps were forecasted to drop to the upper 20’s that night. So I called a couple of my birding friends who also hadn’t heard about it yet, and we all planned to be at the feeders at dawn the next morning.
When I arrived at 7 the thermometer on the
car said 28 degrees – is that too cold for a hummingbird? Calliopes live in some cold mountainous areas
so I was still optimistic. And sure
enough just a couple minutes later, the hummingbird flew in to the feeder. The bird just sat there at first, not even
feeding. Eventually it started to drink,
and gave good views over the next 2 visits before 7:30.
After leaving Manchester I headed down to
CT to try for a stakeout Lark Sparrow. Unfortunately,
for the second time in CT, I struck out on this species. Not every statebird search is successful.
NH was my third eastern state with Calliope
as a vagrant, along with numerous western states where it is a regular breeder
or migrant (see my statebird map below).
And this bird was number 349 for my NH statelist, and #1950 for my New
England list. Now only 50 away from my
long-term goal of 2000 statebirds in New England.
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