Rufous Hummingbird, Biddeford, ME, and Post-Sandy Birding #1 – October 2012

While away on a business trip some posts started coming in about a Selasphorus hummingbird at a feeder in Biddeford, ME.  And a couple posts were suggesting it might not be the expected Rufous – some leaning toward Broad-tailed.  I have no Selasphorus hummers of any kind in Maine, so obviously worth a try for the bird.  But would it stay until I returned from my trip? 

And then there’s the issue of whether it would survive through Hurricane Sandy.  The hurricane battered the Maine coast with lots of wind and rain though certainly nothing like down on the NY, NJ and CT coasts.  The night of the storm I contacted the local homeowners with the hummingbird and they said they did not see it that day.  Was the wind just too strong for this little bird?  So thinking the bird might be gone, I decided to bird along the coast elsewhere the day after the storm looking for wind-blown birds. 

While driving north to head to the coast the morning after the storm I got a call from the homeowners – the hummer was back!  Needless to say I changed my course, and an hour later was at their front yard looking at the feeder.  After about a 20-minute wait I heard a sharp chip note and soon thereafter the hummingbird arrived to feed.  I had good long views of the bird from the back, and although I never saw the tail spread, I never saw any orange at all in the tail feathers.  Hmm…  Regardless of my possible ID, the bird was banded a couple days later and was confirmed as a Rufous Hummingbird.

After leaving the feeding station I began my search for storm-tossed birds.  Two stops in Biddeford yielded a couple large flocks of gulls but nothing of interest.  Then during an hour-long seawatch at the Cliff House in Ogunquit I saw mostly the normal fall seabird migrants, though a Laughing Gull was very late and perhaps blown north by the storm.  I also had the briefest view of a storm-petrel just before it disappeared behind a large swell never to be seen again.  Next stop was Cape Neddick where the first bird I saw was a very late bedraggled male Black-throated Blue Warbler – was this a storm bird?  With nothing else of interest in the thickets, and the road to Nubble Light closed due to the storm, I began to head home.  But one last check of the listserves mentioned a Leach’s Storm-Petrel at inland Lake Massabesic in NH.  With one more change in course I was at the lake with several other birders watching this poor confused bird bobbing around on the lake waters.  Not a NH statebird, but a great inland sighting none the less.

My statebird map for Rufous Hummingbird is inserted below.  I have now seen Rufous in each New England state (my 215^th species in each of these 6 states), as well as five other eastern and Gulf Coast states as a winter vagrant.