[va-richmond-general] in case folks didn't see this!
- From: "Kathy" <k-kreutzer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <va-richmond-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2010 07:03:14 -0500
from Kathy Kreutzer, Chesterfield
Going great lengths to flock together
By Andy Thompson
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/member-center/profile/16546/> |
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Published: December 05, 2010
A serious hunter
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/position/tags/serious-hunter/>
would think nothing of traveling to the mountains of Colorado
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/provinceorstate/tags/colorado/>
to bag a bull elk, the Georgia pines to see a covey of quail rise, or the
savannas of Africa in search of the myriad big game there. Anglers, too, are
known to journey from Tierra del Fuego
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/naturalfeature/tags/fuego/> to
the Arctic Circle
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/region/tags/arctic-circle/> in
search of monster trout and throughout the Caribbean after the elusive
bonefish.
So it should come as no surprise that when a beautiful and extremely rare
avian visitor showed up in Julie Kacmarcik's back yard, its arrival brought
from the woodwork birders willing to travel great distances to see a marvel
so far from its home.
Inveterate birders are invariably inveterate listers, keeping track, with a
check in a box, of all the species they've seen. With the same devotion to
quarry, hunters and sometimes fishermen check their boxes with trophies on
the wall. The common element is the need to see and experience something
uncommon, exceptional. Don't we all share that impulse?
So Kacmarcik
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/person/tags/julie-kacmarcik/> ,
a Chesterfield resident and dedicated birder herself, wasn't all that
surprised at the reaction she received upon announcing the identity of her
flying friend.
It was the morning of Nov. 20. She had spent the previous night banding
saw-whet owls with a local group and was unloading her car when she heard -
almost felt - a strange noise.
"I heard it fly past my head," she said. "I just heard the wings."
The "it" was a hummingbird.
"I have all this purple sage blooming," she explained, but thinking the
hummingbirds already had left Central Virginia for warmer wintering grounds,
"I had just taken all my hummingbird feeders inside about a week and a half
prior."
Kacmarcik
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/person/tags/julie-kacmarcik/>
quickly realized that this bird wasn't a ruby-throated hummingbird, common
in Virginia. It looked more like a Rufous hummingbird, but she wasn't sure.
She called the United States Geological Survey's Bird Banding Laboratory in
Laurel, Md. The head of the lab, Bruce Peterjohn
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/person/tags/bruce-peterjohn/> ,
a certified hummingbird bander, arrived the day after Thanksgiving
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/holiday/tags/thanksgiving/> to
band and identify the animal.
He noticed first that "the flight feathers were very worn and faded." When
he measured a tail feather, he realized this was no Rufous. It was the much
rarer Allen's hummingbird.
How rare is the Allen's? When made official by the Virginia Avian Records
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/organization/tags/virginia-avian
-records-committee/> Committee, this will be just the third ever confirmed
in Virginia. In the past decade, Peterjohn said he has banded just eight
Allen's throughout the entire Mid-Atlantic
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/region/tags/mid-atlantic/> .
Of course, there's a reason for that: The bird is a California
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/provinceorstate/tags/california/
> native. The migratory species of Allen's (there's a non-migratory
population in Southern California) lives near the border with Oregon
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/provinceorstate/tags/oregon/>
and winters in Mexico. How, and why, it arrived in the Richmond area, is
anyone's guess.
"We really don't know why it's here," Peterjohn said. "For whatever reason,
the bird's navigation system, instead of telling it to go to southwest
Mexico, redirected it to the Eastern United States."
Being a birder, Kacmarcik
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/person/tags/julie-kacmarcik/>
knew how people would react when she posted the news on a website for
Virginia bird lovers.
"I thought long and hard about it because you're going to be bombarded with
calls," Kacmarcik
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/person/tags/julie-kacmarcik/>
said, laughing.
She couldn't resist.
"I've been one of those people who's seen a bird that I was very interested
in, and I never would have known it or seen it if somebody had not posted
that information."
Within hours, birders were at her doorstep. An e-mailer from Connecticut
intended to make the trip down I-95 and wanted to make sure the bird still
was there.
Former Virginia Society of Ornithology President Bill Williams, who lives in
Williamsburg, said he wasn't about to miss seeing an Allen's hummingbird so
far from its home and so close to his.
"[When one was in Bristol 12 years ago], people drove all the way across the
state from the coast to see that. So, yes, it's a big deal."
Kacmarcik's feeders are back out in the yard and the sage blooms still are
holding on, but, with a navigation system so off kilter, no one really knows
how long this rare tyke will stay or where it will go when it leaves. That's
why banding these birds is so important, according to Williams.
"The more of these birds that are caught and banded and processed over time,
we will begin to fill in gaps," Williams said. "Suppose somebody in West
Virginia
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/provinceorstate/tags/west-virgin
ia/> has a feeder out and this little bird on its way back, or on its way
wherever, is caught again. That begins to tell us things. It'll take time,
but there will be patterns we think."
For now, the only pattern that seems certain is the continuing line of
amazed birders at Kacmarcik's house, looking to get a glimpse of a rare bird
and check off a box on their life list they thought they'd have to fly to
California
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/provinceorstate/tags/california/
> for.
_____
Contact Andy Thompson
<http://www2.timesdispatch.com/topics/types/person/tags/andy-thompson/> at
(804) 649-6579 or outdoors@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Other related posts:
- » [va-richmond-general] in case folks didn't see this! - Kathy