According to my old bird guides, one of which dates back to a field biology class I took at eighteen or nineteen, this little guy isn’t supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be anywhere from Northern California to Alaska. But here he is, in Southern California. (Notice how we Californians capitalize the two regions, as if we wanted to be two separate states, like the Dakotas or the Carolinas?)
Anyway, he’s in the wrong place, I think. If it’s time for Rufous Hummingbirds to migrate to winter grounds, he’s supposed to be in Mexico, or on his way there. This feisty little Selasphorus rufus has claimed the territory around our feeder during the past two days. I’ve been paying attention to hummingbirds all my life, and we’ve fed them for years, here at the north end of the county and in the city of San Diego, but we never saw a Rufous before, at least not closely enough to identify it. With no green on his back (see below), he’s definitely a Rufous.
My photos don’t do him justice, though they might if he would sit still for a few seconds and let me focus. He’s a glowing reddish gold with an irridescent scarlet throat that could stop traffic. He’s faster than any of the other hummingbirds, and he doesn’t let them forget it.
Maybe his range has been thrown off by global warming, as this Smithsonian site seems to hint, or perhaps they’ve always been around and I just haven’t noticed.
