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Saturday, January 01, 2011

Pennsylvania Anna's Hummingbird

Last month an Anna's Hummingbird showed up in a trailer community at 3450 Mountain Road, Hamburg PA. A couple weeks ago I went to go see it in 20 degree weather with 30 mile an hour winds and struck out. I thought the bird had disappeared in the bad weather, but apparently one of the homeowners (#69) had put a heater on a feeder behind their house and the bird made it through the bad weather. I drove over there again this morning and the female hummer came in after a short wait.

Here's a map of where the bird is to be seen.


The neighbor at #64 has said birders can stand in his yard by the red shed anytime and watch for the bird. Here's what you'll be looking at.

The bird has been coming in to these feeders, and sometimes hanging out in the tangle to the right of the feeders. At other times it apparently disappears to the south, going down along the creek near the sewage plant at the bottom of the map above--which looks like pretty prime Anna's Hummingbird habitat from my experience growing up with these birds in Oregon.

Now that the neighbors know that the hummer is still around, they are putting their feeders back up, so it could be visiting other feeders in the vicinity. Also, it has taken quite a bit of electricity to keep the feeder at #69 from freezing, so any donations to help defray the cost of keeping this bird around are greatly appreciated there.

Neighbors are friendly, but as always, we should be on our best behavior as we are welcomed into this community to look at this great bird. Please don't drive into the community, park as recommended to the right of the guard shack at the campground entrance as shown on the map.

When I was there this morning, I saw the female hummer for a few minutes at the feeders, and got some quick and distant video through my bins with my digital camera. Here's one of the better stills from the video.


Good thing I shot video through the bins--I never would have been able to capture this unless I was shooting video (thanks for the tip from Dale Forbes).

Here's the raw video:

3 comments:

Drew said...

Glad you got to see it. I thought I would try for it again to add to my year list since I was driving through the area, but no luck today :(

Bill Dalton said...

Great info. Can you give any information on how they setup the heater? Did they use a heat lamp? The reason I'm asking is that when I went to the location of the Anna's, in Pa (I did see it) I had a Rufous at my home here in N.J for a week last November and I just recently took down my feeder. I'd like to try a heating system so any info will help.I use the same exact feeder as the folks in Pa.

birdchaser said...

Bill, I'm not sure about the setup. I think it was a heat lamp, and I talked to the owner and they said it used a lot of electricity. A couple years ago I passed along some info on heating lamps for hummingbird feeders at a post here.

Hope that helps!

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