What do Madera
Canyon in Arizona and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula have in common?
If you said they’re two
of the best places in the United States to see a Berylline hummingbird, you’d
be right, at least for this past September.
The rarest of the
hummingbirds that regularly occurs in the U.S., Berylline Hummingbirds (Amazilia
beryllina) are truly a tropical bird of Mexico and Central America. Their
native range extends from northwestern Mexico through Honduras where they nest
in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental and some of the highlands
farther south. Sightings of northern vagrants have been made north of Big Bend
in Texas and the southwest corner of New Mexico. Recently, they’ve been known
to breed in the southernmost sky islands of Arizona, a possible northward
expansion of their range. Until last Wednesday, no Berryline Hummingbird had
ever been seen north of the Chiricahua Mountains.
The story unfolds like a
suspense novel.
On Wednesday evening, as
birders across Michigan were settling in for a late summer’s nap, word came
across the birding listservs of a possible Berylline hummingbird in Grand
Marais, Michigan, on the edge of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. “Possible”
was the key word in the report, and it’s used often when an ID is in question
or a report is received second hand. The possibility of a Berylline anywhere in
the Great Lakes, much less on the shore of Lake Superior, was beyond belief to
many of us. A few conversations sprang up about what it possibly could be. A
misidentified Ruby-throated, the common hummer around here? A Buff-bellied,
which would be significantly more likely than a Berylline but still an
astounding record for Michigan?
In the course of one of
those conversations, Skye Haas, a prominent Upper Peninsula birder chimed in
with something that made us all catch our breath. “I’ve seen the pictures. It
looks good.”
I went to bed, six hours
south of the beaches of Pictured Rocks, with visions of brilliant green
hummingbirds in my head. Across town from me, Adam Byrne, who holds the record
for most birds ever seen in Michigan (400) was in his car headed north.
Dawn broke and turned
into a lazy lunchtime as I took care of some chores and checked the listservs and
Facebook frequently. There wasn’t a peep from the Upper Peninsula. That was
odd. I knew many of Michigan’s best and most-connected birders were at the site
of the bird at dawn, so why no report?
In Grand Marais, the
mood was somber. A dozen birders had been staked out where the bird had
supposedly spent the previous day, but nothing was to be seen. Finally, in
early afternoon, Skye broke the news that the bird was absent. It was what
birders wistfully call a one-day-wonder. The consensus among everyone was that
it would not be refound. Calls went out to birders still driving north that
they might as well turn around. Caleb Putnam, Michigan’s Important Bird Area
coordinator, and Rick Brigham, who is coming up on 300 birds in Michigan for
the year, had just crossed into the U.P.
Hearing the sad news
about the hummingbird, they decided to ease their pain by birding the eastern
U.P. for the afternoon.
I expressed my
condolences to the chasers and put the bird out of my mind.
At 9:30 that night, I
decided to turn in early. As I was setting the alarm on my phone, a message
appeared from Adam Byrne.
“Call me!”
Adam launched right into
the important questions.
“What are you doing
tomorrow?”
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“Can you drive a stick?”
“Yes.”
“The bird is back!”
Adam had driven through
the night to be at the bird’s location at dawn, not found the bird, and
returned back home. Thirty minutes after setting foot in the door, he got the
call from the local birder in the U.P. who had first broken the news. While the
birders had been looking for the hummer at a rural house near the national
lakeshore, it had spent the entire day at a house in town!
The only reason any of
this became known is thanks to the culture of Grand Marais and a lucky
coincidence. For whatever reason, there are a lot of residents of the little
town who are very interested in feeding hummingbirds. They aren’t necessarily
birders, but they meticulously maintain hummingbird feeding stations and know
their hummers. The resident of the home where the bird first appeared on
Wednesday recognized it immediately as something unusual, even coming to the
unlikely conclusion that it looked an awful like a Berylline. She snapped some
excellent diagnostic photographs which led to the great chase on Thursday.
Thursday evening, after
having a bunch of birders staring at her house all day, she decided to go out
to a local spot to watch the sunset, since she hadn’t done that in a while and
summer was fading. A mile away, another couple from Grand Marais decided on a
whim to check out the sunset. They ran into each other and started chatting
since everyone in town knows each other. The first lady told the tale of the
strange hummingbird the previous day and the even stranger birders camped out
earlier that morning. The second lady thought that was fascinating since she
had been seeing and photographing what looked like a Berylline hummingbird at
her feeders all day.
To catch up with the
scene, we have birders that have driven from all over staking out a hummingbird
that is actually leisurely lapping up nectar one mile away. Some of these
birders drove right past the house where the bird actually was to pick up
snacks.
Adam hadn’t slept in 36
hours and had just driven six hours back home, but he was about to head back
north for Michigan bird #401. I was going to join him on the all-night drive
for safety purposes. Caleb and Rick had just finished their consolation birding
and were about to cross the Mackinac Bridge for home when the call came in that
the bird was back. They diverted to a motel, thanking the birding gods for
their decision to stay up north until the evening. The U.P. birders were
comparatively well-rested and ready for another go at it at dawn.
After an uneventful drive, Adam and
I cut through a corner of Pictured Rocks to check out the previous day’s
stakeout, then moved on to the new location just before dawn. In short order,
other vehicles arrived and a bunch of bleary-eyed birders lined up across the
street from a house in Grand Marais, summoned by the clarion call of a tiny
green bird. Skye was there with a crew from the U.P. Caleb and Rick were lined
up. I had my scope ready. Adam, running purely on adrenaline and caffeine now,
was still standing. A park ranger from Pictured Rocks and a collection of
others joined us.
It wasn’t
even light yet, when we spotted a dark hummingbird zip through the yard. Voices
were hushed in anticipation. An odd chattering call came from a willow tree in
the yard. None of the highly experienced Michigan birders assembled there
recognized the sound, a very good sign that it was our tropical interloper.
 |
| The assembled twitchers at dawn. |
And then
a Cooper’s Hawk, notorious for feasting on small birds, flew over our heads and
made several emphatic dives into the yard. Seconds after we had just admonished
each other to remain quiet, everyone started yelling things like, “No!,” “Get
out of here!,” and perhaps an obscenity or two.
The hawk
moved on and just as the true light of dawn emerged behind the house, the
curtain was pulled to reveal our prize. “Porch feeder!” We all got scopes and
binoculars on the feeder, and there was a Berylline hummingbird happily sipping
sugar water thousands of miles from the Sierra Madre. Hugs and high-fives were
exchanged down the scope line. A tear or two may have even been shed. And then
we watched the bird come and go for hours. Some of the best and most
well-traveled birders of the region were standing there, and for all but two of
us it was a life bird.
 |
| The best picture I could muster, phonescoped. |
No one
can say how the Berylline hummingbird got to Lake Superior. Some suggest
Hurricane Odile pushed it out of its home and into the high prevailing winds
that took it rapidly to Michigan. It’s anyone’s guess, and we’ll never know for
sure. Sadly, it’s unlikely the bird will live to pass on the wanderlust in its
genes. Hummingbirds can’t survive a northern Michigan winter, and the Berylline
is a non-migratory bird by nature. Will it have the instinct to head south when
it gets cold? In its native range it would be more likely to descend in
elevation in response to poor conditions, which isn’t an option in Michigan.
 |
| Stunning phonescoped capture of the hummer by Upper Peninsula birder Joe Kaplan. |
I’d like
to think he’s just a wanderer like me who wanted to see what was out there
beyond the oaks and pinyon pines of his home. Maybe he’ll head home to the
Chiricahuas and tell tales of his adventure and the ruckus he caused among the
silly humans out east. In the meantime, the intrepid birders of the Thursday
and Friday chases are sleeping.
