I have two question before I can give you an opinion.
1. What do you mean by red? Rufous Hummingbirds are an
orangy red (rufous).
2. Did you hear anything? Male Rufous Hummingbirds make
a nearly incessant zzzzzzzzzzz while they are moving around.
This is distinctive.

Last year's first dates were:

Washington Skamokawa, WA 02-20-2000
Guemes, WA 02-24-2000
Bellevue, WA 02-27-2000

but arrivals ran a bit early.

This year has been a sort of factured early season with birds
showing up mid-range without being detected further south and there
are a lot of birds still being seen in their winter quarters with
no real sign of moving on...




Squeakyfiddle at aol.com wrote:
>
> Boy, I hesitate to report this. I've checked around and I think it's just too
> early. But. Yesterday was sitting on the back porch around 4:30 admiring the
> house finches in the pear tree- in the late afternoon light they looked like
> ripe peaches. Then noticed a hummingbird. It zipped into sight in the shadow
> of the neighbor's garage and hovered. I figured it was the Anna's that has
> been gracing the garden all winter. Then it moved into the sunlight and all
> I could see was red. Head, tail, and when it turned, belly. Red. I got about
> 10 seconds of viewing before it flew out of sight into the neighbors yard.
>
> What's the probability that this was a Rufous? Or, given the angle of light
> and the tricks of iridescence, an Anna's that just looked red? I checked Mike
> Patterson's hummer report, and there was a definitive Rufous on the southern
> Oregon coast on the 18th. How quickly do they cover ground when they're
> migrating? Do they show up earlier in years of warm winter weather? There are
> Osoberry blooming in the open places in the neighborhood, but my red-currant
> bushes are barely showing new leaves. Sorry about all the questions. I
> suddenly realized that I know very little about hummingbird arrival dates and
> migration patterns.
>
> Catherine Alexander
> squeakyfiddle at aol.com

--
Mike Patterson Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo,
Astoria, OR it is not enough to be persecuted
celata at pacifier.com by an unkind establishment,
you must also be right.
---Robert Park
http://www.pacifier.com/~mpatters/bird/bird.html