Catherine:

You'd have my vote for Rufous, which certainly can appear all-red at times.
It's a tad early as the main flight is in March, but there are plenty of
late Feb. records for the mild Seattle area. I had an overflight hummer
Feb. 22 at Discovery Park which was probably a Rufous--it just gave the
high-pitched, fast "tic-tic!" "tic-tic!" call, which I have not heard Anna's
do. I would be interested in Tweeters feedback: has anyone out there had
Anna's give this sort of overflight call? The Anna's around Discovery
usually give a raspy series of slurred notes but may give single chip note
calls on occasion.

Scott Atkinson
Lake Stevens
email: scottratkinson at hotmail.com



>From: Squeakyfiddle at aol.com
>Reply-To: Squeakyfiddle at aol.com
>To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
>Subject: Rufous hummer? South Seattle
>Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 23:31:33 EST
>
>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

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