Matt,
Chances are good you saw a Rufous. We own the Westerville,OH Wild Birds
Unlimited store and worked with one of our customers that have had a female
Rufous ("Maude") at their HB feeder since Oct 26th. These folks are located
in northern Westerville and are still seeing her as of today 11/23. We put
these folks in touch with Allen Chartier from Michigan
(http://mihummingbirdguy.blogspot.com) who is one of a select few licensed
hummingbird banders. Allen came to Westerville earlier this week(11/19) and
banded their hummer and ID'd it as an after hatch-year female Rufous. This
was Allen's first banded Rufous in Delaware county. He was making the
rounds through Ohio and had about half a dozen reports of Rufous HB's
scattered around the state that he was hoping to authenicate/band.
According to Allen there is a rare chance of late hummers such as this being
an even rarer Allen's hummer. Once the bird is in hand he is able to
distinguish Rufous vs. Allen's by a subtle difference in their tail
feathers. We posted several pictures that we took of Monday's banding
activity at this website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/westervillewildbirds/
Regards,
Dan Hall
http://westerville.wbu.com/
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