Each year hummingbirds turn up in the darndest places. Many folks are shocked. But as you can see from this collection of records, whether it's a Costa's in Minnesota or a Calliope in New York or a Broad-billed in Idaho or a Xantus's in British Columbia or a Blue-throated in South Carolina -- hummingbirds are sure to continue to show up where we least expect them. Are you ready to host yours?

"Chance Favors the Prepared Mind" -- Louis Pasteur

A SPECIAL NOTE: Many of the birds tallied on the species maps below have been documented by federally licensed hummingbird banders at the invitation of homeowners like you. The information that can be gathered by banders is not only interesting, it is vital to our understanding of these "vagrant" hummingbirds that spend the winter in areas we previously considered inhospitable. You can do your part by inviting a hummingbird bander licensed in your state to visit your house to capture, band, measure, and release unharmed your winter hummingbird. I encourage you to submit your report to us. Of course if you prefer not to have your bird banded, all you have to do is say "no, thank-you" -- we clearly respect that. Either way, your report is very valuable, so at least send an email to Stacy Jon Peterson, web page compiler, so we can include the report on our database and maps. Thank you very much!

-- Stacy

CLICK A SPECIES TO VIEW RANGE MAPS AND EXTRALIMITAL RECORDS
Recall this is largely a work in progress and should not be considered an authoritative compendium at this time.
Corrections / additions are great appreciated. Species without links are being researched at this time.

I am grateful for the assistance of the state / province bird record committees (hereafter Committees) for providing access to their records. Please become a supporter of the efforts of these Committees by documenting rare birds you see and submitting reports to these entities. You can find links to their respective websites HERE or by doing a simple GOOGLE search.

While every attempt is being made to include all records that have been formally accepted by the various Comittees, in many cases I have included additional records above and beyond those reviewed by these Committees. On rare occasions I include records that have been outright rejected by the various Committees (See British Columbia "Xantus's Hummingbird" for example), but always with explanation. A prominent source for non-formally accepted records is the ABA journal, North American Birds and it's earlier incarnations.

I do this for several reasons:

1. In far too many cases, observers do not submit records to their respective Committees in the first place (I encourage you to change your ways if this applies to you!).
2. Standards of proof required for a record to be accepted often vary considerably between the Committes. Sight records accepted by one may not be accepted by another, for example.
3. My intent is to show trends and illustrate the overal abundance of "out of range" hummingbirds, not to be an archive of perfectly documented records.
4. This is my tally and I set the rules!

That said, I fully anticipate that the records contained heren are valid to a fairly high standard. I attempt to hold "real" rarities (Bahama Woodstar in Florida, for instance) to a higher burden of proof than more common vagrants (Selasphorus in Tennessee, for instance).

Furthermore, each record included in this compilation also includes a citation. Readers or researchers are invited to look up the citation for further details and use the "proof" within the citation for making up their own mind on the validity of any questionable record. In many cases, these citations include websites (and are linked to such), publications (like North American Birds), Rare Bird Alerts, email listservs, or personal communications.

If you have information to refute a controversial sightings that I've included in this website, please bring that to my attention. If the species was not correctly identified, I will certainly adjust the tally and maps accordingly. Where published photographs to the listed rarities exist on the internet, every effort is made to link to those, too. Please alert me to broken links.

Extracting records from published sources, listservs, RBAs, and Committee records takes time! For that reason, I tend to focus on extralimital sightings instead of local rarities. For instance, Black-chinned Hummingbird is probably more rare on the Washington or Oregon coast than it is along the Gulf Coast in winter -- but my focus is more on extralimital vagrancy outside the sphere of origin, and so I don't include Washington or Oregon records (at this time) for this species. One exception may be Anna's and Costa's hummingbirds. I'm particularly interested in these species' movements anywhere outside their breeding / wintering ranges (as published in Sheri Williamson's hummingbird field guide range maps), and so records in the West close to their published ranges are included. Same goes for "extralimital" Rufous Hummingbirds outside their breeding ranges in Alaska.

Finally, my focus here is to provide observers with a yardstick by which to measure the significance of their own sightings - AND - to help people recognize that hummingbirds can and do stray from their "normal" range. The end result, I hope, is that observers will then be more likely to pay attention to the possibility of encountering a rarity in their yard.

"Chance Favors the Prepared Mind" -- Louis Pasteur

Please let me know how this website can better serve you. Enjoy!

Stacy Jon Peterson
Eagle River, Alaska
September 2005