Home for Christmas

An Anna’s Hummingbird has made the trip over to Point Roberts in order to be home for our White Christmas. Apparently, she (it’s a she, note the white tip at the end of the tail) is doing her homecoming at Rose’s. Anna’s are not the most frequent of our hummingbirds on the Point. That honor belongs to Rufous Hummingbirds. All our hummingbirds arrive in mid-spring and then disappear sometime around July. I always assumed that they went south, but when I looked up info about them on Google, I found that “Christmas Bird Counts document the presence of Anna's Hummingbird throughout western Washington in the winter.” Apparently, it winters as far up as southern Alaska. Hardy fellows, given that they didn’t come up past California until the second half of the 20th Century.

Certainly surpised me to find they were up here as winter dwellers. I’ve never seen one in Point Roberts much after August, let alone in the winter. Up farther north, here on the Sunshine Coast, we had a Xanthus Hummingbird who showed up about ten years ago around Christmas and then wintered over. Since the Xanthus is a Baja, Mexico, resident and never comes this far north, it was quite an event and people came from all over to look at it. We drove down to look at it and we definitely saw it. But that was about it for me. I can’t imagine coming here from 1,000 miles away to see a bird whose picture is readily available in any bird book as some people did, but I guess that only goes to prove that I’m not really a serious birder. But I knew that already.

Anyway, the householders who had the Xanthus put out a visitors’ book and graciously welcomed this weeks’ long string of visitors. And then come February or so, the Xanthus disappeared. Holiday over. One of the bird scholar people up here speculated that it had been blown up this far on the winds of a winter storm system coming up from the south. Ah, the lives of birds: more unexpected events than I might have thought. I tend to think it’s just food—for themselves and those noisy broods.

Does this Anna’s need a Visitors’ Book? No, probably not. Just needs a lot of sugar solution, for which she can thank Rose. And thanks to Renee for the photos!