It was another hot, humid weekend in central Iowa. Saturday got off to a good start with the first good vagrant bird of the fall season. On Thursday, longtime Iowa birders Eugene and Eloise Armstrong had a Selasphorus hummingbird appear at their Madison County farmstead. Selasphorus is a western genus that contains several similar species. The one most likely to stray east, and the only one recorded in Iowa so far, is the Rufous Hummingbird. However, there are a few Allen’s Hummingbird records in the east, and except for adult males, the two species are nearly identical. So, most females and immatures go down in the record books as ‘Selasphorus species’ due to lack of definitive IDs. With the bird still present Friday night, birding friend Jim Sinclair and I met at the Armstrongs’ Saturday morning to try to see it. Neither one of us had seen this bird in Iowa before, and we are both to the point where getting new state birds is getting tough, so this was pretty exciting. Fortunately, the Armstrongs were sitting out back in their lawnchairs watching their feeder set up, and had seen the bird several times already. Of their four feeders, three were being swarmed by 7-8 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, while the other was being guarded by the Selasphorus. Anytime a Ruby-throat would try to feed at it, the Selasphorus would dart out of a tree and chase it off. All the birds were fairly confiding, and I was able to photograph our target at relatively close range.
Rufous Hummingbird, Armstrong residence, Madison Co., IA, 21 Aug 2010.
So that’s one of the good shots from an aesthetic perspective. But, to confirm the identification without the bird in hand requires photos of the throat and the fanned tail. Fortunately, the bird would occasionally fan its tail when chasing off Ruby-throats, allowing me to get several useful shots including the following.
Rufous Hummingbird, Armstrong residence, Madison Co., IA, 21 Aug 2010.
Long story short, after consulting several references, I believe this is as expected, a Rufous Hummingbird, and not the very unlikely but not out of the question Allen’s Hummingbird. We are still waiting to hear back from some real experts for confirmation, but regardless, it’s a good looking bird and we were glad to see it when we did–it headed south an hour after we saw it!
On Sunday I made a trip to the Marietta Sand Prairie which is about an hour northeast of Des Moines in Marshall County. This prairie has a nice big sand blow that was good for Big Sand (Cicindela formosa) and Festive (Cicindela scutellaris lecontei) tiger beetles earlier in the year. I was hoping to find a different species today, but it was more of the same. What was impressive was the sheer number of C. formosa. In the blow itself were hundreds. Walking the surrounding trails flushed 5-10 per step. I have never seen anything like it.
Big Sand Tiger Beetle, Marietta Sand Prairie, Marshall Co., IA, 22 Aug 2010.
Another common creature of the sand blow is this millipede(?).
unidentified millipede, Marietta Sand Prairie, Marshall Co., IA, 22 Aug 2010.
And what happens when a millipede wanders around a sand blow in front of a bunch of tiger beetles?
Big Sand Tiger Beetle, Marietta Sand Prairie, Marshall Co., IA, 22 Aug 2010.
Big Sand Tiger Beetle, Marietta Sand Prairie, Marshall Co., IA, 22 Aug 2010.
One less millipede. Those are the highlights of the weekend. I’m hoping to make a trip out west to the Loess Hills in the next few weeks to look for Leonard’s Skipper and to check on this fall’s Nevada Buckmoth flight. Until then, hopefully there will be plenty here locally to keep things interesting.
Hi Aaron – your formosa seem to have a more nominotypical appearance than I would expect that far east of the Missouri River. Maybe it’s just the lighting, but they seem much more purplish than typical generosa populations.
I was down in southeastern Missouri yesterday on some sand habitats and did not see any of these yet – your fall season must be considerably more advanced.
It wasn’t just the lighting. Most of them were very noticeably purplish. The ones at this site in the spring were more of a dull brown with an occasional hint of maroon. The scutellaris were also more purple than I remember from spring. The earlier ones were a more wine color, while the ones yesterday were almost a bright grape purple. Considering that both species seem to have shown variation in the same direction at the same time, I wonder if this a normal spring/fall difference or whether this was environmentally induced?
[...] 13th and 14th Rufous Hummingbirds, one of which I was able to view and wrote about in a previous post. Although there are now fourteen Rufous records, I, and a number of other birders, think that [...]