Are there hummingbirds in nyc

They have even been seen chasing chipmunks! If an aggressive Rufous Hummingbird has taken over your hummingbird feeder, you have a few options to help alleviate the pressure. My favorite strategy is setting up multiple feeders around your entire yard. The farther you can place them apart, the better!

There is no way your problem bird can defend all the feeding stations at once, ensuring that other individuals get a chance to eat. The most common sound you will hear these birds make is a series of chipping notes, which are given as a warning to intruding birds.

Bird Watching HQ. The 2 Types of Hummingbirds in New York! Today, you will learn the 2 hummingbird species that can be found in New York and how to identify them. To learn more about birds that live near you, check out these other guides! Here are the 2 types of hummingbirds in New York! How To Identify: Males : Medium-sized hummingbird with a bright red throat and a black chin and mask that extends behind the eyes. The top of their head and back is iridescent green. Underparts are pale grey with a green wash on the sides of their belly.

Females : Duller than males. The chin and throat are white with pale green streaks. Their face lacks the black chin and red throat of the male. Native American Indians thought they were magic. They are certainly magical. Over 20 species of hummingbirds have been recorded in the United States. Most are found in the Western United States. The Ruby-throated Hummingbird is the only species normally found in New York. Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird. The female has a mainly white throat.

The Ruby-throated Hummingbird, on the other hand, migrates miles across the Gulf of Mexico twice a year. It's similar to the Lenoir Preserve Rufous in having quite a lot of color in the throat.

This bird was also seen feeding in Central Park on Jan 10th - expanding its nectaring range to the Winterdale Arch near Tanner's Spring. Unfortunately that does involve crossing Central Park West, but these birds are fast and maneuverable.

Rufous Hummingbird at Lenoir Preserve in Yonkers, An immature female Rufous Hummingbird at Lenoir Preserve in Yonkers, November of which I got adequate but not definitive photos of. I'm not sure who found this hummingbird but Lenoir is a regular fall location for western hummingbird vagrants. Others have obtained tail spread shots and this is yet another first winter immature female Rufous.

It's quite remarkable just how many of the vagrant Rufous are immature females - I would have expected immature males to be the vanguards. I can find dates for this bird from Nov 6th - Dec 11th Those dates do not overlap the known one for the Manhattan bird but the appearence of the gorget on them is different - they are unlikely to be the same individuals. Given the absence of flowers it was assumed it was just passing through but this bird stuck around at least through Monday December 13th and I managed to get photos of it on Dec 2nd and Dec 3rd: Based on the extent of the gorget feathers as a significant central spot the feathers visible as rufous under favorable conditions , the absence of rufous gorget feathers elsewhere on the throat they are green , the general lack of rufous on the back and head, and the lack of "rifling" pattern on the bill often seen in immature hummingbirds, this bird appears to be an adult female.

Adults are much less common as vagrants than immatures, but adult females aren't a lot easier to ID than immatures adult males are a lot easier. Statistically the bird is more likely to be Rufous than Allen's, something that is made even more likely by the relative broadness of the tail feathers in some of my own photos.

However Cal Vornberger got a tail-spread shot of this bird which makes it's ID unequivocal - adult female Rufous Hummingbird. The pattern on the R2 feather is definitive and reliable in adult birds. Broad-tailed Hummingbird was eliminated quickly from the presence of an obvious white "collar" on the bird below the throat and by the tail shape. The same ID marks apply here as on the Yonkers bird, namely the extent of rufous on the back, potential notching on the inside of tail feather R2 usually pretty minimal in immature females , relative width of R5 compared to R4 and R3.

The bird may not be definitively identifiable, but I have a few photos to share. In bad light I took several photos of this bird on 12th November The first photo is a "tail spread" shot of dubious quality, but it does show that R5 outermost is smaller than R4 and R3, but the extent of which is up for debate. Unfortunately R2, although having a small white tip, is not well-defined in the photos. There is a suggestion that R2 may have a small notch on the inside, but it's just a suggestion.

The other three photos are just feeding shots that help to show the extent of rufous in the upper tail coverts and back - there is not enough rufous in them to clinch Rufous over Allen's but the tail does show enough green in R1 to indicate immature female over immature male, which is consistent with the reasonably broad tail feathers.

There's a fair amount of variability in these sort of markings but the lack of rufous on the rest of the bird also suggests a female. There is rather extensive green stippling in the gorget, but I can detect no rufous in those feathers in my photos.

The extent of gorget markings give me some qualms about the identification of the bird as an immature female, but for now I will stick with the ID.

More recently June , Sheri Williamson of the Southeastern Arizona Bird Observatory made the comment that the narrowness and length of the retrices seemed much more suggestive of Allen's over Rufous. This opinion is shared by other experienced birders that have seen the photos.

Although stopping short of absolute certainty, there seems a distinct likelyhood that the Central Park bird would constitute the first NY State record for Allen's Hummingbird. Getting it accepted by NYSARC is another matter, not least of all because it may be impractical to separate Allen's from Rufous with certainty short of capturing it which is exactly what they did in the fall Cape May Allen's Hummingbird.

There are also pictures of this bird taken by Cal Vornberger , also featuring a tail-spread shot. The Central Park Allen's appears to have left around lunchtime on Saturday November 23 , a day of very high winds. Hummingbirds migrate during the day.

Another Selasphorus was seen in Manhattan that day, down at Wagner Park, but I don't think it was the same bird. There's a disturbing possibility that the rarity of Allen's Hummingbird in the east is partially a product of expectancy - i.

I personally didn't see any photos of the Lenoir Selasphorus that were definitive for Rufous over Allen's, although quite obviously comparsion of the morphology of the Central Park and Lenoir birds might tell us something. In fall of in the course of going through the identification of the AMNH Rufous I took another look at the tail spread shot I had and it became much more obvious to be that the bird was an Allen's Hummingbird based on the narrowness of the outer retrices.

Immature female Rufous Hummingbird in Yonkers, One year after the first Rufous another Selasphorus hummingbird was again found by Michael Bochnik at Lenoir in late October , in the same flower garden.

This bird appeared to be a fairly drab immature female Selasphorus , which complicated the ID of this bird. Based on a combination of features, and clinched at least in part by the tapering of the tail, this bird was believed to be a Rufous Hummingbird as was accepted as sch by the NY State Records Committee although the details of the ID didn't emerge on public email lists as far as I know. Two of my photos are shown below, and there are others at Kevin McGowan's site.

You can't tell the species from these photos, so one relies on the observations of others. As of Nov 20th there were apparently TWO hummingbirds at Yonkers, but the second one was not refound subsequently. This bird was present from October 28th to November 29th Calliope in Manhattan, In people wouldn't have given you good odds on finding three Calliope Hummingbirds in Manhattan over two years, but Ben Cacace found and identified an immature male Calliope Hummingbird in Wagner Park near Battery Park in Manhattan on November 19th Several birders including Lloyd Spitalnik, Harry Maas, Tom Fiore, myself went down the following morning and saw this bird.

The critical features were that the short tail was significantly shorter than the wings, evident when perched, and the presence of two elongated red gorget feathers on the right-hand side of the bird. The forehead, crown, back and upper tail coverts of this bird were emerald green.