Rare Rufous hummingbird draws birders to St. Marys
By Galen Simmons
A tiny visitor from western North America has made a backyard on Queen Street West in St. Marys the centre of attention for birdwatchers from across the region after being identified as the first recorded Rufous hummingbird in Perth County.
Brent and Cathy Cubberley had no idea they were hosting such a rare visitor until Brent Cubberley mentioned to his son-in-law, avid birder Derek Ruthig, that two hummingbirds were still visiting his backyard feeder in early November, long after most hummingbirds would have migrated south for the winter.
“I feed the orioles, and then the hummingbirds have come in, and it got later in the year and later in the year, and I’m wondering about how long I should leave a feeder out,” Brent Cubberley said.
After discussing the unusual visitors with Ruthig and fellow birder Dave Wallace, Brent Cubberley was encouraged to leave the feeder up and try to get photographs.
Ruthig managed to capture video showing an unusual spot on one hummingbird’s throat, suggesting it wasn’t the Ruby-throated hummingbird commonly found in Ontario.
“We got a video that you could see this one unique spot on the throat of this hummingbird, which indicated that it wasn’t a Ruby-throated hummingbird,” Ruthig said. “It was something different.”
Additional photographs confirmed the bird was something special, and members of the Ontario Field Ornithologists were contacted to help verify its identity. The bird was identified as an adult female Rufous hummingbird, a species normally found in western North America.
According to wildlife biologist Brett Fried, who is involved in bird conservation, research and the documentation of rare bird sightings in Ontario, Rufous hummingbirds typically breed west of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, southern Alaska and the northwestern United States before migrating as far as Mexico for the winter. Some travel more than 6,000 kilometres annually.
While Ontario’s Ruby-throated hummingbirds generally have green upperparts and, in females, whitish underparts, female Rufous hummingbirds have rusty-orange colouring along their flanks and tail feathers, along with a small patch of iridescent orange-red feathers on their throats.
Fried said photographs of the bird’s spread tail, including a distinctive notch in one of its feathers, provided strong evidence distinguishing it from the closely related Allen’s hummingbird.
The sighting is particularly significant because Rufous hummingbirds are exceptionally rare in Ontario. The Ontario Bird Records Committee had accepted just 38 provincial records through its 2021 review, with only a handful of additional sightings reported since.
“This represents the first documented Rufous Hummingbird for Perth County, making it a particularly significant record for the local birding community,” Fried said.
Interestingly, another Rufous hummingbird, a young male, has been observed at a private residence in Waterloo since September.
Fried said the birds’ presence in southwestern Ontario could be the result of unusual migratory instincts, changing weather conditions or strong winds pushing them eastward, though there is no definitive explanation.
Despite arriving in Ontario as winter approaches, Fried said the species is surprisingly resilient, capable of surviving freezing temperatures and entering a state of reduced metabolic activity called torpor to conserve energy.
For the Cubberleys, the discovery has brought an unexpected influx of visitors to their Queen Street West home.
A designated viewing area was established in their backyard for Nov. 6-8, with roughly 130 birders, some from as far away as New Market, Hamilton and Vineland, visiting St. Marys to see the bird over the weekend. Among them was Steve, a Stratford resident originally from the West Coast who said he had seen the species before but never in this part of Ontario.
The rare sighting also presented an unexpected opportunity for the Town of St. Marys, which set up a tourism information booth and collected donations toward a bird-viewing platform being constructed along the Grand Trunk Trail, overlooking a field on Ruthig’s property where rare birds, including the threatened bobolinks, have nested.
Amy Cubberley, the town’s director of tourism and culture and Brent and Cathy Cubberley’s daughter, said the town plans to place a greater emphasis on birding tourism in 2027.
For Brent Cubberley, who plans to keep his feeder available and take steps to help his unusual guest through colder weather, the experience has been a reminder that one never knows what might show up in their backyard.
“It’s none of my doing,” he said. “I just feed the birds.”
“I just thought it was a hummingbird.”
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