I’m thrilled to announce the publication of a note in the latest issue of Western Birds describing a “new” hummingbird hybrid: Ruby-throated × Rufous!
The inspiration for the article was a stunning adult male photographed in Beaver Mines, Alberta, by Gordon Peterson and initially accepted by the Alberta Bird Record Committee (ABRC) as a Broad-tailed Hummingbird. Gordon later photographed an adult female of this combination at his feeders, and searches of eBird and iNaturalist turned up additional examples photographed in Griffith Woods Park in Calgary and at a private home in Revelstoke, British Columbia.
Broad-tailed is something of a “grail bird” in Canada, with only one indisputable record to date (an adult male in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba in May 2006). Dozens of other records have turned out to be drab juvenile female Rufous or hybrids involving Rufous or simply lacked persuasive documentation (“looked just like the picture in the field guide” doesn’t cut it).
Despite the disappointment of removing a species from Alberta’s bird list (for the time being, at least), ABRC members Jocelyn Hudon, Curator of Ornithology at Royal Alberta Museum, and David R. Scott, librarian at the University of Lethbridge, were enthusiastic about writing up this previously undescribed hybrid combination. We chose Western Birds, the journal of Western Field Ornithologists, to increase the article’s reach to the birding community and were grateful that the article was accepted with minimal revisions. Jocelyn and David were outstanding collaborators, and it was a pleasure and a privilege to work with them. Thanks are also in order to the hard-working volunteers who review records submitted to eBird and the provincial bird record committees, contributors to eBird and iNaturalist whose submissions are the raw material for this kind of “armchair ornithology,” the supporters and administrators of these community science platforms, the members of Western Field Ornithologists, and the editors and reviewers of Western Birds.
The article, along with the rest of the issue, is free to read. Download it here (PDF).
