This hummingbird failed to fly south for the winter, so it got a car ride

A tiny rufous hummingbird was released safely in Van‐ couver late last month af‐ ter it was found flying around Prince George, more than 500 kilome‐ tres north, long after it should have migrated for the winter.

The bird first caught the notice of Clive Keen, an editor with B.C. Birding magazine, when his wife Anna pointed it out in early October.

According to eBird, an on‐ line resource that lets users record bird sightings around the world, the latest recorded sighting of a rufous in Prince George up to that point was in September, with most mi‐ grating south by the end of August.

But since the city was en‐ joying an unusually warm au‐ tumn, Keen assumed it was simply waiting for the frost to set in before taking off.

However, when he saw it again on Oct. 26 after the city's first snowfall with tem‐ peratures forecast for -15 C, he started to get worried.

"Clearly, it wasn't going to survive if it stayed around," he said. "I kept thinking ... 'Surely, you're going to take the hint and head off south.' But no, it kept hanging around in my tree."

So he turned to the online birding community to devise a plan worthy of a Looney Tunes cartoon to trap the bird and transport it to safety.

A species in peril Rufous hummingbirds are one of the smaller species of hummingbird, measuring ap‐ proximately eight centimetres long and weighing roughly four grams when fully grown — or, as Keen puts it, "about the amount of a dime."

They spend summers in the Pacific Northwest, includ‐ ing B.C., as well as into the Yukon and Alaska before mi‐ grating over 3,200 kilometres to Mexico and parts of the southern United States for the winter. As a result of this wide range, rufous humming‐ birds have been identified as a top "surrogate species" by researchers at UBC for mea‐ suring the impacts of climate change and habitat loss since their livelihood is dependent on the well-being of larger ecosystems.

And there is concern about their survival: Research from the Grouse Mountain Refuge for Endangered Wildlife, which tracks hum‐ mingbird migrations, indi‐ cates a rapid decline in their numbers. Earlier this year, the committee on the status of endangered wildlife in Canada recommended they be ur‐ gently assessed for possible inclusion on Canada's nation‐ al list of species at risk.

The trap

All of this meant there was high interest from birders across Canada as Keen pro‐ vided updates on his late-sea‐ son hummingbird in forums and email groups, asking for advice about what he should do.

Eventually, he got creative, setting up a feeder inside a cage with a string attached to the door. Similar to Wile E. Coyote in Roadrunner car‐ toons, he and his wife lay in wait, ready to use the string to pull the cage shut once they acquired their target.

And just like the cartoons, the bird proved elusive — fly‐ ing near the cage and sitting on the string, but not actually going inside. In all, Keen says, it took 14 hours over two days of watching and waiting for the plan to be successful. "It was an endurance test." Several people said they were willing to transport the bird south or chip in for a plane ticket, but in the end, it was Keen's wife who made the trip, immediately driving nine hours to release the hummingbird in a Vancouver park. There, Keen hopes, it will survive and perhaps return to Prince George — currently ex‐ periencing temperatures be‐ low –20 C — once things warm up next year.

And although it took a lot of work, Keen says the payoff of getting to help the bird and see it up close was worth it.

"I mean, they weigh about the same amount as an in‐ sect. It's astonishing that such a thing should exist."