16 November 2025

If you live in southwestern Pennsylvania and have a hummingbird at your feeder in November it’s guaranteed to be a Rare Bird — most likely a rufous hummingbird. This month there were rare hummingbirds at two private residences. Charity Kheshgi and I went to see one of them on Friday. (Thank you, Ron Burkert!)

Rufous hummingbirds (Selasphorus rufus) breed from the south coast of Alaska to California and Montana and spend the winter in Mexico and the Gulf Coast. However, a few have compass errors that lead them east instead of south. 

Normally this would be a fatal error but rufous hummers are so cold hardy that they return to their breeding grounds in April when there is still snow on the ground and can survive an Eastern winter as long as they have food — a heated hummingbird feeder that does not freeze.

The eBird Species Map below shows where they’ve shown up in October and November in the past three years, 2023-2025. Notice how many (purple) occurrences there are east of the Mississippi in those months!

The wanderers are often immature birds who’ve never made the trip before. Indeed the bird we saw on Friday was immature and was molting some of his head feathers.

He perched nicely on a twig so that Charity could film him.

These wanderers eventually head south. Some of them spend the winter in Florida. It’s a long way to go to find warmth.