Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, December 26, 1994                   TAG: 9412290027
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: A12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A COUPLE OF RARE ONES

"That morning the little rascal took 39 sips," said Osterhaus, who lives on the Roanoke side of the foothills of Bent Mountain.

"The next time it came, my wife counted 42 sips. It was the last time we saw him."

The mid-December departure was late.

"Our hummingbirds typically leave in the middle of October," he said.

But last year the Osterhauses were late winterizing their feeder.

"Through negligence, we left it out," said Osterhaus. "On Nov. 1, we had a hummingbird there."

The visitor hung around three or four days, then left. This fall, the Osterhauses decided to leave their feeder in place during the late season to observe what it would attract.

"On Nov. 1, the hummingbird showed up again," said Osterhaus.

When it hung around for a couple of weeks, Osterhaus called the Roanoke Valley Bird Club. He told members it wasn't quite like the ruby-throated hummingbird, a familiar summer visitor around the blossoms and sugared water feeders in the area.

The birders didn't get excited about it until Osterhaus called again on Dec. 1.

"They got real interested then, because they began to suspect it might be something other than a ruby-throated," he said. "I knew it had markings different from the ruby-throated, but I am no expert on it."

On a Saturday earlier this month, four bird club members showed up and spent more than an hour in the Osterhauses' dining room watching for the bird for more than an hour. It didn't show.

"The little rascal always would be there otherwise," said Osterhaus.

The birders decided to fan out around the house. When they did, the hummingbird began to approach the feeder, then return to a brushy area.

Birder Barry Kinzie got a picture of it, and felt certain it was an immature, male rufous hummingbird, a Western species that feeds and nests in the high country meadows in the Pacific Northwest then goes south to Mexico to winter. Kinzie once traveled to Williamsburg to observe one that had strayed eastward.

But there was a major problem this time in identification. A young male rufous looks exactly like a young male Allen's hummingbird, another West Coast species. So much so that it takes an experienced birder with calipers to measure the tail feathers in order to determine the difference.

"So we are not saying 100 percent it is a rufous," said Mike Smith, president of the bird club. "The best we can do is back it down to the genus."

The genus of both the Rufus and the Allen's is Selasphores.

"About the only thing the records committee would accept is a complete, adult male," said Smith. "When you have one of those there is zero questions."

So the rufous goes undocumented in this region.

Smith speculates that the bird came across Canada, then down the East Coast.

"Those little characters can cover thousands and thousands of miles. It is amazing."