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hummingbird observed in oz (2 Viewers)

W

wolfgang

New member
hi!
a couple of weeks ago i sat on my veranda (northern rivers region, new south wales) and a very light drizzle of rain had just started. suddenly i saw a moth flying around a trachelospermum jasminoides (star jasmin) flower. somehow it all looked a bit strange, and to my total amazement, when i had a very close up look, the moth was in fact a miniture brown colored hummingbird!!
i gave not much thought about it, till my researches revieled that there are no hummingbirds described in australia.
the bird was observed from as close as 30-40cm,
it had brown color and a straight trunk, which it poked from one flower to the other. i had a good look at its head and trunk, and it was WITHOUT DOUBT A HUMMINGBIRD, and not a moth as the sydney museum try's to explain my observation. gee, they must think i am stupid, and not able to distinquish between moth and hummingbird. btw, i cannot recall hearing any sound.
i have some hopes though that some people will believe my observation,
because i found out that, the smallest bird in the world in fact is a hummingbird (mellisuga helenae) and it's native to cuba.
i mean my bird looked exactly like this bird only that it color was brown, and secondly, cuba and australia once where part of gondwana.
i kindly ask for support and ideas,
so i could obtain proof for my observation.
i don't think this ~50-60mm bird will be back soon,
i guess, it visits even that flower only rarely, and would mostly live only in the areas very jungle like overgrown closer to the river...
my only ideas so far are, constant video surveillance of the star jasmin, and placing a big net close to the plant so one could catch it. i took digi cam shots but cannot see much on them, they need processing.
 
Hi, Wolfgang, a warm welcome to you from all of us on staff here at BirdForum!

A photograph would be extremely helpful in this case. I don't know where in Australia you're located, but if there are any zoos or collections of exotic birds in your area, I would speculate that that would seem the most likely explanation if in fact what you saw was a hummingbird escapee. But I'm sure someone more knowledgeable in Australian birds than I am will be along shortly to discuss.

Two years ago, I had the smallest "hummer" I'd yet seen visit one of our feeders, and got some silhouette shots of it feeding. It did indeed turn out to be a "hummingbird moth", a Ten-lined Sphinx Moth if I'm remembering the exact species correctly. It was extraordinary. If I can find those slides, I'll post them here for you to see. It sure had me fooled at first the way it hovered and extended its proboscis into the flowerets to get nectar!

Look forward to seeing any shots!

EDIT: Found 'em! They're dark because they were taken after sundown but I sure did a double-take when I first saw this guy. ;)
 

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Hi Wolfgang

It an interesting observation but .... first I must ask if you know what hawk moths look like? They are quite different from other moths in their flight - they have rapidly beating wings and dart from place to place and feed from flowers much like a hummingbird. There are quite a number of species in Australia in different sizes and colours but they are basically brown. In poor light they could easily be mistaken for a bird.

If you are sure that it is a hummingbird then you should try to photograph it - that is the only way you can get proof of its identity. You shouldn't try to catch it - that could easily injure it and it may be illegal anyway.

There are no accepted records of hummingbirds in Australia but about 5 years ago I was contacted by people who were sure they had seen a hummingbird in the Noosa/Cooloola area of southern Queensland, a few hundred kms to the north of you. Again I suggested that they should try to photograph it but heard nothing more.

Pete
 
Hi Wolfgang and welcome to BF

As Pete says an interesting observation. Two autumns ago there were a spate of hummingbird reports in Iceland, all turned out to be Convolvulous Hawk-moths (Agrius convolvulii). As Katy suggested are there any zoos nearby where it escaped from? The nearest naturally occurring hummingbirds to Australia are Ecuador/Peru.

Also do you know what Yellow-bellied Sunbirds look like? They can hover "hummingbird like." Their normal range is a long way north of you, from central coastal QLD and north but there have been sightings well south of this, haven't there Pete?

Anyway keep your camera handy and your eyes peeled.

E
 
Hi Wolfgang
Welcome to Birdforum. Because of the high energy costs of flight in hummingbirds it is very difficult for them to cross large expanses of water. There are many species of bird that have crossed oceans, but hummingbirds are not capable of doing this, so it could not have flown wild from the Americas. As others suggest, it is possibly an escape or a hawk moth. Please don't feel bad that we are suggesting it is a moth; only a few months ago I saw what I was certain was a Black-crested Coquette (a type of hummingbird), but only when I saw it better did I realise that it was a sphynx moth. I've not seen it written anywhere, but my guess is that these small coquettes may acttually mimic sphynx months to avoid being attacked by other hummingbirds, which are very aggressive. Does anyone know if there is likely to be any truth to this?
Tom
 
thank you all for your replies, this is a very friendly forum!!
the museum in sydney told me aswell that is was very likely a moth.
but all i can tell you is, that i had a very close look, and i saw it was a hummingbird. i think it's an undiscribed bird, native to australia, but so shy and well camoflaged it never has been reported before. australia was once part of gondwana, and the excistence of the melisuga helenae at cuba is proof that birds like the one i saw are reality.
it had a typical beautyfull hummingbird shaped head and a straight dark allmost black peak, and it's not possible to mix up a tiny but solid trunk with the apendixes of a moth.... i will move away from this area soon, so other observations are unlikely, but i will try next year again once the star jasmin flowers again...
i don't think that this bird often visits landscaped gardens, but lives at the river where it's moist and shady.
what plants do melisuga h.or other small hummingbirds visit as a food source?
knowing its food, would help me to search for it's habitat.
aswell what are my chances of attracting it to an artificial feeder?
 
I think I saw one too....

Hi y'all,

I see that this thread is nearly a year old so I doubt if anyone is actually reading it but I thought I'd make the post anyway.

I have also seen what I think is a hummingbird in Australia.

It was in the outer suburbs of Darwin and, like Wolfgang's, it was visiting a flowering tree which I think was a jasmine. It was seen by three peope, all of whom identified it as a hummingbird, and was seen for about five minutes in the middle of a bright sun-shiny day as it flitted from one flowering bush to another.

We are quite familiar with the insects of the Northern Territory as they really are the dominant species here and when we first saw it, we took notice because we thought it to be a hornet-like wasp. The colour was almost an orange-brown or ochre with a black tail and beak. It was about 50 to 60 mm long. I think the wings were black too but, of course, they were a blur. The closest we saw it was about 1.5 metres.

I've looked at pictures on the internet of the hummingbird moth and, though I agree the colours are similar, I do not think that they are the same. Running "hummingbird moth" and "Australia" through Google also yields no results. Darwin is also a small city (pop.120,000) with the nearest large city over two thousand kilometres away. Timor, however, is less than six hundred and the Indonesian part of Papua New Guinea about four hundred away at it's closest point.

A rumour circulated a year or so ago that a photograph was taken of a hummingbird in an area about 50 km from here. I am told that it was never published because the photographer was asking for money for the photos (far more than anyone was willing to pay) and naming rights.

There is my bit. I'm pretty sure I saw one.

Regards,
Paul Irving
 
I taught I taw a putty tat, too, but it was just an old puss!

Seriously, yesterday I got so EXCITED seeing what I thought I saw because I thought I was watching hummingbirds. Imagine my surprise when I got home and got on the internet just to find it was a MOTH. I promise you, this looked like a hummingbird. I've seen them ALL OF MY LIFE. My grandmother had a showcase yard every year and my mother-n-law has feeders. I went to supper at her house last evening exclaiming about the hummingbirds.

Put "tiny hummingbirds" into google search and on the first page you'll see two pictures of these creatures.

FASCINATING! As a gardener I am constantly amazed at the levels of mimickery that goes on in nature. It is absolutely uncanny.

KSP
 
Hummingbird??

wolfgang said:
hi!
a couple of weeks ago i sat on my veranda (northern rivers region, new south wales) and a very light drizzle of rain had just started. suddenly i saw a moth flying around a trachelospermum jasminoides (star jasmin) flower. somehow it all looked a bit strange, and to my total amazement, when i had a very close up look, the moth was in fact a miniture brown colored hummingbird!!
i gave not much thought about it, till my researches revieled that there are no hummingbirds described in australia.
the bird was observed from as close as 30-40cm,
it had brown color and a straight trunk, which it poked from one flower to the other. i had a good look at its head and trunk, and it was WITHOUT DOUBT A HUMMINGBIRD, and not a moth as the sydney museum try's to explain my observation. gee, they must think i am stupid, and not able to distinquish between moth and hummingbird. btw, i cannot recall hearing any sound.
i have some hopes though that some people will believe my observation,
because i found out that, the smallest bird in the world in fact is a hummingbird (mellisuga helenae) and it's native to cuba.
i mean my bird looked exactly like this bird only that it color was brown, and secondly, cuba and australia once where part of gondwana.
i kindly ask for support and ideas,
so i could obtain proof for my observation.
i don't think this ~50-60mm bird will be back soon,
i guess, it visits even that flower only rarely, and would mostly live only in the areas very jungle like overgrown closer to the river...
my only ideas so far are, constant video surveillance of the star jasmin, and placing a big net close to the plant so one could catch it. i took digi cam shots but cannot see much on them, they need processing.
Click to expand...

I tend to belive what you're saying you saw because I'm sure I saw something very similar this morning in my garden flitting from one murraya flower to the next. At first I thought it was a moth. I got a closer look and I swear it was a tiny hummingbird. It was brown and it had a long probuscus type beak thing probing into each flower and it certainly wasn't any moth I've ever seen. It was only about 2-3 cm long. It was very cute. Also I think it had thin gold or yellow stripes across it's back. I live in Fernvale by the way in Queensland.
 
Well, it would most certainly be interesting if someone could get a photo of all these unexplained hummingbird sightings. I saw a hummingbird moth when I was in florida, I was so excited that I thought I'd finally seen a hummingbird, but it was just a moth, I was so sad, but it was still a pretty cool thing to see.
 
hi, unrelated to sightings of panthers, tasmanian tigers, yowies, lord lucan ;)
hey ive seen a male spotted pardalote behaving like a hummingbird, only once mind you, but it sure was weird, - I dont see a lot of them, as unlike people who see lots, i struggle to do the early morning/dawn expeditions - but unrelated to this thread, sorry
 
I saw one too!!!!!

Hey all, this is my first forum but was so excited that I wasnt alone I had to add my bit! I am a tripper with Wolfgang cause yesterday I was on my balcony with my son and we saw exactly the same thing! We are on the Gold Coast and have a Jasmine out the front. We are used to seeing all kinds of bees, but the last thing we expected was what we actually saw!! It was about 3cm in length, wings going so fast we couldnt see them, and it was going around all my flowers and poking its long nose?beak?tongue? and getting the pollen! I asked my dad what it was and he said its a hummingbird! I was utterly shocked that they say there are none in Aus, cause I would bet my life on it. It definately wasnt a moth, it had no "antanne" or such on its head. It was actually quite pretty! My son says it was more purple than brown (he is 9) I on the other hand would call it a 'muddy brown colour'. I am now going to scope my balcany with a camera as often as possible to try and take a photo!!!

this is what i saw! http://www.hiltonpond.org/images/CAHUBethany02.jpg
 
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Wooza said:
It was about 3cm in length, [/url]
Click to expand...

There is absolutely no way this was the Calliope Hummingbird you saw then because even as a fledgling they are 7.5 to 8 cm in length. Their bill alone is 1.5 cm in length.

I have seen biologists and yes even professional ornithologists give "hummingibrd moths" a second look suspecting they were birds. I have done it myself for that matter.
 
Yep, once and for all - there are NO hummingbirds in Oz!! The closest you may get is an Olive-backed Sunbird but 99.9% of 'hummingbird' sightings are hummingbird hawkmoths
 
i have had to look twice at a hummer. When i saw my first in canada i was supprised by the similarity. At two to three Cm it is more likely to be a Moth. Hummingbirds can't, as said before, cross a large sized water expanse, and as the pacific is the largest, i am 99.99999% sure that one hasn't made it to anywhere outside of the americas naturally. Also the fact that Australia and cuba where connected doesn't mean that they will have evolved in australia too.
 
Wolfgang,
Sorry for being 5 1/2 years late on the reply (just saw the date)....I suppose the discussed creature is deceased by now anyway. If you will notice, most will give odds but are hesitant to use the I word...Impossible. Wonder why?
Sometimes nature finds a way, like it or not. If you live near an International airport, or sea port, your odds wouldn't be as bad as quoted in this thread. I've seen bats in airplanes several times, both getting on and off. They are attracted by the easy accommodations (ever look inside a jetbridge canopy), free food (bugs) and few predators. Add a flowery fresh smell, bright pastel colors, and fruity drinks....and a local hummingbird may get stuck in coach for the long haul...they can fly across the gulf of Mexico which takes a while.
This is in the realm of possibilities...not likelihood. Fair dinkum?
 
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