The Californians are Coming: Recent Shifts in Range and Abundance of Northwestern Hummingbirds

Presented by CJ Battey

From the mid-1970’s to the early 2000’s the Anna’s hummingbird (Calypte anna) went from rare vagrant to ubiquitous year-round resident across the Puget Sound lowlands. Over the same period the migratory Rufous hummingbird has colonized a new wintering range on the US Gulf Coast, some thousand miles northeast of its traditional wintering habitat in central Mexico. In this talk I will explore the history of range shifts and changes in abundance in these speceis on both evolutionary and human timescales, and discuss why we have observed such dramatic change in such a short period of time.

C.W. Battey is a Ph.D Candidate with the University of Washington's Department of Biology and Burke Museum of Natural History, Seattle, WA.

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