Encountering a MEGA at LaBagh - COS Board Members Share Their Stories

Photo by Nathan Goldberg

This week’s Broad-billed Hummingbird visit to LaBagh Woods is making big waves in the Chicago area. Seeing a rare bird like this is as thrilling to a casual observer as it is a veteran birder. COS Board Members Nathan Goldberg and Jeff Skrentny share their accounts of encountering our special visitor.

(Note - a MEGA is a birdwatcher term for an especially rare bird.)

Nathan Goldberg:

Well, today was truly mind boggling... This morning’s 5 AM wakeup was met with a light drizzle and dark overcast skies - not ideal weather for bird photography. But Owen Deutsch and I pushed ahead and ended up having a lovely morning with nice even light and lots of migrants, including 20 species of warbler.

We were enjoying ourselves poking around LaBagh Woods on Chicago's northwest side, expecting to find the "expected" suite of great spring birds. That was, until this little gem popped into view for 5 seconds, gave us a heart attack, and disappeared!

The first glimpse I got of this absolute MEGA was when it flew in to investigate us while we birded the wood edge from the parking lot. I called out to Owen that I had a hummingbird, and quickly got my binoculars up to confirm what I expected to be a Ruby-throated Hummingbird. What I saw though in the span of about 2 seconds, was a deep blue-green hummingbird with a bright red bill... that was when I lost my mind.

Fumbling for my camera, I couldn't get a shot off in time before it disappeared. Looking at Owen, I started to question everything. Did I really just see a freaking Broad-billed Hummingbird? At LaBagh Woods? In MAY?!

I called Steve Huggins and Jeff Skrentny and started both calls off with "you're seriously not going to believe this, but... I just found a male Broad-billed Hummingbird at LaBagh..."

I've seen loads of rare birds. I've even found a few (though nothing of this caliber). My deepest, gut-wrenching fear was that I not only wouldn't get a photo of the bird to document it, but that I somehow even had mis-identified it somehow. I knew what I saw, but self-doubt can truly be a potent and challenging feeling to grapple with.

Fortunately, about 45 minutes later we were able to refind the bird, snap a few documentation shots, before losing it again. The call went out that the bird was still present to the whole community. About 15 minutes later, Audrey Carl refound the bird perched next to the main path and got those present on it. Vindication!

The bird stuck around throughout the day for many happy birders, and I gather observers even found a flowering Buckeye tree it was feeding from throughout the afternoon - so fingers crossed it's there tomorrow. This bird represents only the 3rd record for Illinois, following a 2017 bird that was not accessible to birders, and the only other chaseable record in 1996 near Peoria. Even crazier, we found it without a feeder or flowers at first, making this all the more insane.

A belated birthday gift from the birding gods, and a truly welcome MEGA - it honestly doesn’t get much better than this!

Jeff Skrentny:

It was very courteous of Nathan Goldberg to call me this morning and tell me that he was sure he just saw a Broad-billed Hummingbird at LaBagh. I asked if he had photos. He did not. I told him that if he didn't have photos, it didn't happen.

But here is the problem, Nathan is a heck of a good birder, and despite the day long plans I had to go out and find species for the City Nature Challenge, I had a whole itinerary of things to find, I packed up and headed out to LaBagh. But I forgot to bring a mask! I went home to get one, got distracted by a message Nathan sent saying the re-found this MEGA rare bird for our location, and left without it.

When I arrived Nathan and who he was working with, Owen, did not have the bird. So we all mulled around, and slowly people I have NEVER seen at LaBagh started trickling in. Wasn't even sure some of them knew where to find LaBagh, as they ONLY bird at Montrose. But for a Broad-billed Hummingbird they learned quickly how to read a map.

Though I had not given up hope, time was dragging on, when up about 50 feet on the Weber Spur railroad grade Audrey waves at Joe and I. We took off running, and then walking fast as we got close. There it was, WAY out of range Broad-billed Hummingbird, and it just sat in the same perch for about 20 minutes. We all took photos and started texting everyone we knew. And just as most of them arrived, it took off chasing a warbler. Shoot.

It was re-found, and then lost. Then I re-found it because I heard it, but it was flushed by enthusiastic birders I couldn't warn about where it was, and then it was re-found and a few folks saw it. Then it was re-found and almost everyone saw it. It kept showing itself all day long, nectaring at two Ohio Buckeyes in full bloom.

Frankly, the rarest bird that has ever been found at LaBagh Woods that I know about. This easily blows away the Black-throated Gray Warbler from the early 1990s and the Townsend's Warbler from the mid 2000s. It is the 213th confirmed species of bird documented at LaBagh Woods... the 57th new species seen at LaBagh since the COS / Centennial Volunteers restoration project began in 2014. We couldn't be more thrilled.

Everybody's big question? Will it be there in the morning???