Cape May County home to never before seen broad-tailed hummingbird

Bird watchers in South Jersey have another reason to be a twitter with joy this spring.

Cape May County is now home to a broad-tailed hummingbird—a creature never before seen in the Garden State.

Pete Dunne is the Director of the New Jersey Audubon’s Cape May Bird Observatory.

“Birding is a little bit like being on a life-long treasure hunt. One of the things you hope is that ma’ nature throws you a bone—something really special, something really different and a new state record is very exciting.”

Usually at home in the Rocky Mountains, the rare hummingbird was actually first spotted in the state in November.

But, at the time, officials had mistaken it for another breed.

Luckily for the thousands of birders who flock to Cape May every year, local experts recently caught the error and changed their tune.

You can view images of the hummingbird on the Cape May Bird Observatory website.