Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Hummingbird Wars

Makes sense. Male birds are always more colorful.

Maybe some species do, but not all.

Was able to get some decent shots of them battling with my Canon 1d mark iii.

Do you put red food coloring in the nectar?

My wife keeps adding a couple feeders each year for the hummingbirds. I think she's up to 8 or 9. One protective mini buzzard sat on a branch near the corner of the house where he could watch 3 feeders and chase away the competition. Moving them a few feet meant he could guard two at most. My wife just refilled the feeders and had a hummingbird feeding while the feeder was still in her hand before she could reach up to the hanger. They're fun to watch and a few more show up every year as the dining options expand. Then, there are a few that stay all winter here in western Washington.

In Florida and Pennsylvania, those are ruby-throats. That's the only species east of the Mizzippi. The ones in Pat85's photos are girls.

I honestly don't know how it's mixed. Those shots were taken at the girlfriend parents house several years ago. They had six of those lined up and it was nonstop birds back and forth. I actually held a flower head in my teeth and stayed perfectly still between two of the feeders. One came up and tried to drink from the flower head. They can be entertaining to watch.

Hawkeye;
Good afternoon or pretty much evening for you all down in Florida, I hope the day went by without incident other than the fighting hummers.

My late Mom as well as my late Mom in law used to feed them and some of them are irascible quarrelsome little buggers to say the least. One of them - I believe it was Mom - had one kill another one at her feeder one year.

Sorry I couldn't tell you which subspecies fed there but there are at least 3 different ones here, Rufous, Calliope and Black Chinned.

Good luck making peace with them, perhaps the answer is like one of the Moms used to do and that was put up two feeders fairly far apart in the yard.

All the best.

Dwayne

Some do but it is not necessary. We stopped years ago when we heard (no data to back this up) that it is not good for them and unnecessary.

I've seen that in the Sacramento Mountains of Southeast New Mexico in July at high elevations (8,000ft), mostly broad-tailed hummingbirds with rufous and Anna's himingbirds mixed in. I assume this is humingbirds moving south after breeding, "island hopping" between areas of high altitude mountain meadows and the abundant wildflowers at those elevations at that season.

I held a feeder at arm's length and got swarmed.

As for making the nectar, I just follow the directions that came with the feeder, which is one cup of hot water, then pour in the table sugar till water level reaches 1 and 1/4 cup, then stir till clear, then let cool before filling.

Yeah, that's what my wife read, never has used the store-bought red stuff. Sugar desolved in water only

The red throats are the mature males. Adult and juvenile females don’t have the red throat.

Adult and juvenile females and juvenile males have white tipped outer tail feathers. You can see that in some of the pics above.

Around here, shortly before they migrate, you can start seeing the red throat feathers developing on the young males. If you’re observant you can start identifying individual birds by where and how prominent the red dots are on their throats.

Yes. I have three that hang out at my place. Always fighting. One in particular is really bad ass. My neighbor and I named him "Lil' Dude". He camps out on a wire and when the other two show up, aerial battles commence. They are very quick, very fast and aggressive.

Lil' Dude has a habit of flying right up to my face, hovering, checking things out, then moves on to the flowers.

Very normal behavior for them. Sitting in my yard and watching them fight you can hear them clacking together like Rams. They'll hover about 4 ft off the ground, flutter up face to face to about 10 ft & ram together. It's pretty brutal for such a small critter.

Actually had a Ruby Throat show up on my Merlin Bird sound App Saturday night. Unlikely place, too. I was near the overlook deck at the North end of the old Savanna Army Depot. Not many flowers around.

We mix 1 cup of sugar into 1 cup of boiling water. It pretty much instantly dissolves, then let it cool down.

I have always heard you oughta cut off the feed before the snow flies so them little buggers will head south for the winter.

Hummers are on the flowers constantly but insects and spiders are 80 to 90% of their diet. They get a lot more than nectar from the flowers. They're hunting meat as they go. Nectar and sugar water are dessert.