Battle Royal - Hummingbird style

Jeff Horton

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4,272
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The Heart of Dixie
Anyone else keep up Hummingbird feeders? I have kept them for years and always enjoy watching the little acrobats. Well I don't know what has happened but I am guessing the drought has cut the food supply down to nothing because my feeders are "The place to be" if your hummingbird!

For those that have never watched them they are mean and very territorial. I have 3 feeders and I have counted at least 8 birds out there at one time. Probably more than that but it's impossible to count with them flying so fast. Right now one bird stakes out each feeder. Another bird shows up and they fight over the feeder. Sometimes you have 3 or 4 birds fighting over one feeder and often two fights break out at the same time. I get dizzy trying to keep up with the action! It's a riot. And I often get buzzed by a retreating bird just a few feet from me.

I get the biggest kick when one dive bombs the other and I hear the thump as they hit. Nothing like a good cheap fight! :D
 
Hey Jeff,

Just came in from the screen porch where the wife and I were doing exactly as you described. We must have 50 of those little rascals fighting over our 3 feeders. My head is spinning faster than my lathe from watching them. You are right about them being a riot to watch. :thumb:
 
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Those little rascals can be so aggressive! My aunt used to keep four feeders and she was constantly making sugar syrup to put in them. She acutually made some "mittens" to put over the side view mirrors on her car as the little rascals would fly by....see the other hummingbird in the mirror and fight with it. Actually broke the side view mirror on her car.
 
We love our hummingbirds. We have feeders visible from the family room windows and also from the kitchen window. Where we live now we don't have as many as where we used to live. There we lived in the woods and had a screened porch. I had a feeder hanging about every five feet. It was not unusual to see one bird on every perch and one waiting in line for every perch. They certainly do like to get into dogfights...

Here we only have the ruby throated variety but I guess in other parts of the country they have more than one variety. Usually we start to see some arrive in early April around here.

As an aside, I was working at the kitchen table one day. We have a deck that backs up to the kitchen door. There was an extensive spider web under one of the rails between the spindles. I noticed a hummingbird swooping by the window and going out of sight and started looking at what she was doing. She was dismantling that spider's web strand by strand. I later learned that they use the silk for their nests. It was interesting to watch her cut the strands and fly off with them. Nature is wonderful....:)
 
You guys are lucky. I'd never seen one around here but then moved out to Oregon for 4 years a long time ago. We had lots of flowering shrubs about and the crew would usually fly in around late afternoon. Anywhere from 15-30 all looking like a WWII dogfight. I finally saw a lone individual feeding on the morning glories here last summer to remind me what I've been missing.
 
I get a kick out of watching them too. We have a bay window with a feeder off to one side and every once in a while if you're standing in the window one will come right up and look you in the eye. From now until the first cold snap we have herds of them coming to the feeders. We have to fill them daily even though it seems like they hardly ever get a chance to eat because all they do is fight.
 
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