Busy Hummer Feeders‏ Barry Ulman 10/1/13

With the turn of the weather, the Anna's Hummingbirds have been coming to my feeders hot and heavy. I have two feeders outside my kitchen that are only about three feet apart, plus another feeder outside the hall. For the last week or so, I have regularly seen two hummingbirds feeding simultaneously on the kitchen feeders, and once in a while I'll even get two on one feeder (parent and juevnile?). This has occurred only rarely in the past. I'm wondering if it could be for two possible reasons:

The cool, rainy weather and less blooming flowers have made the hummers much more dependent on the feeders, or:

I'm getting quite a few hummers coming now; I'm not sure how many but probably at least half a dozen. With more birds coming, the birds may be more willing to share the feeders just to get a meal.

Any thoughts on this?

Barry Ulman

Barry,

 

Sounds reasonable.  Recent studies have shown that in conditions of scarcity, our brains focus on meeting our need for the scarce resource, for example food, and our capacity to deal with other issues is compromised.  In the New York Review, Cass Sunstein reviewed “Scarcity:  Why Having Too Little Means So Much” by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir.

 

John Bremer

I think that it is not breeding season so none of the birds consider your feeder as part of their  territory that must be defended. If the food is plentiful, they can afford to share. It will be same old,same old once breeding season starts next spring.  Adena Mooers

I worked at The Firs lodge at Mt. Baker for quite a few years and we had hummingbird feeders. The Rufous hummingbirds would show up in April and use the feeders so heavily that they would share the same hole on a feeder that had multiple holes! Later on there would come a time when traffic slowed and an adult male would defend a feeder. They always arrive there in numbers, feeders or not, so there must be natural sources of food. Easy feeding in lousy weather may have contributed to some crowds- I have blizzard pictures- but I also remember getting swarmed while refilling the feeders in nice weather. They were like mosquito flocks buzzing around. If we left the door open in nice weather they would attempt to fly through the building and we would have to capture them near the ceiling and release them outside. One afternoon I had to catch 7 before leaving to go home- really quite a cool experience to handle those little amazing creatures that have traveled so far. All this to say that there didn’t seem to be a consistent reason as to why at times they tolerated others and other times one bully would rule.

By the way, in all those years I only saw one adult male Caliope hummer for about 15 seconds sitting on a fire escape railing. They aren’t as easily found there as some of the other mountain resort areas it would seem- probably because it is so far west and the other areas are near passes to the eastern slope.

 

Phil Wegener