Hummingbird Wars

We’ve had some interesting times the past few months.  We’ve packed, packed some more, and moved me just in time for me to have hip replacement surgery the following day.  A few days later my husband Rick turned around and went back down to the house we had moved from to finish packing it up.  Three trips later, he had it all packed and in our workshop in boxes, where most of it now sits until we can get the master bed and bath added to our house.  All in all, it’s been a crazy time.

         A couple weeks after my surgery, while my friend Kim Floyd was staying with me, I saw a flash of green off the back porch.

         "I could have sworn I just saw a hummingbird,” I told her.  For a few minutes she watched where I showed her, and she saw one too.

         The next day, my physical therapist cleared me to go shopping as long as someone else drove me, and I cajoled Kim into taking me to Walmart to get a hummingbird feeder and a shepherd’s hook to hold it.  We put it up that evening, and the next morning our little hummer found it almost immediately. 

         By the time Rick got home, we had two hummers chasing each other off the feeder.  We would eat our meals on the back porch where we could watch the feeder, and before long we saw a third one.  We nicknamed the first one “Boss Bitch,” because she was smaller than the other two but clearly in charge of the feeder.  She would chase one off, and the third one would slip and get a sip or two while she was gone; then she would chase that one and the other one would nab a little sugar water. 

         On our next trip to Walmart I bought two more hummingbird feeders and hung them on shepherd’s hooks Rick brought from our old house.  I put these two on opposite corners of the house so the birds at any given feeder couldn’t see either of the other feeders.

         Before long we had multiple birds at all three feeders, chasing each other, and sometimes even two of them sitting on the opposite sides of a feeder for a few seconds before one took umbrage and chased the other one away.  I’ve seen as many as five at a time, diving and twittering as they strafe each other like tiny jet fighters.  They slam into one another so sharply that we can hear the impact, and now and then one will knock another one off the feeder hard enough that the two of them tumble almost to the ground before they untangle themselves enough to take wing.

         The way they swoop and dive made me wonder how fast they actually fly.  A little internet research provided the answer.  Under most conditions they average between 20 and 30 miles an hour.  During courtship, however, the males may reach a staggering 60 miles an hour.  At that speed, one hitting you would hurt!

         Even though we humans feed hummingbirds sugar water, that’s only a small portion of the Ruby-Throat’s diet.  They not only drink flower nectar, they also sip tree sap, and juices from ripened fruit; all of these together make up only about 20 percent of the bird’s diet. 

The other 80 percent of their diet is insects.  They’re known to feed on fruit flies, mosquitoes, small bees, gnats and other tiny insects.  They are basically insectivorous birds who like a side order of something sweet.

The insects they eat have to be tiny, because the Ruby Throat rarely grows to more than 4 grams.  That’s about the weight of 4 paper clips or 4 US dollar bills.  Somehow, hummingbirds eat their entire weight in insects and nectar each day.  

Although I hung a hummingbird feeder where we lived in Loxahatchee, I never had any birds there, or when I lived in Tampa before that.  I haven’t had hummers at a feeder since I lived outside Quincy in the late 1990s.  I’d forgotten how beautiful and magical they are. 

I’d also forgotten how relentlessly aggressive and territorial they are.  We have one that sits up in the magnolia tree where it can see two of the feeders, and obsessively dive-bombs any other bird that gets near either feeder.  Only when it’s on one feeder can another bird sneak to the other one.  If they were bigger, stepping off the porch would be dangerous!

I’ve always been told that the only hummingbird that occurs in Florida is the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird.  Turns out, that’s not correct.  Although the Ruby Throat is the only species that breeds here, we also get an occasional Black-Chinned Hummingbird here during migration, and rarely a Rufous Hummingbird.  Since we seem to be in a hummingbird hot spot, I will definitely be watching to see if either one visits our feeders this fall.

Photo by Debra Lucas/Outdoor Alabama