I have had just one hummer hanging around here and yesterday, I just went out and sat and watche d and listene d to the sound s of nature and observing nature at work when I noticed I now have another hummer come from somewhere.
One was feeding on the salvias and one on the feeder. next thing I know both are at the feeder and then they would take turns for a bit , but about after 20 minutes I not sure if they were fighting for the feeder or if one is a male and one is a female.
Does anybody happen to know how to tell if they are fightenign or if they doing a mating dance in flight?
Also, this is really gonan soudn dumb, but I am wonderign wher e they go at night to sleep , if they do sleep and if that is the place wher e they might lay their eggs.
Durign the day, I will se e my one rest for a few second s on a lower branch in a couple of my hickory trees, but I have to get soem yard work done. My jungle is turnign into a real nightmare and I want to make sure I at least try and stay away from thos e areas where eggs may be laid.
We lost alot of birds with the grapefruit hailstorm. I hope never to hear those screaming pitifall crie s of bird s dyign as they were being hit by such a massiv e attack of ice again.
Wanna do what I can to help these hummers.
Hummer question.
Hummers are aggressive little birds...males and females alike. They will 'stake out' a nectar source and defend it against other hummers. Brave little souls who are absolutely fearless. I had a hummer expert tell me at a lecture one time..'If hummers were the size of crows, we'd all be dead'.
It may be a bit late in the season for nests and babies...northern hummers will be starting back south shortly...if they already haven't done so. So, chances are, they won't nest this season.
They like trees with fine 'dippy' branches and make their nests on the tips. They are so small, and are made up of soft grasses and lichen. About the size of a golfball...and are sort of 'glued' to the end of a branch.,
They will roost close to their nectar source in trees with small branches that give a lot of cover. They need nectar soon after they awake...their metabolism is so high that they can even be sluggish till they get their 'fix'.
starlight...i have 6 hummingbird feeders and there are territorial fights all the time.
i have the feeders separated in different areas and they still have their spats...
some even perch near the feeders and guard them. they come back year after
year and if the feeders aren't out when they return, they hover in front of my
window to let me know they're home. i can't imagine how horrible the
dying birds were...
Totally frustrated and almost have given up on hummers. My yard is landscaped for birds and BF's including a huge trellis of honeysuckle and many many red flowering plants. NO HUMMERS. I have just removed the feeder that for a year I had filled twice a week with sugar water. I figure if I ever see a hummer on any of my plants, I will put the feeder back.
I cracked up at the comment, 'if hummers were the size of crows, we'd all be dead'. That is the truth! We have three feeders about 15' feet apart and it sounds like an air force fighter squadron revving up outside the back door. I get dive bombed by the hummers all the time and they get really cranky if I stay out there and weed, 'Get out of our garden!'
We have the world's ugliest apple tree in our yard. It was here when we moved in and it's obvious that no one ever shaped or pruned it. I want to take it out and start over, but it's a big mature tree and the hummingbirds love it's misshapen, troll like visage. It's really ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Sigh.
Thanks for the nesting info. maybe once all the leaves fall of the tree over the cours e of the winter, then I wil be able to see some of the branch ends and check and se e if I can find any nests and what trees they are preferring.
Gues s when I can get to the store gonna get me a bunch mor e feeders so everybody will be able to have snack time.
TropicalKaren.... Don't giv e up on the hummers. At one when I first started planting I felt the way you did. It takes and patience. You may even have hummer s and not notic e it. Your in a warmer climate than I am and usually when I se e mine it nto too long after sunrise and when the sun has warmed thinsg up just a touch. I se e them for a bit then don't se e them again until evenign when it cools and usually I hear them more than I se e them. They may be visiting when you don't even know it.
I had gotten my feeder just this year and it sat there not doign anything except dripping and attracting ants. I was about ready to giv e up on it and just keep their plants. Then the one day when i wasn't looking there it went to the feeder and now I got two hummers. : )
There is somethign else you might try too if you can. There thes e coupel of guys from Ball seed company that go around and visit different shows and garden center s and such and do evaluations and whats ne w and such. They were at this one garden center in Ca and the folks had this big piece of not sure fi it was cement or wood , but they was letting folks who visite d it, put a bunch of graffitti art on it . Was really wild looking.
Anyways the guys were asking for suggestions of what to do with it. I had submitted my idea and parts of my respons e were publishe d in the next months magazine. Told him to take it make a walkway path in so many words out of it and then plant humme r plants in the center.
One thing people forget is how tiny hummers are and how high they have to fly especially when they are traveling from oen area to another. We look around at our gardens and think how pretty and how we have plants for the humemrs and other beneficals, but what we don't consider is how it looks from the air, from a " bird's eye" view.
What we see may be quite visable to us but not to a hummer. They are gonna head to where they see from the air a mas s amount of color. A plant here and a plant there they aren't goign to notice. We smell the plants as we walk by them, but a hummer traveling at thousands of fett isn't going to get a drift of the bloosm perfume it gonan head to a mas s plantign of color first then se e if ther e anythign it can drink from.
The hummer s are attracte d by bright bold color s and lot s of them. Things like getting them cement squares that ya walk on, or big rocks and painting them a bright vibrant oranges, reds and yellows and blues and putting them in grouping s aound out in an open area around a bed is great for attracting from the air.
The thing that got them to my yard was a mass planting of Black and Blue Salvia plants. had about 30 plants all sittign together out in the open in a semi shady spot. It still the main plant that they drink from here.
LOL... Love all the little hummer comments and adventures. : )
Thanks for the peptalk Starlight, I needed it..
LOL , yes, quite a pep talk! Good one, too!
But, melody--yours is a bummer!!! you said they were going to 'start migrating south', if they haven't already!! sob! I'm just getting to 'know' mine!
So, here's the Hummingbird Migration site so everyone can keep track of their whereabouts... http://www.hummingbirds.net/map.html#south
And general info about the Ruby-throated HB:
http://www.hummingbirds.net/migration.html
'
Oh no, I didn't make myself clear....I'll have hummers till about the first of Oct. They will just be migrating ones for the most part. I was just stating that there probably won't be any nesting pairs even that far south shortly.
At this same lecture that I attended, the expert said from about Aug. 1 on, the hummers you have will stay a few days and then move on...with others from further north taking their place. We'll have hummers daily...they just won't be the same ones from week to week. This means that breeding and nesting in the mid-south all the way to Canada are over for the year.
Sob. Oh, well! I'm still trying to get mine to perch on my shoulder or my hat! I'd better hurry with that training!
You gave an excellent explanation! I just wanted to whine a little!
This message was edited Jul 20, 2007 1:22 PM
Well, since the website says that many of the birds start migrating south in August and the beginning of September, I may start putting out my feeders again. I think I will take Ella's advice and try to use some bold color groupings or some garden flags or something that might be seen from the air. Anything to steer them here! LOL! I need a large visual landing strip! Maybe large flashing red arrows in my yard! LOL!
One lecture that I attended says tie bright surveyor's tape to stuff and let it flap like tails. They're supposed to see it fro 1/2 mile away.
I have a very high 'embarrassment level'...so nothing fazes me about what my neighbors think....and we're out in the country with no HOA to dictate lawn accessories.
becky.. I coudl be wrong, but I always thought once ya put the feeders up in early spring , ya don't take them down again til well after migration back south has happened.
That if you put them up and down , they might mis s your place, or you may have one or two visit when ya haven't seen them and then if ya don't have anythign there they won't coem back again, they wil find someplace wher e the know the chow line not gonan have a " closed " sign on it.
You make your landing strip Becky. LOL Isn't there some old Chinese saying about " Plant it and they will come."
I got a small patch of red hot pokers going now too for visual olor and effect . Take s them awhiel to get establishe d but I think about things for food fo rthem now and the future, and this year I had two huge bloosm that got over 6' tall. They look cool and all that bright yellow and orange shades ya can see. When it gets big enough should be a real attention getter.
Same here Melody. I don't care what the neighbors think. The one next door tryign to sell his place which is a wors e jungle than mine and he asked me if I was gonna cut my lawn, weeds, and such cuz they more than knee high now. Told him nope not til sometiem next month. I got several hundre d wild daisies and such that are all in full bloom plus bunches of milkweed plants that wild and til they get done blooming and go to seed, it can look like the amazon out there.
Every year when I do have to cut it , I complain to myself why did it I let it go so long and get so big as it take s weeks to get it mowed but then come the spring, I so glad when I se e a field of flowers and buterflies all fluttering around takign drinks and playing in it. : )
Starlight, I agree with you about letting a naturalized area go to seed for your enjoyment next year. That reminds me of the dumb mowing our state DOT is doing by planting wildflower projects on the right-of-way, then mowing them down before they ever make seeds. Geesh. The following year, there were no flowers but they did put up Do Not Pick The Wild Flowers... State Highway Department Wild Flower Project. Why they only plant annual wild flowers when there's plenty of perennials to choose from is beyond me.
Ella - If they ever come to my yard, I have lots and lots of red nectar plants for them. The feeders are just to entice them here! ;-) The heat here causes the sugar water to spoil by the end of each day. I would keep them out IF I actually had hummers, but I lost interest last month, so not something I want to continue to do unless I feel like the odds are in favor of seeing a hummer. This is my second year of trying to attract hummers, so this is not new to me. Many folks here that see them say they are more interested in the flowers than the feeders. That's what the nurseries and some of my local friends say that actually have hummers frequent their yards. They all live within 5 miles of me. (sigh)
Deborah - LOL! about your DOT! Florida is not much better. The money they waste on beautification is unbelievable! They plants some gorgeous trees, shrubs, and flowers along the road and in the medians. Everything looks and grows great. The next year they come along and dig it all out and put totally new plants in! What's up with that??? Such a waste! I could see it if the plants didn't survive, but they look really good when they decide to replace them with something else. These gorgeous plants are not blocking traffic view or causing any issues that I can see. I guess they have to keep the county workers employed so they spend the money to redecorate the roads every year! I should go stand by the side of the road the next time they do it and ask for the plants they are digging up! LOL! I could get some really nice ones!!! (Sheesh!)
I wait until I see a hummer or two on my landscape plants before putting out feeders.
Another suggestion that I have used: Hide the feeders from each other. Try to look from the feeder like you were a hummer at that feeder. Look around to see if you can see the other feeders. If you can, try to move the feeder to a spot that if a hummer were on it, it could not see the other feeder, or another hummingbird feeding there. This will prevent one hummer from guarding 4 or 5 feeders. I've had pretty good success doing this. At least some of them can feed in peace.
That suggestion really does work. I have three feeders with absolutely no sight line between them. Each set of parents will bring their young to the feeder they are used to feeding from. I'm sure there are two pair at at least one of the feeders and maybe at a second one, but they seem to have come to some sort of truce and everyone gets enough of the sweet fix. Its when the babies fledge that it gets wild. Talk about wars!
My problem is that I don't always get a feeder refilled in time and all the hummers from the empty feeder will go to the other two. I really try to keep fresh sugar water in all the feeders, but, I have to admit, the squabbles are *so* funny to watch when one group invades another group's feeder. There are always little "dust ups" at any given feeder, but mostly its just "youthful playtime". Best I can tell there are at least three breeding pairs here - maybe four - and that keeps me plenty busy!
I am now working on setting up a wildflower meadow to serve both hummers and b'flies. It will take a bit of time and a lot of work, but it should be worth it in the long run.
ginni