We have a momma with 2 baby Rufus Hummers, and 3 Broad-tailed Hummers. For months, the female held control of our largest feeder, so it would take her a long time to drink the 1 liter of nectar. Now, since babies are flying OTHER hummers have showed up and they are all fighting and drinking. But could they really drain 1 liter in 2 days? That seems excessive…I am wondering if the thing is not leaking…but there is no puddle under it and I can’t see any leaks or wet spots.
Any ideas?
I’ve seen my feeder go that quickly, but I’m pretty sure that we are dealing with more hummingbirds than that when that happens. It’s still not outlandish. Maybe you have more birds than you think.
I’ve seen downy woodpeckers at my feeders this year, so you may be getting more traffic than you think. That said, if it’s hot where you are, you could be losing a decent amount of water to evaporation.
See if you can get them do down a gallon of milk in under an hour.
you might want to put somethiung like a piece of newspaper on the ground unde it to see if spilled nectar stains it. FWIW
I’m staring at all 4 perches with 4 baby hummingbirds gulping down the nectar. I cannot believe this!
Now I’m picturing a whole bunch of hummingbirds with fat bellies lying on the ground, belching and making little zzzzt noises.
One liter of water weighs one kilo. Assuming you are using a typical sugar concentration of about 20%, that contains 200 grams of sugar.
Rufous-tails and Broad-wings weigh about 3-4 grams each. In agregate, your birds weigh no more than 24 grams, and probably less. For them to drink a liter in 2 days means that each one is consuming more than 20 times his body weight in a day.
This articleindicates that a Ruby throat on a rich nectar solution ate less than 6 times his weight in food a day, and on a dilute solution about 14 times. So your birds are eating much more than would seem likely.
Possibilies include:
There are a lot more hummers visiting your feeders than you realize. Are you sure you can individually recognize each one?
Insects are consuming some of it. Are there wasps or bees visiting?
Nocturnal mammals are visiting the feeder. Are you checking levels at dusk vs those at dawn?
It’s leaking.
Ii work from home, and my desk is about 10 feet from the feeder so I am seeing them all day long. I refilled the canister today in front of a group of angry hummers. They were all chirping and screeching and buzzing my head until I put it back. The one large female rufus is definitely the matriarch because she is the primary bird feeding and defending the feeder.
My solution is 25% and they love it. The feeder is definitely not leaking, and I doubt an mammals are coming up at night because we have two dogs on the porch all night, so I am thinking we are getting more birds than I can count. There are definitely a family of Rufus and a family of broad-tailed but there may be more outsiders coming in than I recognize right now.
I, for one, welcome our new hummingbird overlords.
Did anyone else read the title and think: “If a hen and a half could lay an egg and a half . . . .”
That’s a fairly rich nectar solution. If we use a consumption rate of six times body weight per day for each hummer, it would take visits from at least 20 individual hummers to consume one liter in two days. So if you aren’t able to recognize individual hummers that’s almost certainly what’s happening.
Also, how sure are you of the 1 liter measure? I think that’s fairly large for a humming bird feeder.
During the month of may, I’m certain that I have 20 hummingbirds. I’ve seen 9 at one time. It’s pretty crazy. We have had an uptick in the number of humming birds lately, but nowhere near that number. I’ve only seen 4 at a time in recent days. Usually at this time, we are reduced to one pair.