I have hummingbirds at my feeders. Or more specifically, I have one male who’s sure that they are his feeders, and I have a few other hummingbirds who make frequent attempts to fly in under the radar and have a few sips of nectar. This usually results in a furious blur of hummingbird politics which ends up with the interloper flying off with the local proprietor in hot pursuit.
My question is – what happens if the interloper refuses to flee and just ignores the attacking hummingbird’s hissyfits? What can one hummingbird do to another? Can they do serious damage with their beaks? Would a hummingbird actually damage or kill another hummingbird, or do they rely strictly on intimidation?
As a side question, I’ve seen videos of feeders in which hummingbirds appear to be co-existing in reasonable harmony. Often there’s a cloud of 10 or more hummingbirds each waiting their turn for a spot at the feeder. Under what circumstances do hummingbirds switch mode from a Hobbesian “every bird for himself” to a more communal flock behavior? Is it sheer volume of feeders?
Thanks to advances in fast-motion camera technology and Nova/Animal Planet showing three different hummingbird-fight episodes within the span of two weeks, I can answer this. Basically, it’s hover stabstabstabstabstabstab oh-you’re-not-gone-yet? stab-stab-stab-stab-stab. Lasts until one or the other leaves the area for good, or dies (though they never show a dead hummingbird).
The feeder question I don’t know, but my guess is that hummingbirds of the same species would get along better than individuals, unless it’s mating time.
Fights to the death aren’t common in many animals, it’s a high price to pay.
One of the birds will get tired before the other and go away for a while. Rarely, one might poked in the eye or some such.
General behavior is one male will dominate a feeder, allowing only females to feed. Patrolled areas aren’t large, another feeder 10 or 15 feet away can have a whole different social group.
I have watched hundreds of hours of hummingbirds feeding at flowers and at feeders, and I have never seen a fatality. I wouldn’t rule it out, but with their very small body mass a hummer probably can’t strike with enough force to kill another unless the blow was very lucky. (It doesn’t keep them from trying, however.)
They do strike at each other with their bills, and I have occasionally seen one hit another so hard as to force it to the ground. I have also seen them grappling with their feet so they fall to the ground and wrestle a bit before breaking off and flying away.
There is a dominance hierarchy among hummingbird species (the subject of my doctoral thesis), with some species being highly aggressive and territorial while others are subordinate and usually flee rather than fighting. Males are usually more aggressive than females. Levels of aggression may also vary with time of year, and availability of nectar away from feeders. But even with unlimited food at feeders some individuals may continue to try to defend the resource and keep others away; some hummingbirds seem to have no “off” switch for aggression. In cases where there is little fighting at feeders, it may be because most of the individuals are from non-aggressive species or are females and immatures.
In those cases, it was probably going faster than in most attacks. The window also doesn’t have any “give” to it, unlike a flying hummingbird.
My first hummingbird project was on Rufous in northern California, and they are indeed assholes. Some tropical ones, though, are just as bad or maybe worse.
As I am fond of mentioning, the Aztec god of war and blood sacrifice was the fearsome Huitzilopochtli, the Southern Hummingbird (sometimes translated as “Hummingbird on the Left”). They knew that hummers were the most warlike and ferocious creatures on Earht.
I haven’t witnessed any stabbings, but some body hits. Lots of that high chirping and then a thud. We’ve got two feeders and keep them filled. No need for so much jerkish behavior.
(I was walking by a feeder earlier this year and a hummingbird came zooming in to feed and didn’t notice me until the last second. Came very close to my eye, a bit scary.)
Reminds me of the very first hummingbirds I saw as a kid. Two in particular would fight like crazy over the feeder in our back yard. The dogfights were so good we named them Red Baron and Green Hornet (the colors from their plumage). I don’t remember them ever hitting each other, but they’d do a lot of chasing and near-misses.
Neither generalization seems completely true for my ruby-throats. The male is indiscriminate about chasing males or females, although it does try to seduce the females after it chases them off (doing the big swoopy courtship display). It has, occasionally shown a very brief tolerance for what might have been an immature hummingbird.
And the patrolled area seems to be at least as far as the male can see, because it manages to guard two widely-spaced feeders and a distant honeysuckle at the same time.
I find that if you station yourself a couple of feet from a feeder and stand still, the birds will stay away for about 2 minutes. They then regard you as part of the scenery, and behave just as if you weren’t there.
This yields some really good detailed views. I’ve even had them (briefly) land on my head.
A few months ago at the UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley I saw two Anna’s clash in mid-air repeatedly, then tumble to the ground and continue grappling for a good few minutes. At one point they seemed completely exhausted, with one actually crouched atop its prostrate competitor for a bit, before they both eventually separated and flew off. I’ve seen them chase each other maybe 20,000 times, but that is the first time I ever saw a pair get into a full-on wrestling match that carried from the air to the ground.
Of course the ironic thing is that it was spring in the African section with a pretty much inexhaustible supply of hummingbird accessible blooms to choose from;). The more food there is, the more aggressive they seem to get.
Since it was written back in the Stone Age, no, there’s no digital version that I am aware of. It was so long ago I did my data analysis with punch cards on a main frame, and typed it out on an electric typewriter.
No idea. I haven’t done much birding within Allen’s range, and have never ticked it off my life list.
Go away! Wait, mate with me! Now, go away!
