Humming bird Ranch

The fall season is the time to see humming birds fight it out for the sweet nectar. As many of you may know, humming birds are extremely territorial and aggressive when protecting their staked out spots. What this leads to when you put up a humming bird feeder is all out warfare if your bird populations are high as they are here in Arcadia California next to the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains.



So what is the solution to decrease the fighting? Can't we just all get along, someone pipes in. Well in a word, NO. What I can do is to increase the scarce resources so that instead of one big fight there are lots of little ones and a lot of birds get fed. The way to do this is to put up more feeders. Simple solution to a complex problem. How many feeders you put up just depends on your temperament. Currently we have 7 or 8 feeders up scattered around the front and back of the house. All of them are in front of big windows where we can watch them. In front of the kitchen window we have three which attract a lot of attention.



These birds seem to be tolerating each other at the table so why is that. Well I don't have a scientific answer except for my observations. Manly the birds that get along are the extra females or the immature males. With so many feeders up the dominant birds have a lot of work flying around chasing off invaders to their territory. If you put up a lot of feeders some of them will be open. Seems logical. In practice this is what happens.



The fall seems to be the time when the most humming birds are around here in Arcadia. Maybe that's because all the babies are beefing up before migration time. In any event, we have birds here all year long but the fall late evenings seem to be the busiest times for the nectar maker. Last week I made about 5 gallons of nectar. The 26 ounce jars were empty by the end of the afternoon while the big 32 ouncer that I have was over half empty every night.

I can put up links for feeder infor if there is interest otherwise just enjoy the pictures.