Hummingbirds and the feeders

jzuzphreek said:

woah! Your calico has almost exact coloring and pattern as mine!!

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Cool! Does yours have chocolate on the side of its face like mine does? She's still a little sleepy in this pic.; she just woke up from napping on top of some files on my desk.

This is really cool!

^^^That is cool Mike. They are so trusting. I wonder if the guy did that all the time.

....Haven't seen a hummer in 2 days.

That's a neat video! I'll have to try that. I get dive bombed when I'm out there but they don't come drink. I'll try taking a chair out on the porch and sit for awhile and see what happens.

It may be next year though, I've only seen one today.

mikelz777 said:

I think my hummingbird season is over. The last one I saw was the middle of last week and even then, I was only seeing them 1 or 2 times a day. I'm guessing that several of those were probably hummers just passing through from further north because they didn't behave the same way as my regulars. Hopefully I'll get even more next spring!

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The hummingbirds are still coming here in South Louisiana.

I haven't seen a hummer in 5 days.

All of the sudden there are two or three different kinds at the feeder yesterday and this morning.

Getting cooler here. Haven't seen one since last weekend. Might be all over for this year.

DoctorShavegood said:

All of the sudden there are two or three different kinds at the feeder yesterday and this morning.

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You're probably getting one of the last waves of migration.

Looking way ahead to next spring, what are your thoughts about more feeders = more (visible) hummingbirds?

I ask this in part because of my experience with squirrels. They always come around to feed underneath my bird feeders and for the longest time I thought I was seeing the same 3-4 squirrels. To keep a long story short, a situation arose that necessitated live trapping the squirrels in my yard and relocating them. I thought, "no problem", I'll catch the 3-4, relocate them several miles away and be done with it. I bet I caught and relocated at least a dozen squirrels. I remember getting annoyed when I'd see another one in the trap. Anyway, the moral of my tale is that I wasn't seeing only 3 or 4 squirrels. Even thought I was only seeing 1 or 2 at a time, I was actually seeing a dozen or more at different times. So now I'm wondering how many actual hummers I'm seeing at my feeder. I've only ever seen 2 at one time and even then that was only when one was chasing off another. If I put up a 2nd feeder, do you think it is more likely that I'll see 2 or more feeding at once? The only issue I'd have with putting up additional feeders would be that they would only be practical outside my sliding glass door because anywhere else, they'd never really be seen. If I limit myself to just outside my sliding glass doors then they would only be 6-12 feet apart at most. I've found myself endlessly enchanted with seeing my hummers this year so I'd love to give it a shot and see what happens.

mikelz777 said:

Looking way ahead to next spring, what are your thoughts about more feeders = more (visible) hummingbirds?

If I put up a 2nd feeder, do you think it is more likely that I'll see 2 or more feeding at once? The only issue I'd have with putting up additional feeders would be that they would only be practical outside my sliding glass door because anywhere else, they'd never really be seen. If I limit myself to just outside my sliding glass doors then they would only be 6-12 feet apart at most. I've found myself endlessly enchanted with seeing my hummers this year so I'd love to give it a shot and see what happens.

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It's possible. Start a little earlier. You said that you put your one, and only, feeder up in early May. This may have been around the time that a breeding pair had already set up a territory. While you may have been seeing only two birds at a time, there is no way of knowing they were the same two birds. Bird plumage RARELY shows individual characteristics that the human eye can see. You would have to band them to know for sure. Hummingbirds follow the sapsuckers when they migrate, which is usually in mid-April. They will feed out of the sap well holes the sapsuckers make, and they can survive the cool nights by going into a torpor state, lowering their metabolism to conserve precious energy.

Your surroundings may play a big part in how many birds you're seeing, too. I know you said you live in south central Minnesota, and to me that means flat farming fields with sparse and spotty tree cover. Again, I can't say for sure because I haven't seen your yard.

Don't use squirrels as a correlative for what the hummers are doing. Squirrels are opportunistic mooches who have adapted well to humans and can make it almost anywhere. In short, they're jerks.

Don

In Michigan we only get the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. I think mine are gone for this year.

Here's a link to a site I found last year with lots of great information. http://www.hummingbirds.net/map.html

She tracks the Ruby-throated's migration every spring. I used it this year to help figure out when to put my feeder out.

Connie, that's a good map. It looks like Mid March for me to put out my feeder.

I don't have a bird feeder but did plant a Kowhai tree that the Tui birds feed off.

DoctorShavegood said:

Connie, that's a good map. It looks like Mid March for me to put out my feeder.

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It does vary some from year to year. It's interesting to look at the early years and see how many spotters she has been able to add year-over-year. This year it was fun checking in on the map as the migration was under way.

I'm tired of winter! I just picked up another hummingbird feeder this weekend so I'll be having a go with 2 feeders this season to see what happens. I didn't get my feeder out last year until early May so I'm going to put them out even earlier this year to try and attract any early arrivals. This year I'll be shooting for mid-April so we're just over 2 months away! I hope we can pick up the conversation again this season!

Mike, this was probably a good time to revive this thread! Thanks!

I'm going to go out this weekend and grab a feeder. We're going to be putting some flowerbeds in the back yard this year (trying to put the house on the market later in the year), and I think hummingbirds would be a marvelous touch!

You're in Louisiana and I know DoctorShavegood who started the thread was from Texas so you'll be seeing hummers long (probably a month or more) before I will up here in Minnesota. It would be kind of cool if people who are interested report their first sightings of the 2016 season. You could be seeing them in a month or so.

mikelz777 said:

You're in Louisiana and I know DoctorShavegood who started the thread was from Texas so you'll be seeing hummers long (probably a month or more) before I will up here in Minnesota. It would be kind of cool if people who are interested report their first sightings of the 2016 season. You could be seeing them in a month or so.

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Absolutely!

I know there's a site that was mentioned earlier in this thread where people can report their sightings. KJ (TheVez2) is in MO, and I'm pretty sure he has feeders as well. Heck, we might get to track migration all the way to your place!

Here's what I was going by last year and looks to be a pretty good site. It has records for past years migrations as well.

http://www.hummingbird-guide.com/hummingbird-migration.html