Peak Hummingbird Viewing Days

In my area, the southeast USA, August and September are prime hummingbird viewing days.  It can be a challenge to understand what activity you're watching, but time spent among them will certainly tug at the heart strings and cause you to marvel at their high-speed lifestyle even more.

In the image above, you see a male Ruby-throated hummingbird chirping a warning to intruders.  As you scroll down the page, the series of images show stages of this same hummer as he is posturing.   The final image is what you see if you're a hummer and you don't heed those warnings fast enough.  A fire ball!


This morning I watched a male ruby-throat feed at the feeder while I drank my morning coffee.  My first thought was, that's not 'the King'.  What's going on here?  The King is my nickname for a male hummer who has claimed the feeders as his breeding territory.  Within minutes, the King appeared, chased away another hummer, and the first male, resting on a branch nearby, swiftly departed.  

According to Bob Sargent, author of Ruby-throated Hummingbird, a male may claim a territory for a period of time and then abandon it to establish another if it is not attracting enough females.   But there are other activities going on this time of year, as well.  Breeding season is coming to an end and male hormone levels are shifting causing a change in focus from breeding to feeding and fattening up for migration.  In addition, we may be seeing many different hummingbirds at the feeder.  In fact, hundreds are traveling through our yards, those we see and five times that many that we don't see, according to Sargent.  

Hummers from northern breeding territories are already migrating and research shows that they may visit the same feeding areas on the same day each year.  The only way we know for sure is through the efforts of hummingbird banding.  Everything we learn from banding our birds helps us know more about how their populations are managing in an environment full of challenges and changes.

For more about this 'King' visit my August post, Hummingbird Days of Summer, at Knoxville's Wild Birds Unlimited.  

You may also enjoy my series The King, about a male hummingbird I followed during the 2008 breeding season and Hummingbird Banding with fascinating information we've learned from banding our hummingbirds.

And watch for my article on bird banding at Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge, upcoming in the Nov/Dec issue of The Tennessee Conservationist magazine.