feeder setup for a couple of years, until a feisty rufous-tailed hummingbird arrived. Four inches long and the weight of a nickel, he was handsome enough, with an iridescent green body, red lance of a beak, and orange-brick tail. But he was also meaner than all the other hummingbirds and never let anyone forget it. When he wasn’t gorging himself on sugar, the aggressive hummer spent almost all his time chasing everyone else away; this guy was the tiniest bully Liz had ever seen.
She tried moving the feeder, but he just moved with it. She tried putting out more feeders so he couldn’t possibly guard them all, but another rufous-tailed showed up and they joinedforces to defend against all comers, in all corners of the garden. The yard rang constantly with the sound of miniature aerial dogfights. She tried taking down all her feeders but one, thinking that the rufous-tailed would be overwhelmed by the other hummingbirds flocking to a single spot, but that just made it easier for him to fend them off. She even tried putting a feeder inside the lodge. A shy long-billed hermit learned to dart indoors for quick sips, but, lamentably, the other tropical hummingbirds couldn’t figure it out.
Pretty soon, the other hummingbirds stopped visiting entirely, leaving the rufous-tailed to sit, hour after hour, next to a lonely feeder. Doubtless, he enjoyed his life, king of an unlimited supply of food, but he wasn’t very entertaining for visiting birders.
“It was boring,” Liz said after she’d told me the whole story. “The rufous-tailed chased the others away, so instead of a buzzing hummer setup, we eventually just had this one bird, day after day.”
After five years, several more rufous-tailed hummingbirds arrived. Between them, they wouldn’t let a single other hummer anywhere near the lodge, much less the feeders. Where several species used to nest among the flowers in the garden, now there was just one.
Liz tired of pampering her resident bullies. She took down the feeders and never tried attracting hummingbirds again. By eliminating the feeder setup, she hoped to return to a more balanced mix of hummingbirds around the lodge, like there had been before the feeders went up. Some of the shyer hummers did return, but only gradually.
It was all very vexing. The feeders supplied unlimited nectar, and when they were nearly empty, Liz always refilled them. If the hummingbirds could just get along, they could eat all theywanted without wasting energy on fighting. Why were they so selfish? Hummingbirds are supposedly smart—they may have the largest brain size, relative to body mass, of any bird in the world—but they weren’t acting logically. It didn’t make sense.
—
BECAUSE THEY ARE SO TINY , hummingbirds are often described in superlatives. They are the world’s smallest birds and the world’s smallest warm-blooded vertebrates (besides a couple of obscure species of shrew). The bee hummingbird, which lives in Cuba, weighs as little as 1.8 grams—about a third as much as a sheet of printer paper. You could mail sixteen of them for the price of a single postage stamp.
Most hummers aren’t quite that teeny, but they’re all small. Of about 330 species of hummingbirds living between Alaska and Chile, the largest, the giant hummingbird of high-elevation Andes woodlands, could still be covered by that same first-class stamp. Not that airmailing hummingbirds would give them much of an edge; the ruby-throated hummingbird routinely flies more than five hundred miles nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico during its spring and fall migrations, taking about twenty hours to do so, and the rufous hummingbird, which commutes annually between Mexico and Alaska, makes the longest flight, relative to body length, of any bird in the world.
Being small carries great advantages. Hummingbirds are nearly immune to predators. Because bite-sized hummers are so quick and light, they don’t have to worry much about hawks and other
She tried moving the feeder, but he just moved with it. She tried putting out more feeders so he couldn’t possibly guard them all, but another rufous-tailed showed up and they joinedforces to defend against all comers, in all corners of the garden. The yard rang constantly with the sound of miniature aerial dogfights. She tried taking down all her feeders but one, thinking that the rufous-tailed would be overwhelmed by the other hummingbirds flocking to a single spot, but that just made it easier for him to fend them off. She even tried putting a feeder inside the lodge. A shy long-billed hermit learned to dart indoors for quick sips, but, lamentably, the other tropical hummingbirds couldn’t figure it out.
Pretty soon, the other hummingbirds stopped visiting entirely, leaving the rufous-tailed to sit, hour after hour, next to a lonely feeder. Doubtless, he enjoyed his life, king of an unlimited supply of food, but he wasn’t very entertaining for visiting birders.
“It was boring,” Liz said after she’d told me the whole story. “The rufous-tailed chased the others away, so instead of a buzzing hummer setup, we eventually just had this one bird, day after day.”
After five years, several more rufous-tailed hummingbirds arrived. Between them, they wouldn’t let a single other hummer anywhere near the lodge, much less the feeders. Where several species used to nest among the flowers in the garden, now there was just one.
Liz tired of pampering her resident bullies. She took down the feeders and never tried attracting hummingbirds again. By eliminating the feeder setup, she hoped to return to a more balanced mix of hummingbirds around the lodge, like there had been before the feeders went up. Some of the shyer hummers did return, but only gradually.
It was all very vexing. The feeders supplied unlimited nectar, and when they were nearly empty, Liz always refilled them. If the hummingbirds could just get along, they could eat all theywanted without wasting energy on fighting. Why were they so selfish? Hummingbirds are supposedly smart—they may have the largest brain size, relative to body mass, of any bird in the world—but they weren’t acting logically. It didn’t make sense.
—
BECAUSE THEY ARE SO TINY , hummingbirds are often described in superlatives. They are the world’s smallest birds and the world’s smallest warm-blooded vertebrates (besides a couple of obscure species of shrew). The bee hummingbird, which lives in Cuba, weighs as little as 1.8 grams—about a third as much as a sheet of printer paper. You could mail sixteen of them for the price of a single postage stamp.
Most hummers aren’t quite that teeny, but they’re all small. Of about 330 species of hummingbirds living between Alaska and Chile, the largest, the giant hummingbird of high-elevation Andes woodlands, could still be covered by that same first-class stamp. Not that airmailing hummingbirds would give them much of an edge; the ruby-throated hummingbird routinely flies more than five hundred miles nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico during its spring and fall migrations, taking about twenty hours to do so, and the rufous hummingbird, which commutes annually between Mexico and Alaska, makes the longest flight, relative to body length, of any bird in the world.
Being small carries great advantages. Hummingbirds are nearly immune to predators. Because bite-sized hummers are so quick and light, they don’t have to worry much about hawks and other
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