Last summer I was potting some plants and I left a bag of garden soil sitting on my porch. The bag had a picture of some flowers on it, and one day while I was standing in the kitchen looking out the window, I noticed that hummingbirds were coming up to the bag and trying to feed at the picture of the flowers. I knew then I needed to get some hummingbird feeders.
When I was a kid, my family went on a vacation to the Virgin Islands, and I was captivated by the hummingbirds zooming around the flowering plants. When we came home, my parents got a hummingbird feeder for our yard. Sadly, I only ever saw one hummingbird visit. So, I was thrilled to see them visiting my new house when I didn’t even have any feeders up. I immediately purchased a feeder on Amazon, and they started visiting the same day I put it out.
I have since purchased two more feeders, so there is now a total of three—two on the front porch, one on the back porch. Much to my surprise, it turns out these birds are extremely territorial and combative. They stand guard in the trees near the feeders and zoom in to fend off any other hummingbirds that attempt to feed. I’ve included a video for reference. I’ve slowed it down so we can see what is happening. They are quite fast!
This year, I noticed a dramatic increase in population around mid-summer, I assume because the offspring are now visiting my feeders in addition to their progenitors. This has made territorial defense of feeders much more difficult, as there are now simply too many birds visiting the feeders for the dominant bird to easily fend off. They are still extremely aggressive towards one another for the most part, but on occasion I see 3-4 feeding on a feeder at the same time. So, I am hopeful that one day perhaps they can all come to a truce.
They have been so active that I decided to attempt hand-feeding them. I’ve seen videos of people hand-feeding hummingbirds on Instagram, so I had to give it a shot. I was shocked at how easy it was, all I had to do was stand still. I only had to hold the feeder for about five minutes before the first one took a sip.
The most interesting part to me was that for several days afterward, whenever I went out on the porch, hummingbirds were very curious about me. Normally they are very cautious around people on the porch and sometimes even moving around can be enough to scare them away. But for several days after hand feeding them, hummingbirds were coming right up to me like they expected me to have something for them!