I was also surprised by how much rough housing these little guys do. I saw yesterday one Hummer land on another (kicking it in the head in the process), knocking the perched hummer off the feeder perch and both tumbled into the flower bed.
I now have two sentries in my yard, one in a lilac bush close to one of the feeders (and just outside our living room picture window giving me an amazing ability to watch these guys on the 'off' periods at close range) and another that floats between a flowering maple on the west side of the house, an ash in the front yard near the road and in a large maple that overhangs the house in the back. This results in there only being 'peacefully' two and a half hummers in my front yard at any one time (One of the hummers seemed more tolerant and was letting another hummer feed with it, maybe they were siblings or parent child combo, not sure but that was yesterday and today the dynamic has changed as there is a zero tolerance policy in place). I often watch them skirmish and dogfight across the yard and whilst the two sentries are busy pushing off another hummer a third will often sneak in and take a quick sip before the sentry comes back. I think I can tell which ones are sneakers, as there seems to be two feeding strategies, the hummers who land, and the hummers who hover and feed. I'm assuming that the hovering hummers are the sneakers and the landers are the sentries that 'control' the territory. I have no proof of this as the hovering individual(s) depart rather quickly and I lose track of where they go. Also today I nearly lost my head as I got caught in the middle of a mid-air skirmish as I was sitting in a lawn chair taking photos of the hummers coming into and out of the feeders and a pair swooped in out of nowhere chattering like heck and buzzed me, dropping down to eye-level before pulling up and sweeping past my head. The last few days when the hummers return (they tend to leave Ottosen during mid-summer or become a lot less visible) have certainly livened up my flower bed. Jacob Ottosen, Humboldt Co., IA --- Please contribute your sightings to our list; it is only as good as members make it! --- Birding channel recommendation for FRS/GMRS radio use: Primary selection; channel 5/0 , alternate selection; channel 6/0 --- This mailing list is sponsored by the Iowa Ornithologists' Union. Membership available on-line at http://www.iowabirds.org/iou/membership.asp. ----- You are currently subscribed to ia-bird as: [email protected]
