Teenage Hummingbirds Tag-Team Their Mom

Last April I posted a blog about my large trellis array covered with flowering native trumpet honeysuckle. It’s still in bloom and it’s been a fun summer watching the hummingbirds. The action so far includes:

In early summer, a large female aggressively dominated, and others were driven off in a swirling blur. She visited about every quarter hour on a specific route from our pine grove windbreak beside the house, and then left via the same route, presumably to her nest. A few weeks later a somewhat smaller hummingbird appeared from the same direction and for perhaps a week was not bullied badly by Mom – instead more gently crowded away from the flowers and presumably told to go disperse.

In mid-summer, this Mom (or possibly a different one with the same habits) developed a shuttle routine from a different direction, and a couple weeks later there were two immature males hanging around. By then, all three had accepted my presence nearby and I could stand in the shadows behind the trellis with tempting clumps of flowers around my face, and a youngster would fly in to feed and we would be nose-to-beak. At a distance of one foot, even I with my increasingly challenged eyesight, could see the streaky little red feathers on their throats, which identified them as immature males. And the way the bigger female rather leisurely chased them off – not the swirling blur of early summer – suggests they were her sons, and she was telling them to grow up and go find their own patch of flowers.

But the boys had a different idea. One would slip in at one end of the trellis array to feed until Mom came to chase him off. And as they were flying away, the other youngster would appear at the other end to feed until Mom returned to chase him off in the opposite direction, at which time youngster #1 would reappear at the opposite end for a repeat performance. I once watched for nearly an hour, when there was hardly a moment without one of them feeding.

Later in the summer, with the breeding season over and the two youngsters not leaving, Mom’s need to, and resolve to, defend the whole flowery array faded. On August 18, other hummers moved in and it has become a general feeder for as many as eight, who sometimes feed within a few feet of each other, but more often just do brief and leisurely chases and quickly return to their favorite spot-of-the-moment before it is usurped by another. I now have no idea who is who, or whether the newcomers are other locals seizing the opportunity, or earliest arrivals of the annual migration.

Having wildlife living in your yard, freely living out their lives, is such a treat. Another blog is coming your way in autumn about a slightly different hummingbird honeysuckle that is better adapted to a colder microclimate, and might do better in that harsh corner of your property.