Hummingbird Posts

I'm not sure what's happening with the Rufous Hummingbirds here as I thought migration was long past, but suddenly we are being inundated.  We are currently running 5 of the standard 4-station, 1 cup feeders and are going through at least 10 cups of nectar per day.  A little on-line research indicates that there is great disagreement between people on how much nectar a hummingbird will consume in a day, but even the largest estimate I found was slightly under 1/2 ounce.  That would indicate that we have a minimum of 160 hummingbirds visiting the feeders, which just seems incredible.  (The smallest estimate was 1/4 oz. which gives an even more ridiculous number).  But it does make for lots of photo ops.

The photo was just a grab shot of a feeder behind my set-up when I heard a bunch of noise back there.

 

That's crazy and a lot of work but worth it when your seeing that many. We live up pretty high in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia so our one feeder last for about 3 days but we always have a few birds. My brother however lives on the coast of Virginia right on the Mattaponi river and they buy sugar in 50 lbs bags!! I have no idea how many feeders they have but I do know they use about 150 lbs a month. I'll ask him for numbers and do the math to see how many he has.

 

That's an impressive level of traffic, Dennis. There were decent numbers in southcentral Alaska when I was there earlier this month, so it's not that they stayed in the Pacific Northwest.

If I recall correctly (Nate may have more accurate data), Tandayapa Lodge on the west slope of the Andes in Ecuador goes through 30 gallon of nectar a day. It has the most hummingbirds of any place I've ever been. 

Dennis, I wonder if the fledglings are out of the nest--that could account for a big increase in numbers.  If the numbers are skewed way toward female/immatures vs adult males, that would be an indicator.