Somewhere I Got Idea this Does Not Happen (1 Viewer)

[MBP]

In years of watching hummingbirds I have never noticed any gender differentiation as far as protecting a feeder is concerned - I have seen females protect the feeder as fiercely if not more so than males.

Do you think this might be species specific? I also tend to think that the females of our Anna's do not defend the feeder, at least not that much; if someone defends it, it is usually a male - as far as I can tell. And on the rare occasions when there are two there at the same time, at least one of them looks like a female. Sometimes we could even see the defender sitting in a tree nearby and watching a hummingbird drink from "his" feeder - but in these cases the drinking hummingbird never appeared to be a male - at least not an adult. Of course this all might just have happened by chance and is definetly not statistically evident, and also I would never claim to be able to distinguish an immature male from a female for sure. But it would make sense though, at least at nesting season, when the females have better things to do than defending a feeder, wouldn't it?

 

[crickieheather]

Do you think this might be species specific? I also tend to think that the females of our Anna's do not defend the feeder, at least not that much; if someone defends it, it is usually a male - as far as I can tell. And on the rare occasions when there are two there at the same time, at least one of them looks like a female. Sometimes we could even see the defender sitting in a tree nearby and watching a hummingbird drink from "his" feeder - but in these cases the drinking hummingbird never appeared to be a male - at least not an adult. Of course this all might just have happened by chance and is definetly not statistically evident, and also I would never claim to be able to distinguish an immature male from a female for sure. But it would make sense though, at least at nesting season, when the females have better to do than defending a feeder, wouldn't it?

My hummers (the 15-20 total i get here), are very gendered in terms of feeder defense. The females defend them like crazy durring nesting season, then the immature males drive the females off. I rarely see an adult male at all, and he will stick around for about 3-4 days tops.
Heather

 

[humminbird]

Gotta agree with you Heather on females during nesting season.

Mark
Bastrop, TX