BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AlanGino" data-source="post: 1286818" data-attributes="member: 69320">I live in central Arkansas, USA and a few days ago I noticed behavior I had not seen before from the hummers that frequent my backyard.Usually I just have one dominant hummer. This morning it appeared I had three pretty bold hummers vying for the dominant position off and on. Then at one point two of the hummers began flying all over the place about a foot apart in what appeared to be a dominant face-off. That went on for about a minute with them holding their face-off positions. Then, to my complete surprise, they latched on to each other, wings still going like crazy, and slowly went to the ground, still locked together – literally resembling a ball. They actually appeared to wrestle for two to three seconds on the ground….then separated and flew about ten yards just above the ground, still facing-off. Then they latched on to each other again, hit the ground but only momentarily, and then one appeared to tuck-tail and take off….the other close behind.From the information I have been able to read, it would seem that mid-flight mating is obviously out of the question which could only mean that I observed a really vicious encounter between two hummers vying for dominance. I know that one was for sure a male Anna’s hummingbird.Can anyone shed any light on this behavior or perhaps has seen similar behavior??</blockquote>