Palouse Country: The Day The Hummingbirds Left
Considering the ecological and moral calculus of feeding birds
Today is marked on my calendar as the day that the precious hummingbirds of summer left the steep, dry, hillside bluffs of the Snake River Valley in southeastern Washington. No more dive bombing, buzzing squadrons of tiny birds zipping, chittering, and chasing each other around our patio like miniature fighter airplanes, even if only armed with hypodermic-like bills instead of missiles.
However, I have learned through careful observation that such hyper-aggression and pointy little beaks still can be quite deadly for some unfortunate individuals. Ultimately though, that may be my fault and not theirs.
Admittedly this specific day is somewhat arbitrary as bird migration often doesn’t have a discrete beginning for many species with timetables for individuals and groups varying by sex, age, body condition, food resources, daylength, social facilitation (e.g., guess I’d better go too, the rest of the flock is leaving), geographic location, weather, etc.
In reality, I strongly suspect that a great many Black-chinned hummingbirds (Archilochus alexandri) started abandoning our flower-filled patios and nectar feeders at least 2 to 3 days earlier. But today leaves no doubt or room for wishful thinking. Most hummers are gone for the season.
This morning the multiple nectar feeders scattered on three sides of our house, in my fruitless attempt to reduce their territorial aggression, are vacant. The air is still. The morning sun was bright and cheerful but not hot. The feeders are clean and full, glistening, and sparkling with clear sugar water. No pestering wasps to annoy feeding birds. No lurking cats. No praying mantis waiting motionless, zombie-like by a feeder to suddenly snap its front legs like a mousetrap and snatch an unsuspecting hummer out of mid-air to eat its brains (see: Praying Mantis vs. Hummingbird). Nothing untoward at all stops the usual local feathered crowd from streaming in for their morning breakfast and brunch. They’re simply gone.
In reflection, several weather fronts have recently moved through our area and may have contributed to their urge to move on. The wind has blown hard several times, even if calm today. Night-time temperatures occasionally dip into the 40s F.
Nesting is certainly finished. Hummingbird chicks have long since fledged, learned to fly, and figured out how to hover and dance in perfect unison with tubular flowers bouncing in the wind while using their impossibly long tongues to capture each tiny nectar reward.
In reality, I know that migration by male Black-chinned hummingbirds actually started at least a full month ago, well before any obvious precipitating events, perhaps other than a lack of nesting females to keep males interested in staying around. Several years of careful watching have revealed to me that adult males depart our local area well before the bulk of adult and immature females do.
I suspect that once nesting is well underway and chicks are growing and fledging, adult males tank up on sugar resources and then begin moving on to the next step in their annual journey, which for them, is likely to seek out more productive habitats including flower meadows on higher elevation mountain ranges.
There, unlike our dry late-summer Palouse Prairie landscape, the summer season is still relatively early. For these birds, it’s like taking a step back in time. Temperatures at higher elevations are cooler, and unlike the hot, bone-dry bluffs and hillsides of the Snake River Valley, now largely devoid of nectar-producing flowers attractive to hummingbirds, higher-elevation flower meadows still can be relatively rich in floral abundance. That’s why both hummingbirds and some moths (see: How To Butter Up a Grizzly Bear) often travel there to forage as part of their annual migrations and mysterious life cycles.
However, the current migration by Black-chinned hummingbirds doesn’t mean there are absolutely no hummingbirds around at all. But now, instead of squadrons of hummers zipping around the patios, which for us typically means maybe six or so bickering and fighting birds at a time, only an occasional single bird stops by during the day for just a few fleeting moments to check out a flower or two in a patio container, then quickly zipping off on its way again.
It’s as though a few straggling individuals are now moving down through the river valley, dropping in on their journeys to quickly check out the flowers in our own homestead version of a mountain meadow. Perhaps making a mental note in their encyclopedic map memory of flower resources and then quickly leaving again. Frenetic as usual, they’ve got places to go and work to do.
It’s strange, but the sugar feeders often are ignored by these busy single migrants. As an avian ecologist, I can’t resist coming up with a working hypothesis or at least a nearly untestable flight of fancy that might explain such behavior. But first I’ll let you ponder that issue to see what thoughts you generate.
However, if this year is typical of the last few, a different species, the Anna’s hummingbird (Calypte anna) may move into the Snake River Valley and elsewhere in Palouse country to partially replace Black-chinned hummingbirds during fall or even winter.
Yes, winter, with sub-freezing temperatures, wind, snow, ice, and everything associated with cold temperate winters.
Anna’s hummingbirds are common along the generally warm coastal areas of the western U.S. but have been steadily expanding their range east of the Cascade Range for decades in response to increased human development, urban tree plantings, and undoubtedly, global warming. If nectar feeders are available and managed during winter (i.e., protected from snow cover and freezing) some Anna’s hummingbirds may elect not to migrate right away and stay around for much or all of the winter.
Indeed, it’s an interesting, if quite stressful experience to manage hummingbird feeders in winter to sustain non-migrant Anna’s hummingbirds. Perhaps I’ll relate some of these challenging bird-survival adventures here in the future. How about a story “How to Watch Hummingbirds During a Blizzard?” But for now, disappearing hummingbirds and many other signs surely point to the arrival of fall.
The bluffs and hills of the Snake River Valley have long since turned largely brown, the bunch grasses and other plants now mostly senescent for the remainder of the year, their roots or seeds waiting patiently in the soil until cooler temperatures and rains return to signal the start of a new year of growth.
The beautiful exception to this plant growth cycle during fall on Palouse Prairie landscapes are wild yellow sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) with their abundant blooms and the emerging yellow blossoms of Green rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus), which some people may mistake for sagebrush on arid rangelands in the western U.S.
Wild bees and moths gorge themselves on these flower resources while migrating birds, such as Red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus), finches, and many other wild birds, pluck and glean the energy-packed seeds from dried sunflower heads.
I suppose one could view the recent emergence of large hawkmoths or sphinx moths (sometimes called hummingbird moths) on my patio as one of Mother Nature’s insect substitutes for birds as they now visit the same tubular flowers of Salvia spp. as preferred by hummingbirds. Beautiful and mysterious in their own right, the arrival of hawkmoths at flower planters is dependable as clockwork as evening and dusk approach and a sure signal of approaching fall.
While my nectar feeders now sit untouched, other birds attack the seed feeders with gusto, including flocks of 20–50+ Red-winged blackbirds that spiral down from the sky, flashing red epaulets while giving their trilling call. But they will soon move on as will unseen multitudes of other bird species not as attracted to artificial feeders.
The Moral Calculus of Feeding Wildlife
While I’m certainly disappointed that my summer of hummingbird observations is largely over, I can’t help but think about the lessons I’ve learned repeatedly from Mother Nature about watching and caring for wildlife. The pleasure of attracting birds and other wildlife to watch and study up close comes at a price. And sometimes that price is steep.
The windows on our homes, businesses, and especially, large shiny buildings, extract a huge toll on birds that die from collisions with mirror-like glass. Our home is no exception.
An estimated 100 million to 1 billion birds die from window collisions just in the United States each year (see: Bird-window collisions). When one considers the number and potential magnitude of bird-window collisions at homes and buildings the world over, including other mortality factors such as wind turbines and vehicles, and especially the huge devastation and death toll wrought by outdoor cats, the extent of the problem is difficult to even imagine.
Factor in climate change, declining insect populations and natural habitats, along with human exploitation and consumption, and it’s easier to comprehend that avian populations are reduced through untold hundreds upon hundreds of millions of direct and indirect human-caused bird deaths every year.
Billions of birds over time. One bird and death at a time.
I was distressed recently when I noticed a hummingbird lying in a planter underneath my office window overlooking a patio. It was dead and a reasonable guess is that it hit the window at high speed, snapped its neck, and fell into the planter.
I indulge my passion for birds by putting a window-mounted hummingbird feeder on my office window. Then, while I’m working at the computer, I hear the buzz of hummingbird wings and simply turn my head to watch the birds while they’re feeding only several feet away. Observing hummingbirds up close, if not magical, is at least fascinating and entertaining.
Unfortunately, this death mimics one occurring last summer, for that bird also was found beneath a large window overlooking a patio. At the time, that death puzzled me somewhat, as hummingbirds are masters at aerial maneuvering and are able to start, stop, twist, and turn on a dime. They are intimately aware of their spatial surroundings, especially when they repeatedly visit a yard for its nectar feeders and flowers.
So why would a hummingbird in particular make such a serious mistake and slam into a window? Even as an avian ecologist, that death puzzled me somewhat.
But now after several years of logging observations, I’m almost certain I know why it happens and the answer to that question. You see, as beautiful as hummingbirds are, they also can be vicious little creatures to each other as they bicker, fight, and chase each other around to defend flower patches or nectar feeders. I’m convinced that the consequences of this aggression can at times be fatal.
Numerous times I’ve observed hummingbirds at a feeder suddenly being attacked in a high-speed chase by another bird. I’ve watched several birds, in one case apparently a young hummingbird, be forced to the ground to escape an attacking bird.
And if you look closely enough, especially if you take close-up photos of hummingbirds as I do, you often will notice feathers dislodged and ruffled on their backs or even heads, quite likely it seems from being pecked by another bird.
I’m convinced that in a few cases, hummingbirds flying fast in a panic to escape a chasing bird may accidentally fly into a window at high speed, something they seem much less likely to do under other circumstances when simply approaching feeders or exploring flower gardens and planters by themselves.
Then I wonder. I call these deaths “accidental” but are they?
Territorial aggression certainly is embedded in hummingbird nature and part of their evolutionary makeup. Flower and nectar resources are precious for these birds that live life on the metabolic edge because of their small size and feeding specializations.
At times and places, this evolutionary pressure favors individuals who defend flower patches and nectar resources to harvest for their own selfish benefit. Such are the biological laws of Nature. But this territorial behavior can backfire when humans modify the environment, which is the primary thing we are good (or bad) at doing.
The Human Tax on Birds
I’ve long known that there is both a “window tax” and a “predator tax” levied on the lives of birds that we attract into our yards with bird feeders. Often the two taxes overlap. Numbers of times I’ve witnessed birds striking windows when being chased from feeders by small hawks, such as the Sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus).
The life-threatening, do-or-die emergency of avoiding a chasing hawk combined with a window that looks like an escape route is a bad combination. Puffs of Mourning dove (Zenaida macroura) feathers on the ground sometimes let me know that hawks were successful in their surprise attacks at bird feeders even without aid of a window. And with avian diseases expanding around the world (e.g., avian influenza) I wonder how much of a “disease tax” is levied at dirty bird feeders and bird baths everywhere.
No matter how good you might be at math, the ecological and moral calculus of the costs and benefits of attracting, feeding, and attempting to “help” or watch wildlife can be difficult to solve. I don’t even attempt to rationalize that my bird feeders make a significant difference to any species or population as a whole. But what about a specific localized population? Or some specific individuals?
Hummingbirds are not long-lived compared to some other larger birds, but still may live for a number of years if they reach adulthood. Might the individual that died at my office window otherwise have lived to nest, fledge young, and perhaps revisit my patio flowers and nectar feeders for several years? In the end, even as a wildlife biologist, I don’t know.
I hope that with thoughtful actions and awareness of strategies to mitigate bird deaths and create and enhance beneficial wildlife habitats, I can solve the ecological and moral calculus of bird watching and feeding to at least reach a neutral outcome. Bird watching and observing all kinds of wildlife, plants, and the natural world brings meaning to life and peace and calm to the soul that cannot be easily duplicated in any other way.
I buried the hummingbird to allow it to decompose slowly in shallow soil beneath one of their favored nectar-producing plants when it blooms in our arid landscape garden, a red yucca or hummingbird yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora). Some people will laugh at this gesture, but I did it with contrition for my part in the death of this bird and others and with reverence for the beauty of life. After all, if we don’t protect and revere life on Earth, what else really matters?
R. Sayler
Sept. 13, 2023
More information on reducing bird-window collisions:
- American Bird Conservancy
- Preventing Bird Collisions at Home
- Glass Action: Advances In The Science Of Making Windows Safer For Birds
- Wikipedia
More information on bird feeders:
- Analysis: Do Bird Feeders Help Or Hurt Birds?
- Project FeederWatch: Feeding Birds and Feeding Birds FAQs
