A cardinal of a different color

A male Northern Cardinal with a rare mutation has become an Internet sensation!

Former shelter kitty Lucky Wilbury, who is currently recovering from a life-threatening bladder blockage.

To commemorate this avian celebrity (and gently rib certain curmudgeons in the birding community), I created this homage to Andy Warhol’s colorful silkscreen portraits of celebrities. It’s now available in my Mountain-Gem Arts store on Zazzle on men’s, women’s, unisex, and kids’ T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, and more in a variety of bright, medium, and dark colors, including many bird-friendly options. A cropped version including the left and center panels is available for your wall and as a 2-inch square button to adorn your Tilley hat or birding vest (or as one of your minimum 15 pieces of flair).

Proceeds from sales of this design (and everything else in my Zazzle shop) will help defray the cost of recent lifesaving veterinary treatment for my indoor-only rescue kitty, Lucky Wilbury.

 

Killer hummingbirds revisited

“It’s a photo of a dead hummingbird! What do you make of it Holmes?”
“Impossible to say without additional evidence, Watson.”

Periodically over the nearly nine years since the publication of Killer hummingbirds?, I’ve received comments from people taking issue with what they believe that post says. Typically, these readers have witnessed an attack by one or more hummingbirds on another and wish to inform me that I’m wrong to say that hummingbirds never kill each other. The first problem is that I didn’t say “never,” and they would know this had they read as far as the bold black text in the middle of the post:

 “Only birds weakened by hunger, disease, or injuries… are vulnerable to injury and, in rare instances, death from other hummingbirds…”

Some of the reports clearly fit the qualification above, because, to quote more of the original post:

…a healthy hummingbird will either defend itself or flee before a more aggressive individual gets the chance to do any significant damage.“

Others provide few if any useful details of the event, even when prompted, and still others are just accounts of finding a dead hummingbird and assuming, because they had previously observed combat, that it was a case of trochilicide.

This brings us to the other problem with these reports, which is that they are never accompanied by any objective evidence—photos or video—that would support their accounts of the events (much like reports of yellow hummingbirds). A recent correspondent claimed to have seen a Black-chinned Hummingbird…

“…physically stick his bill deeply into another h.bird’s belly, twice! Then 2 more times into the back of the others neck.”

There are a couple of problems with this description as evidence of hummingbirds fighting to the death, even if one combatant is severely disadvantaged. The first is that poking is rather common in hummingbird combat, and the disappearance of the tip of an aggressor’s bill into the thick plumage of the “victim” would be understandably alarming to someone unfamiliar with hummingbird anatomy.

A hummingbird poking another’s body or neck with its bill is a bit like someone poking Marie Antoinette in the bouffant with a knitting needle.

The second is that, even when the bill passes completely through the feathers and makes contact with the other bird’s body, hummingbird anatomy makes a fatal penetrating wound highly unlikely except in freak circumstances (see page 23 of A Field Guide to Hummingbirds of North America for an example).

This X-ray CT image of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, showing its huge, deeply muscled rib cage, short skin-and-bones neck, and virtually nonexistent “belly,” demonstrates why hummingbirds are not as vulnerable to penetrating wounds as humans are (or as capable of inflicting them):

The issue of hummingbirds injuring one another in combat took a fascinating twist in 2014, when Alejandro Rico-Guevara of the University of Connecticut and and Marcelo Araya-Salas of New Mexico State University announced their discovery that the unusual bill shapes of adult male Long-billed Hermits make them more effective at inflicting potentially painful puncture wounds than the bills of females and juvenile males, and that males with longer, pointier bill tips were more successful at defending territories.

These revelations were newsworthy precisely because the bill shapes of the vast majority of hummingbird species, including all of the familiar North American species, show no such adaptations and confer no apparent advantages in combat. It’s also noteworthy that while the researchers observed male Long-billed Hermits poking each other during combat, they did not mention observing any serious injuries, much less fatal ones, resulting from these interactions. In fact, most of the “fighting” shown in their video consists of belligerent posturing and vocalizing with little physical contact, similar to the combat behavior of most North American hummingbirds:

(Note that the black-and-white segment depicts two non-hermit species, and the last sequence depicts courtship and mating, not fighting.)

So now we have compelling evidence that males of at least one hummingbird species have bills adapted for use as “stabbing” weapons, yet documentation of fatal encounters between healthy, normal hummingbirds is still almost as elusive as Bigfoot. I expect it will remain so, but I’m open to persuasive evidence.
Resources:

Rico-Guevara, Alejandro, and Marcelo Araya-Salasb , 2014. Bills as daggers? A test for sexually dimorphic weapons in a lekking hummingbird. Behavioral Ecology 26(1): 21-29.

Digimorph.org: Archilochus colubris, Ruby-throated Hummingbird by Dr. Ronald Stearman, The University of Texas at Austin.

New post at my Web site

I’m such a bad blogger. I didn’t even post about my spectacular trip to Trinidad and Tobago last summer where I photographed this stunning White-necked Jacobin.

Has it really been almost a year since I last posted here? I’m still working on the second edition of A Field Guide to Hummingbirds of North America, so I haven’t been doing much writing otherwise, but I did just add a post to the News tab on my Web site about a controversy that erupted during the spring 2012 Ruby-throated Hummingbird migration. Hope you enjoy it!

P.S.: If you’d like to see more of my photos from Trinidad and Tobago, check out the album on Flickr.

Search of the Week: “what can I feed hummingbirds to get them protein”

Sugar water is a substitute for the nectars of hummingbird-pollinated flowers, which provide the birds with energy-rich sugars, water, some electrolyte salts, and little else. Almost everything else their bodies need, including protein, comes from eating insects, spiders, and other small arthropods. (Salvia sp. in my garden, copyright S. L. Williamson)

Hummingbirds do need extra protein in their diets during the nesting and molting seasons. Here are some tips for helping them meet their protein needs:

• Don’t use broad-spectrum pesticides in your yard: Many common yard and garden pests, including aphids, whiteflies, and various annoying gnats and midges, are just the right size for hummingbirds to eat. Even if the birds don’t sicken and die from eating poisoned prey, spraying pesticides destroys an essential source of natural nutrition and makes your yard less attractive to them. Switch to targeted, low-risk remedies for specific pests, such as a hard spray of water under leaves for aphids and various forms of the natural pest pathogen “Bt” (Bacillus thuringiensis) for caterpillars and mosquitoes. Also, beware of purchasing hummingbird flowers from mainstream garden centers. Many of these plants have been unnecessarily treated with the same neonicotinoid pesticides that have been implicated in the terrifying declines of honeybees, native pollinators, and native insect-eating birds.
• Cultivate a compost pile: Fruit flies are attracted to decaying vegetable matter, including fruit rinds and scraps. Garden experts often advise against adding fruit to compost piles/bins in part to discourage fruit flies, but these tiny insects provide excellent hummingbird food while aiding the composting process.
• Grow your own fruit flies: There are lots of recipes on the Web. When a culture matures, just set the container in your garden and open it so the flies can escape.

The one thing you absolutely, positively should never, ever do is add protein supplements to your feeder solution. It’s unnatural, the solution will spoil much faster, and the birds will not like the taste. (Captive hummingbirds drink protein-rich liquid diets, but only because they have no choice. They’d much prefer flower nectar or sugar water for energy and water and a variety of insects and spiders for protein, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, etc.)

More on what to put (and not put) in your hummingbird feeder:

Feeder Solution Evolution, Part I: The Basics
Search of the Week: “is molasses ok to feed hummingbirds”
Feeding Hummingbirds: The dangers of red dye
Beet juice in hummingbird feeders: NO!
Search of the Week: “hummingbirds won’t eat instant nectar”
Search Roundup: Feeding hummingbirds
Keeping hummingbird feeders clean

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New post at my Web site

Wire-crested Thorntail, Ecuador

As work progresses on the revision of A Field Guide to Hummingbirds of North America, I’ll be using the News page at my Web site to post updates, previews, and other items of interest to users of the guide and other fans of hummingbirds. The first post is about providing nesting material for hummingbirds, one of many new and expanded topics covered in the second edition of the guide.

The Life, Birds, and Everything blog will remain here at wordpress.com, at least for the time being, so please enjoy the archives. Thanks for following along!

“Chemical-free” sugar?

My reply to the following e-mail bounced, so I’ll answer it here:

I’ve read the first part of your article on hummingbirds about what  to make when you feed them.

Before reading the article, I just made hummingbird food with organic sugar. I am concerned about the addictive and other chemicals in white sugar. Is there any white sugar available on the market that does not contain chemicals?  or a way to transform organic sugar in white?

Thank you for your time.

In the strictest sense, there is no product of any kind on the market that doesn’t contain chemicals. I’ll need to know what specific substances you’re concerned about (other than iron) before I can answer your question, but the way it’s phrased suggests that you may have fallen victim to fear-mongering hyperbole about white sugar. In that case, this post may be helpful:

Search of the Week: “if refined sugar is so bad for us then why do we feed it to hummingbirds??”

One feederful of organic sugar isn’t going to kill hummingbirds because the iron concentration is very low. It’s chronic exposure to excess iron over weeks, months, or years that may cause illness and death. Unfortunately, there is no simple home remedy for removing the residual iron from organic/”raw”/turbinado sugar.

Search of the Week: “it is september why am i only getting female hummingbirds at my feeders…”

In juvenile plumage, young male hummingbirds like this Ruby-throated usually look a lot like their mothers. They also seem to leave the nest with chips on their shoulders.

The full search was: “it is september why am i only getting female hummingbirds at my feeders and she is very aggressive”

By September, most of the migratory hummingbirds remaining at northern latitudes will be young birds of both sexes, which look like adult females except for variable amounts of pale fringing on the iridescent feathers of their backs and heads (plus a few other subtle differences, depending on species). Young males often show lines of dark spots on the throat, a pattern hummingbirders call “five-o’clock shadow.” Some young males will show bright flashes of color in their gorgets as adult feathers replace drab juvenile ones.

Though females of any age can be very aggressive and territorial, especially in migration, it’s the young males that seem to be the biggest troublemakers (as though they think they have something to prove). As long as there are still good numbers of hummingbirds around, expect the screeching, chasing, grappling, and chest-bumping to continue.

Keeping hummingbird feeders clean

Brushtech Hummingbird Feeder Cleaning Kit at Amazon.com (click image)

If you’re like me, you’ve got a collection of toothbrushes, baby bottle brushes, and even well-washed mascara brushes sitting next to your kitchen sink for cleaning hummingbird feeders. The problem is that tools made for other cleaning jobs don’t always work as well for such a specialized task, so it’s nice to see a set of brushes made especially to reach the nooks and crannies of typical hummingbird feeders. The big brush in this set could even get into the enclosed bases of some of the cheapo feeder models to remove crud you can’t see.

Of all the nasties that grow on hummingbird feeders, the nastiest and hardest to control is black mold. A 15-minute soak in a dilute solution of chlorine bleach*⇓ (1 part bleach in 10 or more parts water) is very effective at killing black mold on non-porous surfaces, but an hour-long soak in white vinegar is a less toxic alternative (NEVER use bleach and vinegar together: you could kill yourself!). In either case, follow up the soak with a thorough brushing to remove dead mold colonies and other organic growths, then rinse well and let the feeder dry before refilling to allow the odor to dissipate.

An even safer mold killer that’s much kinder to your nose than bleach or vinegar is 3% hydrogen peroxide, the medicinal kind you can buy in any drug or grocery store. The downside is that it’s much more expensive than bleach or vinegar. A frugal alternative to traditional soaking is to add a couple of ounces to the feeder bottle, screw on the base, invert the feeder and swirl gently over a sink or bucket to make sure the peroxide covers all inside surfaces, then allow it to stand for at least 10 minutes. While the peroxide is doing its work from the inside, spray the outside with more peroxide to kill any mold growing there. Follow the treatment with a good scrub, including the ports. and rinse well to remove any debris. No drying needed; the peroxide will leave no odor, and the only residues are water and oxygen.

This advice applies mainly to bottle-style feeders. Saucer feeders such as the Aspects Hummzingers can be cleaned by hand using dish detergent and the small port brush in the kit above or washed on the top rack of the dishwasher. If any stubborn debris accumulates in the built-in ant moat, the little ball-shaped brush in the Brushtech set will swish it away.

Regardless of what type of feeder you have, it will need cleaning and refilling every 1 to 2 days in hot, windy, and/or rainy weather and every 3 to 4 days in cooler, calmer, drier weather, whether the birds have emptied it or not. If you can’t make a commitment to good feeder hygiene, it’s best to plant flowers instead.

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* There’s a persistent myth that using chlorine bleach to clean feeders will kill hummingbirds. It won’t as long as you rinse the feeder well, just as you would if using bleach to disinfect your own dishes or your pets’ dishes. Any minute traces of chlorine residue will be rendered harmless by reacting with the sugar in the feeder solution (the same thing happens when you mix sugar with chlorinated tap water).

Search Roundup: Feeding hummingbirds

If you have an urge to get fancy with how you feed hummingbirds, do it with the feeder itself, not with the contents.
(Par-A-Sol hummingbird feeders at Amazon.com)

Some recent searches on the theme of what to put in hummingbird feeders:

“can you make hummingbird food with brown sugar”

Please don’t try this. Brown sugar contains molasses, which is rich in iron, and excess iron can be deadly to hummingbirds. Use that brown sugar to make some delicious chocolate chunk blondies or pineapple upside-down cake instead.

“can you make hummingbird nectar out of organic cane sugar?”

“organic evaporated cane juice hummingbird nectar”

Again, the light beige color of semi-refined sugars, including organic sugar and “evaporated cane juice,”* indicates the presence of potentially toxic iron (though at a lower concentration than in brown sugar). Until some company comes out with a fully refined white organic sugar, it’s safest to stick with non-organic white sugar. GMO sugar is a non-issue, but some people report that hummingbirds prefer pure cane sugar to either beet sugar or blends of the two (which are usually just labeled “sugar”).

“should you feed hummingbirds high fructose corn syrup”

No. HFCS is made up of two simple sugars, glucose and fructose, which are components of sucrose, the most abundant sugar in the nectars of hummingbird-pollinated flowers. Hummingbirds get all the glucose and fructose they need by digesting sucrose, and HFCS has a greater likelihood of contamination during the manufacturing process.

“how much orange extract to put in hummingbird nectar”

NONE. That product appealingly labeled “Pure Orange Extract” is 79% alcohol plus a little water and orange oil squeezed from discarded orange rinds, not the good part of the fruit. It’s not nutritious, it won’t attract the birds, and it may harm them. At best it will probably attract bees. Seriously, don’t do this.

“can i use vanilla in hummingbird feeders”

*sigh* “Pure” vanilla extract also contains alcohol—not as much its orange counterpart, but still the equivalent of 80-proof booze. Hummingbirds don’t pollinate vanilla orchids, nor do they need flavored sugar water to encourage them to visit feeders. Again, you’re more likely to increase your bee problems, which won’t be popular with your hummingbird clientele.

“is koolaid safe for humming birds”

NO. Kool-Aid contains petroleum-based synthetic dyes, artificial flavorings, preservatives, and other things that are at best useless and at worst harmful to hummingbirds. A glass of Kool-Aid every now and then won’t kill you or me, but what do you think would happen if we ate 100+ packages of the dry mix every day? That’s the equivalent of a hummingbird’s daily intake, minus the water and sugar (the only ingredients in prepared Kool-Aid that hummingbirds actually do need).

This feeder’s contents are colored with organic tart cherry juice, not synthetic dyes. The birds prefer plain sugar water, and the juice makes the solution spoil faster, so I don’t encourage this.

“can u add [fruit juice] to hummingbird food”

You can, but again you’re asking for trouble, including premature spoilage and bees. If you’re thinking of substituting fruit juice for dye in plain sugar water, the least problematical kind of juice isn’t available in the average grocery store: it’s a concentrate strong enough that just a couple of teaspoons will color an 8-oz. feeder. I’ve tested several concentrates, and the one that has the best color and least objectionable flavor to hummingbirds is tart cherry. Black cherry doesn’t give as bright a color, and the birds didn’t like cranberry (it’s probably too bitter). Because adding the concentrate will provide more nutrients for yeasts to grow on, you’ll need to clean and refill the feeder more often to keep ahead of spoilage. As with the flavor(ed) additives above, you may notice more interest from bees and wasps, which love fruit juices. Plain sugar water may not be as pretty, but it’s easier on your time and bank account with fewer problems.

More than a century of backyard experience and scientific research into hummingbirds and their flowers has established beyond doubt that a fresh solution of white sugar in good-quality water served in clean feeders is all you need. No dyes. No flavors. No “supplements.”

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* All cane sugar is produced by evaporating water from cane juice. This is just a snake-oil name for cane sugar that still contains a lot of its original contaminants.

Related posts:

Feeder Solution Evolution Part I: The basics

Search of the Week: “if refined sugar is so bad for us, then why do we feed it to hummingbirds??”

Search of the Week: “hummingbirds won’t eat instant nectar”

Beet juice in hummingbird feeders? NO!

Search of the Week: “is molasses ok to feed hummingbirds”

Search of the Week: “can I give hummingbirds mountain dew?”

Search of the Week: “hummingbirds won’t eat instant nectar”

All of Arizona’s famous feeding stations use plain sugar water to attract avian celebrities such as Lucifer (above, female), Magnificent, White-eared, and Violet-crowned hummingbirds. (photo © Sheri L. Williamson)

Maybe they’re trying to tell you something. Most of the “instant nectar” and “hummingbird food” products on the market are adulterated with petroleum-based artificial dyes and/or preservatives, so it’s safer if the birds don’t eat them.*

Even products that claim to contain natural coloring aren’t necessarily trustworthy. On a recent visit to one of the big-box pet stores, I encountered three versions of a brand of “instant nectar” touted on the Web as containing “natural red coloring.” The ingredient list showed that the concentrate and one of the two powders contained FD&C Red No. 40, which has been found to cause harm in laboratory animals at dosages substantially lower than a hummingbird would be exposed to by drinking one of these products. The label on the other powder listed beet coloring, which may not be the best choice of natural coloring for hummingbirds for reasons I explained in an earlier post.

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* The few “instant nectar” products that don’t contain unnecessary and potentially harmful additives may not hurt the birds, but they’ll put an unnecessary dent in your bank balance. They’re ≥99% sugar priced at five to ten times what you’d pay for white granulated sugar at the grocery store. What you’re really paying for is the colorful, “convenient” package, not a better product. If you’ve got cash to burn, try superfine or caster sugar, which dissolves more quickly in cold water than regular granulated. Organic sugar, “raw” sugar, and “evaporated cane juice” are other pricey alternatives that might seem worth the extra green, but their beige to brown color indicates the presence of iron, which is known to be a potentially deadly problem for hummingbirds. Until we know more about how much supplemental iron hummingbirds can tolerate, they’re not worth the risk.