Hummingbird Video Gallery

• Hummingbird Feeder Battles
• Bathing White-necked Jacobin

I was in Arizona in late April 2010, and found these busy hummingbird feeders set up at a state park near Sedona. It was the prefect opportunity to shoot a bit of digi-video using my Leica spotting scope and Leica D-Lux 4 digital camera with a digiscoping adapter.

The feeders were hopping with male and female black-chinned hummingbirds plus several very aggressive male Anna's hummingbirds. Nearby, regular bird feeders hosted Abert's towhees, gila woodpeckers, house finches, and lesser goldfinches some of which you can hear singing and calling in the background. The roaring noise in the background is the sound from a vent fan from a nearby building, which was unavoidable if I wanted to get these shots of the hummers.

The conventional wisdom about foiling bully hummingbirds used to be to set up additional feeders far removed and out of sight of the one where the bully was holding forth. But this may merely let other bullies set up their turf at these new feeders. Now I usually recommend grouping feeders in a loose cluster so that no one bully can defend all the feeding ports at all of the feeders. Eventually, most bullies let the other hummers feed in peace at some of the feeders.