Yes Hummingbirds Over-Winter Here - And the Males Are in Full Courtship Mode

Anna's Hummingbirds spend all year here in the Pacific Northwest - which is why we all need to plant a mahonia or two, and our native flowering currant for them to feed on...

Ellen Blackstone of BirdNote filled me in on the Valentines Day shenanigans (okay, really, the late winter courtship) of these vibratory little beauties. "The males are really gearing up right now, displaying for females", she writes.  Cornell's Birds of North America calls the courtship action “the most elaborate and spectacular dive displays of any North American hummingbird.”

Ellen describes it like this; "The male does his little buzzy thing, then zooms almost straight up into the air. When he hits the top of his flight, he all but disappears and -- almost simultaneously -- you hear a fairly loud POP. You might find it hard to believe that the sound was made by a bird, let alone a tiny little hummingbird." Wikipedia says that male Anna's are the only hummers that sing during courtship.

Just think - all this romantic drama is happening outside in our gardens right now - especially if you've planted to nurture our native hummers over the winter. Think how much nourishment they must need to keep up these spectacular mating rituals! (Anna's hummers eat insects and spiders as well as nectar).

Once the whole courtship affair is over, the female raises the family on her own, from building the nest, to incubating, to feeding and tending the young. And it's not uncommon for them to be nesting right now.  Learn more about Anna's Hummingbirds here.

Thanks to Tom Grey for these great photos - 

Here's the male Anna's Hummer, hovering, perhaps in preparation for his romantic sky diving - he looks pretty  cocky, doesn't he, for a bird that is about four inches long and weighs less than a nickel?

Female Anna's are sitting on nests out there right now...

A mother Anna's feeds her babies - truly, a single mother, doing all the work herself...

Comments

[Nancy Wiechmann]

Flight recorder and wind tunnel analysis of the diving displays of male Anna's hummingbirds have revealed that the "pop" or squeaking noise at the end of the dive is in fact not a vocalization, but a sound produced by the passage of air through specialized tail feathers, making it, in my opinion, even more remarkable.

[Deirdre]

I remember watching the courtship flight once. The female sat on a twig at the bottom of the big ellipse the male was flying. Every time he passed her, she cheeped and turned her head watching him.

[ricki]

Fun to learn a little more background on these amazing creatures who entertain us so generously.

[Chris]

Seriously, they are sitting on nests, right now? That's the earliest nesting I've heard of here in the Northwest, when most birds haven't even begun the courting activity yet!
How do they find enough to eat so early for young? I do keep my feeder up year round but had no idea I was helping to feed young in February!!

[DariaW]

Great Horned Owls nest at this time of year. They court, or as I like to think of it 'whoo' in my garden every year Dec-Jan. I've seen the Rufous hummingbird court, the way Deirdre describes it. It was the sound of the flight that caught my attention.