[Tweeters] Ravenous Anna's feeding at night

[N D]

Jill, I've got several theories for you. It could be a combo of two or more
of them too.

In the last ten years of feeding hummers, I’ve noticed that a lot of my
female Anna's get chased away so much during the day (by the males) that
_it seems_ the only time they can get a good drink is in the evenings/dawn
when the sun is down. So around that time they can hog the feeder, quietly.

Hummers do feed at night (evenings and mornings when it’s dark) despite
being mainly diurnal, and with the long dark nights right now, there are
fewer insects around for them to find by sight too.

It could be that you have a nesting female too. Nesting females will sit
long and only survive on insects close to the nest during the day but will
leave the nest just for a while and drink in the evening/darker light when
there are fewer active predators to find the nest/eggs. (I remember this
was how I could tell when they were nesting and would quietly wait for them
to feed before bed, and then try to follow their course to figure out where
the nest was located, just so I could be aware of it.)


It's unlikely it's for the following reason and I don't want to concern you
too much, but one other thing I would check is if your hummer is ok in
terms of tongue health. Some folks don't clean their feeders enough or
properly, and this in turn causes a fungal infection in hummers, with black
mold on the feeders - *and in the ports especially* - or in the liquid
itself.  The infection then inflames the tongue and it causes them to not
be able to retract the tongue. After a while they starve because they can’t
feed properly.
The fungal infection however, is really unpleasant to watch, and is painful
for the birds as they cannot get their tongue back in their mouth and they
also starve.  The infected bird will also appear to wobble on its perch as
it strives to stay alert and alive and not fall off it's perch. One can
probably find videos on Youtube if you want to compare the health of your
bird to ones that are infected. But if the tongue is fine, and the feeder
is clean, you can't really do much more.

 NB. It may not be your feeder that has black mold in the ports - it may be
a neighbor's. Mold on feeders is a problem here especially in fall, winter
and spring, when the conditions are damp, but there is enough warmth around
to encourage microbial growth. When I have seen moldy feeder ports, it's
usually when folks aren’t paying as much attention to the health of the
birds/cleaning the feeders), but afaict the mold is less likely in high
heat of summer as it’s less damp then. Instead, in summer - the fluid will
go 'off' in high heat with fast microbial growth instead and the fluid
going cloudy. I’ve never tested what grows in summer hummer fluid but it’s
probably a variety of things - bacteria and fungi.

Anyway, my bet is that your female is nesting. They will nest as early as
February here.
Happy birding!

Nadine Drisseq
(Molecular biologist, now retired)

On Sun, Feb 11, 2024 at 7:04 PM Shelf Life Community Story Project <
info at shelflifestories.com> wrote:


> There is a female Anna’s sitting on one of my feeders, in the dark,

> guzzling nectar. It’s not very cold out. She’s not torpid. The nectar is

> fresh yesterday. It’s been dark out for at least an hour, and she is just

> really hungry, sitting on the feeder for long periods of time, guzzling.

> I’ve never seen this before. Is this normal behavior? Should I keep an eye

> on her? Perhaps she’s getting ready to lay eggs and needs extra calories?

>

> Thanks in advance for any insights.

>

> Jill

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