Hummingbirds

Few birds capture people's imagination quite like hummingbirds. They hover in midair, fly backward, flash brilliant iridescent colors, and disappear almost as quickly as they arrive. Despite weighing less than a handful of paperclips, they leave some of the biggest impressions in the bird world.

Hummingbirds are also uniquely American. Every one of the world's roughly 366 species lives somewhere in North, Central, or South America. Utah welcomes only a handful each summer, but farther south the family explodes into an incredible variety of dazzling colors, extravagant tail feathers, and specialized bills.

Whether you're watching a Broad-tailed Hummingbird buzz around a backyard feeder or admiring a tropical species in a cloud forest, they all share the same remarkable lifestyle—hovering flight, astonishing speed, and one of the highest metabolisms on Earth.

Get a cooperative adult male in good light and hummingbird identification can feel surprisingly easy. The glowing throat feathers, called a gorget, can immediately point you toward the species.

Then a female or juvenile shows up and takes away your easy answer.

Without those brilliant male gorgets, several Utah hummingbirds can look frustratingly similar. That's when it helps to use every clue available—overall size, bill shape, behavior, location, and even sound.

Broad-tailed Hummingbirds often zip past sounding like a tiny homing missile, while Black-chinned Hummingbirds have a buzz that's reminded me of a distant weed whacker. Once you start listening as carefully as you look, hummingbird identification becomes much easier.

This is one of the best times of year to pay attention to hummingbirds in Utah. Summer is beginning to wind down, and birds are already moving south toward their wintering grounds.

Rufous Hummingbirds make this especially noticeable. As they migrate south, they can suddenly appear around feeders in numbers that weren't there a few weeks earlier. A feeder that barely moved earlier in the summer can become a constant stream of activity.

And sometimes they really do swarm it. During the busiest stretches, several birds may chase, hover, feed, disappear, and return almost continuously—and a heavily used feeder can sometimes be drained in a single day.

Put several hummingbirds around one feeder and you quickly discover that sharing is not their greatest strength.

Hummingbirds can be fiercely territorial, chasing one another away from feeders and flowers even during migration, when every bit of energy matters. One bird may claim a nearby perch and repeatedly launch after anything that approaches.

The funny part is watching hunger temporarily win. Several birds may finally settle around the feeder and drink together as if they've called a truce. Then one seems to remember that it is supposed to be in charge, and the chase begins all over again.

It looks wasteful—and in a way it is. They are burning precious energy defending a food source while simultaneously trying to fuel a long migration. But access to a reliable patch of flowers or nectar can be valuable enough to defend.

You don't need fancy nectar to help hummingbirds during migration. The recipe is simple: four parts water to one part plain white granulated sugar. Skip dyes, honey, artificial sweeteners, and other additions.

The more important part is keeping the feeder clean and the nectar fresh. Rather than filling a large feeder completely and letting nectar sit, start with roughly what your hummingbirds are actually drinking and replace it regularly. Less waste makes it much easier to keep everything fresh.

Of course, migration can change the math quickly. If the birds suddenly start emptying the feeder every day, fill it accordingly. Let their activity tell you how much nectar to make.

Simple feeders are often easiest because they're easy to take apart, wash, refill, and put right back outside. The best hummingbird feeder isn't necessarily the prettiest one—it's the one you'll actually keep clean.