Speaker A
He's a foot from your nose on the porch. One side of your face, then the other, then gone.
Discover why hummingbirds hover close to your face, what they check, and what their behavior means in this detailed nature insight by Wendell's Window.
Key Takeaways
- Hummingbirds inspect red and new objects because of learned associations with food sources.
- Their close hovering is a territorial inspection, not a personal interaction.
- Young hummingbirds are more curious and will approach humans more frequently.
- Territorial calls near your face are warnings, not friendly greetings.
- Maintaining a clean, filled feeder reduces repeated hovering and inspection behavior.
What the video covers
- Hummingbirds hover about a foot from your face to inspect objects in their territory, especially focusing on red items and anything new.
- They learned to associate red with flowers and feeders, so red clothing or objects attract their attention.
- Unlike other birds, hummingbirds actively investigate new objects near their feeding area rather than avoiding them.
- Male hummingbirds defend their territory and closely watch anything entering their patch, including humans.
- The close hover distance is possible due to their incredible speed and agility, allowing them to inspect closely without risk.
- They use both eyes sequentially to get a thorough visual check of an object or person.
- Sounds they make near your face are territorial calls, not greetings, signaling you to stay out of their space.
- Young hummingbirds in September are more likely to hover near people as they are inexperienced and very hungry.
- If the feeder is empty or the nectar is spoiled, hummingbirds hover more often near your face as a way to check the source.
- When hummingbirds stop inspecting you, it means you have become a familiar, non-threatening part of their environment.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: The Hummingbird Close Hover
- 00:39Who is Wendell and What the Bird is Doing
- 01:55Red Objects Attract Hummingbirds
- 02:36New Objects and Their Effect on Hummingbirds
- 04:20Territorial Behavior and Inspection
- 04:47Why Hummingbirds Hover So Close
- 05:57How Hummingbirds Use Their Eyes
- 07:14Sounds Hummingbirds Make Near You
- 08:07September: Young Hummingbirds and Increased Visits
- 09:23Feeder Status and Its Impact on Hovering
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
You took that personally. In 2008, a man at a university in California filmed male hummingbirds diving at a female with a camera fast enough to slow them down.
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At the bottom of the dive, the bird was covering nearly 400 times his own length every second.
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Faster for his size than any animal with a backbone had ever been clocked. The loud chirp at the bottom of that dive came from his tail feathers.
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I'm Wendell. That's the bird that just hung a foot from your face, and he can afford to.
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Here's what he was doing there. Twelve things today. He was running three checks on you, and the rest is what shapes them. Stay to the last one, because the day he stops doing this is the day you've passed.
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Subscribe if you want more of what this window taught me. And tell me your state and what you were wearing the last time one hung in front of your face.
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I read every one, and I'd bet a good share of you were in red.
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One thing before we start. None of what follows is a bird thinking about you.
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He's checking things all day at a speed you can't match, and for a few seconds, you were one of the things.
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Number one. Check one is red. He inspects anything red or new near his feeder, because red has paid him before and new might.
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Wear a red hat and you'll get it every time. He isn't born liking red. He learned it from the flowers that paid and the feeder that pays, and he sees more in that red than you do.
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So, a red shirt, a red mug, red lipstick, the red taillight on the car in the driveway. To him, every one of those might be a flower he hasn't tried yet.
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I carried a red enamel mug out to the porch every morning for years, and every summer morning some male came in and hung over the rim of it looking for the ports.
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It cost him a trip every time for nothing. The mug on this table is plain now.
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The feeder is the only red thing he needs to find, and the water in it stays clear. No dye. I've never used it, and I never will. Try it once if you want to see it.
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Wear red onto the porch and count the visits. Number two. Check two is new.
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[snorts] Put a new chair on the porch, and he'll come and look at it.
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Hang a new wind chime, and he'll look at that. A visitor he's never seen, a new pot of flowers, a coat on the rail.
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This is the part that surprised me. Most of the birds at your seed feeder do the opposite. Put something new near their food, and they stay off it for hours, sometimes days, until they've decided it's safe.
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The hummingbird goes and looks at it. I can't hand you a study that measures that difference, and I won't pretend to.
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But I've watched it every summer for 40 years, and it's as reliable as anything in the yard.
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The reason, as near as I can work it out, is that for him a new thing is more likely to be a new flower than a new danger.
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His food turns up in new places all summer long, and the bird that checks first eats first.
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When you step out in a shirt he hasn't seen, you're new. That's the whole of it.
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Number three. Check three is territory. A male hummingbird holds a patch around a feeder or a good bit of flowers, and he watches it from an open perch, the top of a shrub, a wire, a bare twig with
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a clear view. Anything big that comes into the patch gets looked at. Every other hummingbird gets chased. You get inspected, and you've walked right into the middle of it.
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The porch is inside his patch, and so is the feeder, and so is the chair you're sitting in.
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He isn't coming to see you. He's coming to see what just came onto his ground.
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In your yard, that tells you where his perch is. Watch where he goes after he leaves your face.
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Nine times out of ten, it's the same twig, and he'll be back on it within a few seconds looking at the feeder again.
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Number four, why a foot away? No other bird in your yard will come that close to your face.
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So, why does he? Because he can afford it. Go back to that dive. A bird that can cover nearly 400 times his own length in a second doesn't need much of a head start on anything you own.
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Your hand is slow to him. Your whole body is slow to him. Twelve inches is plenty because he can be three feet away before you finish deciding to move.
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A sparrow can't do that. A sparrow needs to leave early, and he does. The hummingbird can leave late, so he gets to look closer than anybody else in the yard.
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That's what the hover is, a bird inspecting at the one distance no other bird can risk.
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Nobody's measured that distance for hummingbirds the way they have for songbirds as far as I've been able to find.
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So, take this one as what I see, not a number. But, in 40 summers, I've never once seen one misjudge it.
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Number five, one side, then the other. He doesn't look at you straight on. He shows you one side of his head, holds, then swings around and shows you the other.
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The sharp part of each of his eyes looks out to the side, so he can only get a good look at you with one eye at a time.
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The first side is one eye. The swing is the other eye. Between the two of them, he's covered your whole outline, left and right, top and bottom. And he's done it in about as long as it takes you to say, "Look at
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that." That's why it feels so thorough, and it is thorough. And none of it is personal.
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Number six, the sound he makes at your face. Sometimes, he says something while he's there, and it comes out as a sharp little chip, or a quick two-note cheeted, or a run of squeaky chips.
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Those are his close-range calls, the ones he uses in a dispute over a feeder, when another bird's too near, and none of them is a hello.
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The plainest translation anybody's given is, "Get out of my space." At your face, it's the same call with less heat in it, because you're not a rival, just an object in his patch that he's telling to stay where it is.
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The other sound is the hum, and on a male, it's sharper, closer to a whine, because the outer feathers of his wings are cut to a point and they sing a little on the beat.
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The females are quieter. If you hear a whine at your ear before you see him, it's a male.
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Number seven. Why it happens most in September. This is the one people ask about most this time of year and there's a plain reason for it.
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The bird hovering at your face in September is very often a young one. The adults leave first. The young leave last.
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And the young have never seen a porch, a person, or a red shirt in their lives.
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They check everything because they haven't learned yet what isn't worth checking. And they're hungry in a way they won't be again.
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In the last weeks before they go, hummingbirds eat almost without stopping. And they put on weight faster than at any other time in their lives.
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A bird in that state makes more trips, takes more chances, and comes closer to things.
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Put a bird that has never seen you together with a bird that's eating as if its life depends on it and you get a September porch where you're being checked again and again.
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That's a young bird with an empty tank and no experience doing both at once and a long way from a goodbye.
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Number eight. The one time it is about the feeder. Here's the exception and it's worth knowing.
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If the feeder is empty or the sugar water's gone cloudy, you'll get hovered at more.
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That's because you are the shape the feeder comes from. He's seen you walk out, fill it, and go back in enough times that the chain is learned. The person, then the sugar.
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When the feeder stops paying, he comes to check the other end of the chain.
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It's the same arrangement as the bird that waits on the rail at the usual hour. An appointment that's been missed, not a request.
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In your yard, if one keeps hanging at your face on a hot afternoon, go and look at the feeder.
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Most of the time it's empty or it's turned, and the hovering stops the day you fix it.
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Number nine. When it's a female in June. The females inspect, too, but there's one time of year when a female at your face means something different. She builds the nest and raises the young alone, and she defends the ground arou
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the nest. Get within a few feet of it, and you won't know you have, because the nest is the size of a walnut and covered in lichen, and she'll come up and hang at you, or swing in close, or dive past
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your head. That one is a warning, rather than a check, and the fix is simple. Take two steps back the way you came, and go around another way for a few weeks.
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She's nesting close by, and in about a month, that nest will be empty. Number 10. The swing that isn't for you.
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Every so often in late spring, a male will swing back and forth in front of you in a short arc, like a pendulum, over and over.
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Or he'll climb high and dive in a long U, with a buzz or a chirp at the bottom.
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He isn't doing it at you. The pendulum and the dive are courtship, and they're aimed at a female perched somewhere close by.
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You happen to be standing between him and his audience. When you see the pendulum, look past yourself.
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Somewhere low in the shrub behind you or on a twig below you, there's a female sitting very still and watching the show.
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Step aside and let him have the stage. Number 11, what not to do. People do three things when he's at their face, and all three are wrong.
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They reach for him, and he's gone before a hand has cleared a knee. They swat, which is the same thing, only worse for the coffee.
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And the one I hear about most, they hold out something red, a cup or a flower, and wait for him to land on it.
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He won't because he'll look, confirm it's empty, and go. The right thing is nothing. Stand still and let him finish.
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The whole check takes 3 or 4 seconds, and the less you move, the sooner he's done, and the sooner he's back at the feeder where you can get a good look at him.
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Number 12, the one I told you to stay for. Here's what nobody has shown, and I'll say it once plainly.
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Nobody has ever demonstrated that a wild bird recognizes the person who feeds it. The hummingbird at your face has no message for you, thanks or goodbye or otherwise.
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He's running his checks, red, new territory. And when he's done, he's confirmed you're not a flower and not a rival.
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Which means the checks can run out. A male that sees the same shape in the same chair every morning in the same colors doing nothing that matters to him, eventually stops coming to look.
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By then, you're not new, and you're not red, and you're no rival, and you've become part of the porch like the post and the chair, and he flies straight past you to the feeder without a glance.
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The males on my hook quit hovering at me years ago. The only ones that still come and hang at my face are the young ones in September who've never seen me before and have to check, same as they check
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everything. And in a week or two, they stop, too. That's the compliment, and it's the only one he's got.
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Not to you, to the yard. The day he stops hovering at you is the day you've passed.
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So, 12 things. He checks red, and he checks new, and he checks his ground.
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He comes within a foot because he's fast enough to afford it, and he looks with one eye and then the other.
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The chip means stay put. September's the young ones, empty and new. An empty feeder brings him to your face, and a female in June means step back.
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The pendulum's for someone behind you. Stand still and let him finish. And when he stops coming to look, you've passed.
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That bird a foot from your nose on the porch was running his checks and you came out fine.
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Give it a season and one morning he'll fly right past you to the feeder.
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That's the one to watch for. So tell me your state and what you were wearing when he checked you.
Topics:hummingbird behaviorbird watchingnature insightsterritorial birdsbird feedingwildlife observationhummingbird factsbird callsanimal behaviorWendell's Window
