Bird Profile

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Across almost the whole eastern United States there is exactly one breeding hummingbird, and a jar of sugar water at the right dilution is all it asks of you.

The Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) is a 3 inch (8 cm), 3 gram bird with emerald green upperparts, and in the adult male an iridescent red throat that looks black until the light hits it. It is the only hummingbird that breeds in the whole of North America east of the Great Plains, which makes identification unusually simple: in an eastern yard in summer, this is your hummingbird.

Feeding it is equally simple, and most of the complications people add are unnecessary. Four parts water to one part white sugar, a clean feeder, and shade.

This profile covers identification including the adult male's slow transformation, the migration that carries a bird this size across the Gulf of Mexico, the nectar recipe and the cleaning schedule that goes with it, what else these birds eat, and the timing of arrival and departure through the season.

How to identify a Ruby-throated Hummingbird#

Adult male: metallic green above, grayish white below, with a black face and a gorget, the throat patch, that flares brilliant ruby red when the light strikes it head-on and looks flat black from any other angle. The tail is forked and dark.

Female: green above, white below, with a plain whitish throat, sometimes finely flecked. The tail is rounded with white tips to the outer feathers.

Juvenile: resembles the female. Young males often show a few dark streaks or one or two red feathers on the throat by late summer, which is the source of many puzzled photographs in August.

In the East the confusion species are few. Rufous Hummingbirds turn up as strays in fall and winter and show orange in the tail and flanks. Sphinx moths, especially the hummingbird clearwing, hover at the same flowers at dusk and fool almost everyone once.

Where and when you will see one#

Ruby-throats breed from the Gulf Coast north to central Canada and from the Atlantic west to roughly the eastern edge of the Great Plains, in gardens, woodland edge, orchards and parks. They winter in Mexico and Central America, with a small number staying along the Gulf Coast and in Florida.

Spring arrival moves north with the season, and it is worth putting a feeder out before you expect them.

These are broad windows, not promises. Weather shifts them by a week or two either way in any given year, and the guidance on exact timing is in when to put out hummingbird feeders.

Crossing the Gulf of Mexico#

The migration is the remarkable part. Many Ruby-throated Hummingbirds cross the Gulf of Mexico in a single nonstop flight of roughly 500 miles (800 km), taking somewhere in the region of 18 to 22 hours over open water, in a bird that weighs about as much as a nickel. Others follow the coastline around through Texas and Mexico, and the balance between the two routes varies with wind and with the individual.

To do it they nearly double their body mass beforehand, going from about 3 grams to 6 grams of stored fat, feeding intensively for a week or two at staging areas along the Gulf Coast. That is why a well-kept feeder in Louisiana or Alabama in late September is doing real work.

The departure order surprises people. Adult males leave first, often by mid to late July in the northern part of the range, followed by females, and finally by juveniles that may not go until well into September. A feeder that had a territorial red-throated male all summer and now has three plain-throated birds squabbling on it has not lost its hummingbirds; it has lost one male.

Nectar: one recipe, no variations#

Four parts water to one part plain white granulated sugar. One cup of water to a quarter cup of sugar. Stir until it is completely dissolved. Warm or hot water dissolves it faster; boiling is optional and does not keep the mix sterile once it is outside in a feeder.

That ratio roughly matches the sugar concentration of the flowers these birds evolved on. Extra leftover mix keeps in the refrigerator for about a week.

Cheap white granulated sugar is exactly right, and there is nothing better to buy. More detail, including whether to boil and how long mixed nectar keeps, is in the hummingbird nectar recipe, and the wider list of things that do not belong in a feeder is in what not to feed birds.

The feeder, and where to hang it#

Small is better than large. A feeder holding 8 to 12 ounces (240 to 350 ml) that you empty and refill every couple of days beats a quart jar of nectar going cloudy in the sun. Saucer or basin feeders, where the nectar sits below the ports, drip less, are easier to scrub, and keep bees away from the liquid better than inverted bottle designs. The trade-offs are laid out in choosing a hummingbird feeder.

Hang it in shade, ideally morning sun and afternoon shade. Nectar in full sun ferments in a day. Site it within sight of a perch, and if you have more than one feeder, put them out of sight of each other, because a dominant bird will guard everything it can see.

Avoid yellow parts, which attract wasps. For ants, use a water-filled ant moat above the feeder rather than any oil or insecticide, as covered in ants in a hummingbird feeder and bees and wasps at hummingbird feeders.

The cleaning schedule that keeps it safe#

The single most important number in hummingbird feeding is how often you change the nectar, and it is set by air temperature.

Cleaning means hot water and a bottle brush or port brush on every surface, not a rinse. Vinegar solution or a very dilute bleach soak followed by a thorough rinse both work. Do not use scented dish soap residue. The method, including how to reach the ports, is in cleaning a hummingbird feeder.

If daily cleaning in a heat wave is not realistic, fill the feeder only a quarter full. A half-empty feeder cleaned on time is far better than a full one left three days.

What else they eat#

Sugar water is fuel, not nutrition. Ruby-throats take large numbers of small insects and spiders: gnats, aphids, fruit flies, small beetles, and spiders and trapped insects picked from webs. Females feed nestlings almost entirely on this animal protein.

They also feed at flowers, favoring tubular red and orange blooms: trumpet creeper, cardinal flower, bee balm, jewelweed, coral honeysuckle, columbine and salvias. A yard with a succession of these blooming from May to September will hold hummingbirds even when the feeder is empty, and the reasoning is in native plants for birds.

Insecticide use in the yard cuts the protein supply directly, and a yard that has been sprayed can hold hummingbirds at a feeder while failing to support a nest.

Nesting#

The female does everything: builds, incubates and feeds. The nest is a cup about 2 inches (5 cm) across, made of plant down bound with spider silk and shingled with lichen, saddled on a small downsloping branch usually 10 to 40 feet (3 to 12 m) up. The spider silk lets it stretch as the young grow.

Clutches are almost always two white eggs the size of small peas. Incubation runs about 12 to 14 days and young fledge at around 18 to 22 days. Females frequently raise two broods in a season and may start a second nest while still feeding the first brood.

Males take no part in nesting at all, which fits with their early departure. A male's summer is a territory, a courtship dive display, and then the road south.

Getting a feeder found this season#

• Hang it two weeks before your region's usual arrival date and keep it filled even when nothing is using it.
• Mix 4:1 water to plain white sugar. Nothing else goes in.
• Fill only what you will change on schedule, and hang it in afternoon shade.
• Scrub, do not rinse, and never top up old nectar.
• Add a second feeder out of sight of the first once a male starts guarding.
• Plant something tubular and red that blooms in July.
• Leave it up two weeks past your last sighting in fall.

If a feeder still sits untouched after three weeks in season, work through how to attract hummingbirds before changing feeders again; placement and nectar age explain nearly all failures.