A slingshot?

(just kidding!)

LOL actually, whenever I see/hear a mourning dove, I think "Target practice!" ... for some reason, that's the only bird I don't like. Haven't the foggiest idea why.

Magpies are pretty, and I like their calls... but I don't like that they steal the cat food from my feral kitty :/

Yeah, that could work. Do hummies like shaded areas? All my feeders are out at the edge of the patio, so they can see them as they pass by. Maybe after they remember there's food at my house, I could put one on the other end of the patio that's in the shade of the willow tree.

You're very lucky to have so many birds that fighting is an issue :)

I think shade is okay. The solution will last better there, so they may actually prefer it. I think when you have lots of birds around, they find a new feeder pretty quickly. The smaller guys will thank you for a chance at the feeders.

Lots? The most I've ever seen at one time was 5 or 6. I've seen YouTube videos where there's at least a dozen fluttering around! :)

And it happened last night. Not sure if it's the same bird, or another one, but it perched on the branch right next to the patio and waited.... LOL

I call 5 or 6 lots, vivid. Especially for this time of year. I don't get that many til July, but I just love to see them rocketing around and chasing each other. I have a wire I put up near a couple of feeders and sooner or later one takes over the wire and uses it to guard "his" feeders. I love to see him sitting there, watching. A tiny friend.

As for remembering your place as a cafe, the books say they store hundreds of food locations in their memories. There are many reports of them coming back the next year to the place where the feeder was last year.

This year I went whole hog on hummingbird plants on my deck. Hoping to get more hummers this year :)

PS, when the defender is chasing one bird, another one is sneaking in to take a sip or two. Just whirling in and out. Wonderful to see.

Vivid, I have two feeders in front outside my office (and they are in the shade of a cherry tree), a third on the other side of the house off the kitchen. They still fight. I see the photos and videos of hummingbirds crowding feeders and taking turns, mine rarely share and the very few times they do it looks like an uneasy truce. The glimpses of two birds on one feeder are so rare, it catches my attention. Oasis feeders with 6 ports each.

well what I heard is that you got to put them in different spots in your yard out of view of one another for example one in the back and one in the front....

I have come to the conclusion that, when the food supply in the area is plentiful, the chasing is as much for sport as competition. We have three separate feeders plus an array of flowering favorites. Normally, the chase and sneak strategy that mehitabel described was frequently witnessed. But this year we had a dominate mature Allen's that claimed one feeder. He would perch on a tree about 25' away, and intruders would be immediately challenged if they entered his "zone". But then he would fly straight back to the tree. Out and back--that was it! There was no chasing them out of the yard.

The rest of the local hummingbirds would feed at the other feeders and flowers without him interfering, so they weren't hungry. Yet they would head for "his" feeder, singly or in pairs, reputedly. During a four hour onslaught, not one of the intruders managed even a single sip from his feeder! Out and back he would fly, 2-4 times per minute. I wondered why he didn't just stay perched at his feeder. lol

He has some other very odd behaviors, too. Sometimes he hides under the canopy of a weeping birch, about the same distance from his feeder. But then, when he is there, he often lets the intruders feed from his feeder for several hours. Occasionally, I have seen him burst out from under the birch and give them a good scare! They are on to his tricks though. The other day, when he hid under the birch, three hummers approached the birch as a group, before going to the feeder, and saw him.

Some of the chasing is serious competition. I've heard the body smacks. But sometimes I think they just like to tease each other.

you are absolutely right, gyr falcon! When there's enough food, they sometimes chase for fun.

There were two occasions last summer when one bird was chasing another and a third flew out of a tree to join in. He wasn't defending anything, just joining in a jolly old chase. Those two times had to be about the fun and not about the food.