The Buzz About Hummers

Birdwatching is one of my main hobbies, but I give hummingbirds relatively little thought.  In my part of the country, there's generally only one species - the ruby-throated hummingbird - so if a hummingbird zips by, I know what it was.  When I'm traveling to a part of the world with a greater diversity of hummingbirds (so, almost anywhere else in the New World), sightings are usually so fast and so short that I don't have much of a chance to see it, let alone tell what it was.  

Normally, I appreciate the opportunity to enjoy studying and observing birds in zoos and aviaries, but here again, hummers pose a challenge.  I don't think there's any group of birds with a great contrast between the number of species in the wild and how few are represented in zoos.  I think I can count on how hand how many facilities I've seen hummingbirds in (and in two of those facilities, I encountered the birds in off-exhibit spaces).

What gives?  Well, hummingbirds pose a number of challenges.  For a bird which can be difficult to observe and breed, that might make some aviculturalists wonder if they're worth the trouble.  They are very small and delicate.  They have super fast metabolism and require constant feeding - that makes the fact of capture and transport difficult, which has historically made them a challenge to send far from their range.  They're very active and require larger habitats than one might expect for a bird of their size.  

They're also surprisingly aggressive - I remember years ago reading a quote from a biologist who said that if hummingbirds were the size of crows, it would be too dangerous for us to walk in a meadow.  That makes it all the more challenging to keep groups together, as the territorial birds were jealously see each other off of their favorite feeders (a pretty large number of my wild sightings of hummingbirds have consisted of one chasing another).  When I most recently visited the San Diego Zoo and saw their new hummingbird house, I was surprised (but maybe only a little) that the vast majority of the birds that I met in the exhibit weren't hummingbirds.

Some zoos have luck with the family.  One of the coolest walk-through aviaries I ever saw was the outdoor hummingbird aviary at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, home to several native species in conditions that were essentially identical to the wild just outside.  For zoos that don't have the resources, skill, or (and this is okay) interest in dealing with some of the most charismatic yet frustrating birds to manage in captivity, there's another solution - just put a feeder or two in a public area.  Let them come to you.