Once the Spring and Summer crowd reaches critical mass, no. There are too many birds to even try and chase away. In the Fall and Winter, I only put out two feeders, sometimes only one, and instead of going through 13.5 quarts of nectar like I did yesterday, total consumption drops to less than a single quart per day. At that point, I sometimes get what is called a Bully Bird.

That situation does not prevail. Remedy.

That is a spring-powered* pistol that shoots a plastic pellet weighing .12 grams, or about three ten-thousandths of an ounce. Nonetheless, that is about 1% of the hummingbird's body weight and the impact is severe enough that when hit, the hummingbird flies away and does not return. Well, one of them did, but I suspect that the first hit was just a grazing blow that disturbed his feathers and little else.

Even though this is a non-fatal procedure, I was banned for life from a popular home and garden website for telling them my bully-bird solution. Go figure.

According to what I have read, a hummingbird will drink twice its 12 gram weight in nectar per day. If I am going through 12 quarts of nectar per day (13.5 yesterday!) that would feed, uhhh, let's see. 12 quarts, 32 ounces per quart... no, wait a minute, that's 32 ounces of water per quart, the nectar is heavier, 36.6 ounces per quart. So, 12 quarts, 36.6 ounces per quart = 439 ounces or 12,429 grams. That's more than 500 different hummingbirds per day at my feeders. In this case, a "day" is 14 hours (6:45am until 8:45pm), so the feeders on average are hosting 35 birds at any given time.

tanstaafl.

*The pellet is actually propelled by air. The spring is compressed when you cock the gun, and it pushes air through a chamber, propelling the pellet when the spring is released by the trigger.