There are a variety of reasons why a hummingbird will fight with another. It can be as a way to assert dominance, to protect their young, to protect their territory, and in this case to stop others consuming sugar water from feeders they’ve claimed to be their own.

Although hummingbirds won’t always go out of their way to block other hummers from consuming sugar water from the same feeder, some may become more aggressive and attack another. This would partially be down to instinct and the temperament of any given hummingbird. 

Taking into account the large variety of hummingbirds scattered across the globe, some breeds are definitely more privy to violence than others.

I’ll dig into this topic in more depth throughout the remainder of this article so, continue reading for a more thorough look at the subject.

3 Reasons Why Hummingbirds Fight Over Feeders

1. As A Result Of Their Territorial Nature

It’s possible that a hummingbird may have marked a feeders location as their terrain therefore, they may go out of their way to protect its contents from anyone else, whether it be a hummingbird or any other avian entirely.

If the hummingbird is a mother they may want to lay stake to the sugar water specifically for themselves and their offspring. This is so they can make it through the day and obviously so their offspring don’t starve.

After all, hummingbirds, need to eat a ton of food daily just to stay alive and even more when they have more than one mouth to feed.

2. It Could Simply Be A Friendly Spar

The fight around the region of the feeder might not be as a result of the two trying to seriously injure each other but, possibly because the two want to have a friendly spar.

Normally a spar will be between males where they will fly at each other, poke with their beaks, flap their wings at one another among other sparring practices. Moreover, these friendly battles tend not to cause any long-term or serious injuries so, they are hardly what you could call malicious battles.

Roufous hummingbirds for example will even spar or genuinely fight birds many times larger than them to assert their dominance. In turn not all spars will be friendly but, more often than not these spars don’t result in any serious injuries.

3. To Protect Themselves

Other times you may see a hummingbird fight another simply to defend themselves. As most feeders are quite large and often spread out fights don’t always break out as most hummers should be fine adapting to the others sharing the same food source.

With that being said some may get into an unfortunate circumstance where a more aggressive hummingbird goes out of its way to drive another away.

As a result, it’s entirely possible the reason some hummingbirds fight is simply to protect themselves from the talons of another more aggressive indvidual.

How To Stop Hummingbirds From Fighting Over Feeders

Even if it isn’t possible to stop every scuffle that hummingbirds will get into, there are a number of steps you can take to minimise the number of violent interactions that occur between flocks that decide they want to fight.

Below I’ll go over 3 things you can do to minimise the number of fights that may break out around feeders.

1. Have More Feeders

This is probably the most obvious one but having moe feeders means each one will be less crowded and in turn, the number of fights that break out will lessen.

Depending on how busy your backyard is you may need to add maybe 1 – 3 additional feeders so, if you’ve got the budget for it and want tp stop these squabbles between hummers, It’s worth considering.

Also if possible, it’s worth getting a feeder that has more openings over one with a single opening so you can further limit the options for hummingbirds to congregate right next to each other and potentially start fighting again.

2. Space The Feeders Out

Through the acquisition of the new feeders, I’d hope you would space the feeders out anyways but, there is a recommended distance for spacing feeders out.

Most would recommend at least a 10ft (3m) between each other feeder but, if you can do more do it. This is because more space means fewer interactions between some of the hummers ultimately resulting in fewer opportunities for squabbles between these hovering little birds.

Summary

Hummingbirds are aggressive birds by nature and they somewhat need to be as a result of their smaller stature. Therefore, you will often see them fight amongst each other and even other birds when objects they believe to be there’s (the feeders) are involved.

They could fight over or around any feeder if they’ve marked it as their own territory, it may simply be a spar between two (resulting in no injuries in most cases) or if they’re trying to protect themselves from another.

Even if you put together a process to minimise altercations, like getting more feeders and spacing them out more, fights will still occur so don’t expect everything to be resolved but, following the aforementioned steps will help.