Fred Flashes Red

Here's Fred, the dominant adult male hummingbird currently in residence at the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary. You can see hints of red on his throat, and at one point he rapidly gobbles an insect. At the end of the movie he leaves his perch and flies down to briefly sample nectar from the nearby feeder. Note that there's another, more timid, adult male around, Pete. No slo-mo.

 

Pete doesn't quite know how my minifeeders work: instead of going straight to the feeding port, which in this case is located on the other side of the feeder (located at the top of the bluff with Long Island Sound below), he's going for the traces of nectar that seep from the cap-feeder junction. You can see his brilliant green back. At the end he quickly dives down the bluff to escape possible attack by Fred, who is zealously guarding all his scattered feeders.

Here we see that Pete, the nondominant male hummer at the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary, has figured out how to use his favorite feeder, located at the bluff edge where he can rapidly scoot down to cover. But he still investigates the entire edge of the cap, not convinced yet that the port is the way to go. Notice that as well as uncertain about the way the feeder should be used, he spends much longer at the feeder than Fred does. Fred just liked to quickly sample, just to check that it's a functioning nectar source which he needs to guard. But now I've got quite a few scattered feeders up, and so he's forced to patrol a larger territory, allowing Pete to sneak in.