Hummingbirds are known for their beauty, speed, and hovering flight abilities. Their small size and dazzling colors make them a joy to observe. While they may seem delicate, hummingbirds are surprisingly tough for their size. These tiny birds migrate great distances, survive in varied habitats, and aggressively defend their food sources.
Hummingbirds are solitary creatures and do not form social bonds with each other. But they have complex relationships with flowering plants, evolving to drink their nectar through specialized bills and tongues. Hummingbirds also build unique nests and exhibit complex mating behaviors.
Given their solitary nature, can hummingbirds form bonds with humans? Or are they strictly independent, keeping their distance from people?
Do hummingbirds approach humans?
In the wild, hummingbirds generally avoid close interactions with humans. They have no natural reason to associate people with food or shelter. Without encouragement, hummingbirds will keep their distance.
However, hummingbirds are intelligent and can adapt to take advantage of new food sources. If you provide sugar water feeders or nourish flowers that appeal to hummingbirds, they will learn to visit your yard. Once they associate your presence with food, wild hummingbirds may fly near you more readily.
How to attract hummingbirds
To encourage hummingbirds to visit your yard:
- Set up feeders with fresh sugar water (4 parts water to 1 part white sugar). Change it every few days.
- Plant native flowers and trees that provide nectar, like bee balm, trumpet vines, and mimosas.
- Provide small baths and misters for drinking and bathing.
- Avoid using pesticides that could poison the birds.
- Position feeders and plants so they are visible from windows.
With regular feeding and nectar sources, the same hummingbirds may frequent your yard daily. They will associate your presence with the availability of food.
Feeding hummingbirds by hand
Some people enjoy hand-feeding hummingbirds. They allow the birds to sip sugar water directly from their fingers. This takes patience, as hummingbirds must overcome instinctive fear. But they can adapt to perch briefly on hands. This is possible both with captive hummingbirds accustomed to humans and with wild hummingbirds trained through regular feeding.
Can you keep wild hummingbirds as pets?
Hummingbirds are intelligent and can be hand-fed, but they continue to be wild animals. They are not domesticated pets.
It is illegal to keep native wild hummingbirds as pets in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Laws protect native bird species to support ecological stability.
However, it is legal to acquire and keep non-native hummingbird species, like hummingbirds native to Africa or South Asia. Their care requires specialized enclosures mimicking their natural environment.
Caring for rescued hummingbirds
Injured or orphaned wild hummingbirds sometimes require rehabilitation before release. With proper permits, qualified rehabilitators care for them temporarily:
- Enclosures must allow flying room while protecting from hazards.
- A specialized diet of sugar water and nutrients sustains hummingbirds.
- Interactions are minimized to reduce imprinting.
- Once recovered, the hummingbirds are released to the wild.
Well-planned rehabilitation aims to ensure hummingbirds remain wild and cautious toward humans.
Do hummingbirds remember people?
Studies show hummingbirds can remember and differentiate humans, provided they have enough exposure. Specific capacities include:
- Recognizing individuals who threatened them previously.
- Identifying people associated with feeding.
- Distinguishing people at feeders 125 feet away.
- Remembering identities for over a year if regular contact persists.
Their small brain size does limit the number of individuals a hummingbird can remember. But for regular caretakers, evidence confirms hummingbirds know “their” humans.
How do hummingbirds identify people?
Researchers theorize hummingbirds rely on multiple cues to identify people, including:
- Face recognition, similar to abilities in chimps and geese.
- Distinctive clothing colors and patterns.
- Voice tonal memory, as seen in crows.
- Associating people with location.
Hummingbirds watching feeders likely use a combination of face, clothing, voice and location cues to identify familiar caretakers over time.
Do hummingbirds bond with people?
Bonding implies a social relationship beyond basic memory. Can hummingbirds form attachments with humans akin to the bonds between dogs and human caretakers?
Evidence suggests hummingbirds are capable of some affiliation with people, given specific conditions:
- They may vocalize when humans approach as a feeding cue.
- Some tolerate limited touching by known caretakers.
- They prefer to feed near familiar people if given a choice.
However, the solitary tendencies of hummingbirds likely limit the strength of any attachments. Most observations of affection represent food-seeking behavior, not social bonding.
Differences from bird-human bonds
Attributes that facilitate bird-human bonds in social species like parrots do not exist in hummingbirds, including:
- Pre-existing social structures.
- Signals and behaviors for flock communication.
- Food sharing and preening to strengthen social ties.
- Long maturation requiring parental care.
Without in-built sociality, hummingbirds have limited capacity to extend those behaviors to interactions with humans. Their independence likely curtails the depth of any bonds.
Can you tame a hummingbird?
Taming suggests ongoing human handling and close contact. While possible, taming a hummingbird poses challenges:
- They are solitary by nature and resist handling by humans.
- Their high-energy lifestyle makes them stressed by confinement.
- They lack social motivation for human interaction.
With intensive hand-feeding from a young age, some hummingbirds will perch on fingers. But they remain undomesticated wild animals. Most retain fear reactions to grabbing or restraint.
Risks of taming hummingbirds
Potential risks associated with taming hummingbirds include:
- Greater stress and health impacts from handling.
- Dangerous imprinting where they approach all humans.
- Inability to survive if released to the wild.
Additionally, capturing wild hummingbirds for taming violates federal and state wildlife laws.
Key Takeaways
Research and observations confirm hummingbirds relate to humans in some limited ways, including:
- They can remember and differentiate individual people.
- They may vocalize around familiar caretakers.
- They prefer to feed near known people.
However, hummingbirds are not domesticated. Attempts at extensive taming are often detrimental. Their solitary tendencies limit social bonds with humans compared to more gregarious companion birds.
While intelligent and adaptable, hummingbirds remain essentially wild. With adequate food and habitat provided through feeders and gardens, they may grace our spaces with their beauty and activity. But their independence is part of the magic.
Conclusion
Hummingbirds exhibit fascinating adaptability in their relationships with humans. When provided with reliable feeders and flowers, they integrate populated areas into their territory and may return daily for years. Individuals can recognize familiar people and preferentially approach them, demonstrating advanced cognitive abilities.
However, attempts to override hummingbird wildness through excessive taming are ethically problematic. And their intrinsically solitary nature limits the capacity for social bonding seen in other companion birds. Withspecies-appropriate interactions focused on sustaining these aerial jewels in shared spaces, we can admire hummingbirds while supporting their autonomy.
Ultimately, proximate does not mean intimate. While tolerant of human presence when associated with food, hummingbirds retain an independence hardwired by evolution. Their lack of sociality with humans does not diminish the magic. If anything, it enhances our appreciation of briefly experiencing the companionship of creatures naturally aloof from our world.
