Some may be a little more aggressive than others but its in their nature and you cant change it. But there are other things you can do such as hang another feeder on the opposite side of the house or far away from the other feeder. Beyond that untill you get a lot of hummers in your yard theres not much else to do.

I know your pain. Last year I had a new born that could barely fly get to one of my feeders. I watched her figure out where the hole in the feeder was to get the nectar. She was so young, she had no fear of me being close by. A rare moment for me.

Soon after, a male chased her away. She came back and got chased again. I was getting p___ed! I parked my butt in a lawn chair ready to guard the feeders for her, but she never come back.

LOL Rob, that is what I did. I stood on the front porch and chased the male away so the female could eat. Also I have one feeder on the front porch and one on the back deck and the male flies over the roof to watch both feeders. He is very naughty!!

Karen

Exactly.. I don't understand these pictures with more than one hummer at a time on the feeder. Even though I have 4 feeders, there is never more than one hummer at a time. The others zip back and forth until there is an opening and then zoom in.

Last evening as I sat out and watched the hummer activity not more than 5ft from the feeder there were 4 males and 1 female and it was a battle for control. The males would have a pivotal point from which they would zoom in as soon as another hummer tried to feed , but it wasnt always the males that had control, I think it would depend on who needed to feed the most, sometimes it was the female who stood her ground at the feeder. The simple fact is they are using up all this energy so there is a point that they have to eat. So there were a few times I observed however briefly two hummers on the feeder at the same time eyeballing each other the whole time. It reminds me of the old-fashioned gunfight duel who will draw first. Its entertaining to say the least. And that last hour before dark I can depend on it most every night. Guess Im lucky. Also heres a link to one of my favorite all-time vids because for a brief second you can see three hummers trying to feed from the same one-port feeder. This is at evening time in august migration.

heres a scene that met me after I returned from the holiday weekend
{{gwi:988817}}

Here is a link that might be useful: A hummers day

Steve, I'm always so jealous of your hummers sharing! It's still a rare sight for me, although I now have constant action most times of the day so I can't complain.

An aggressive male is only defeated by more feeders, as Steve said above. It's a slippery slope...I now have seven feeders and am contemplating buying more... ;)

It always amazes me, if they would just stop chasing everyone away from the feeder, they could all feed and use up less energy chasing each other around. But feeders aren't 'natural' and the amount of nectar in a plant is much less, so they instinctively protect the source.

The answer is more feeders. When things get going here, we have 8-10 feeders going. No one can protect all those feeders.