The hummers don't feed at night, but they do arrive early and hungry, so if you take your feeders in at night, put them back out at first light.

Sounds like raccoon damage. My mother has to bring her feeders in at night, else the raccoon's break them.

ONce they've discovered that sweet liquid, Its nearly impossible to hang them someplace where they won't get them... they will climb the side of the house, and hang down off the gutter to reach the feeders hanging from the soffit.

http://www.havahart.com/

My feeders are near my kitchen windows. I have seen hummers at the feeders at night - my lights in the kitchen shine out the window and I've seen a few in the dark. Very surprising to me at first.

Jane

The other night i went to my porch with hanging flower baskets. I was startled when i was hit in the head by a little bird. My plants are frequented by humming birds so it caused me to ask the question do they feed at night. i really think they do.

Bats also come out at night and could drain feeders although I cant say Ive seen any bats here. There are also hummingbird moths which you could mistake for a bird.

Well Deb, you may have finally pointed out an advantage to me of living in a city. No Racoons! But I had rather live in the country any day instead of a city apartment.

We have millions of Mexican Freetail bats here. They often fly around the lights on my apartment building catching insects at night. I expected to have them at my feeders, but never have seen any there.

Sorry to hear about your problem, I guess I'd take my feeders in at night if that happened here.

I .live in the suburbs of New Orleans. Just about every night around 10 I get two hummers feeding on my bridal wreath or bottle brush.

I've been feeding ruby throats for almost 30 years and have never seen one at night. I can set my clock each evening when the last one leaves. Why on earth would 30-50 birds all be gone at lets say 8:00 PM (not even one bird for the next 30 minutes) and then they come back well after dark? Makes no sense! Not even 30 seconds passes during the day when there are no birds. Why would they take a 3 hour break? I don't think they have night vision either. Anything that moves around here after dark is eaten by one of my owls. Maybe if a light is left on, the birds could feed for 24 hours.

I don't question there have been sightings of hummingbirds feeding in the dark. For the most part, hummingbirds sleep at night and go into a state called, "Torpor" to conserve their energy. Following is an excert from an article in an ornithological magazine explaining "Torpor" and how it relates to hummingbirds.

"Torpid hummingbirds exhibit a slumber that is as deep as death. In 1832, Alexander Wilson first described hummingbird torpor in his book, American Ornithology; "No motion of the lungs could be perceived ... the eyes were shut, and, when touched by the finger, [the bird] gave no signs of life or motion."

Awakening from torpor takes a hummingbird approximately 20 minutes. During arousal, heart and breathing rates increase and hummingbirds vibrate their wing muscles. Heat generated by vibrating muscles, or shivering, warms the blood supply. Shivering is sufficient to warm the hummingbird's body by several degrees each minute and the bird awakens with enough energy reserves to see him through to his first feeding bouts of the morning. Interestingly, hummingbirds reliably awaken from torpor one or two hours before dawn without any discernible cues from the environment. Thus, it appears that the bird's internal circadian clock triggers arousal."

Deb:
To prevent raccoons from getting to our Purple Martins and Bluebirds, we use a piece of PVC pipe around our poles. Get at least a 4' length of 6" dia. PVC pipe. Insert your nectar pole inside the PVC. This should keep the raccoons from being able to climp up the PVC to get to your nectar. You can either purchase the PVC pipe at Lowes,Home Depot, etc, or you can go to a plumbing company and see if they have any scrap PVC pipe they will give you.

I have 4 hummingbird feeders hanging a hook around the my deck. Two of them were empty when I got home yesterday from work and then woke up this morning and the other two were empty. I do have a security light in the front yard so I am wondering if the birds feed all night? Any thoughts?

No, not likely, it's probably bats.

I've seen hummingbirds at my feeders several minutes after nightfall, like about 9:20 PM this time of year, but not later than that and my feeders all fall within the range of my yard lights.

They will come in the mornings about a half hour or so before dawn and before its actually light. They will fly at night during their migration, but rarely to feed. Something else is getting into your feeders.

I found this forum just at the right time LOL! We had to take down one of our feeders because something was completely draining it every night. Very weird. Especially since we have 2 feeders on 2 different sides of the house, and it's only with one of them that this is happening. At first I was thinking it was a raccoon, but if it was, it was the most well-behaved raccoon in history because it did absolutely no damage beyond drinking all the nectar. But I never would have thought of bats. HMMM...
Thanks!

We had the exact same problem. I even caught a racoon red-handed. For a time, I was bringing the feeders in at night, but I am not an early riser so that option grew old quickly. We then moved our feeders to a taller pole and put a metal cannister around the pole so that it would keep the racoons from climbing the pole. Problem solved. Sorry about the picture rotation.

Great idea! BTW...are those Solomons Seal planted around the tree?

No those are hostas. They are not as big as some of the others around my other trees as the tree roots are preventing the plants from thriving.

I'm out on my screened in porch at 7:46 p.m. I have hummingbird feeders on Shepherd hooks in front of my screened-in porch I have Hummers still feeding

We had drained feeders several times. They hung from our overhang roof at the front of our garage. 2nd time the feeders were on the concrete below. Then we moved them higher up inside that roof. Again on the ground. Moved them to higher overhang on house about 9 feet in the air. Heard glass breaking sound in daytime but could not figure out where. My husband went out to hang the other feeders this morning and found the kitchen window broken with a large glass shard on the ground and the larger hummer feeder in pieces. Lid twisted off and broken. Big mud scrapes on the house wall. Bear!! Yes!! They raided our feeders at night before, biting a nice tube feeder in half. But never in the daytime!!! No more hummer feeding at night.

Marilyn, a bear knocking out my kitchen window would make me crazy! Not in the daytime, but won't they get bolder? Deer do.

About feeders, my ones on shepherd's hooks in the front yard have been okay at night. However, we have had to bring the deck feeders in at night for about a month because they were raided several times, each time rougher and more aggressively..

The first few times, they were just dry in the morning, and a suet feeder was not touched. Then the;y were dry and one knocked down, suet still left alone. Finally, .they were knocked down and the suet feeder completely eaten out, mud in the birdbath underneath. We thought maybe raccoons. If I thought it was a bear, I would want to buy an elephant gun. I certainly would have to bring them in at dusk because I'd be too afraid to venture out there at night.

Humming Birds do eat at night for survival reasons only.

If you truly care about the birds then I suggest that you look it up more thoroughly if you doubt me.

My hummingbird feeder is full when I go to sleep but empty in the morning. I have not seen bats at night. The feeder hangs on a 6 foot pole next to my sun porch window.Where is all the nectar going?