What Do Hummingbirds Eat? Nectar, Insects and Spiders

Nectar: fuel for flight

Nectar makes up most of a hummingbird’s diet by volume, and it is ideal fuel. It is mostly water with dissolved sugars, which the bird absorbs very quickly and burns almost immediately to power its wing muscles. Studies show hummingbirds can switch from burning fat to burning newly eaten sugar within minutes of feeding.

In North America, hummingbirds such as the ruby-throated hummingbird visit many native flowers. Favorites include:

• Trumpet creeper and coral honeysuckle, climbing vines with long red or orange tubes
• Cardinal flower and scarlet bee balm, bright red summer flowers
• Wild columbine, one of the first spring flowers they visit
• Jewelweed, an important late-summer source before fall migration
• Red buckeye and other flowering shrubs and trees

Hummingbird flowers are often red or orange, long and tube-shaped, with little scent. Birds see red well, while bees see it poorly, so these flowers keep their nectar mostly for birds. In return, pollen dusts the bird’s forehead and bill and is carried to the next flower, making hummingbirds important pollinators.

Insects and spiders: the protein part

Insects and spiders are not an optional extra. Hummingbirds need protein to build muscle and feathers, and nectar contains almost none. Estimates vary, but a common figure is that nectar makes up roughly 90% of what they eat by mass and small arthropods about 10%.

Prey includes gnats, midges, fruit flies, mosquitoes, aphids, small caterpillars and small spiders. Hummingbirds catch flying insects in midair, a technique called hawking, pick insects off leaves and bark, and pull spiders and trapped insects from spider webs. They also use spider silk to build their nests.

Breeding females spend several times longer hunting insects than males, because their chicks are fed almost entirely on insects and spiders, which the mother regurgitates into their throats.

How does a hummingbird’s tongue work?

A hummingbird does not suck nectar through its bill like a straw. Its tongue is long, can stretch well beyond the tip of the bill and splits into two fringed tips. Along most of its length the edges curl to form two grooves.

For a long time scientists thought nectar was drawn into these grooves by capillary action, the way water creeps up a thin tube. High-speed filming published in 2011 showed something different: when the tongue enters the nectar, the grooves spring open, then close around the liquid and trap it as the tongue pulls back. Later work showed the tongue also works like a tiny pump.

The tongue flicks in and out up to about 15–20 times per second, and each lick takes only a fraction of a second.

How much do hummingbirds eat?

Because they burn energy so fast, hummingbirds eat almost constantly while awake. They typically feed every few minutes, with short meals of under a minute, and may visit hundreds to more than a thousand flowers a day. On a hot or busy day a hummingbird may take in more than its own body weight in nectar.

Their energy budget is extreme. Scientists have estimated that, scaled up to human size, a hummingbird’s daily energy use would be on the order of 150,000 food calories, about ten times what a marathon runner burns in a race. Their heart and wings run at extraordinary rates, as explained in how fast do hummingbird wings beat?

At night they cannot eat at all, so many hummingbirds save energy by entering torpor, a deep sleep-like state. Before migration they eat even more and add fat, nearly doubling their weight in some cases.

Sap wells and other foods

In early spring, when ruby-throats return to the North before many flowers bloom, they rely heavily on tree sap. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers, a kind of woodpecker, drill neat rows of small holes in birch, maple and other trees and come back to drink the sweet sap that collects in them. Hummingbirds visit these sap wells too, and also snap up insects drawn to the sap.

Hummingbirds sometimes sip juice from ripe fruit damaged by other animals and drink sugar water from garden feeders. Feeders can help, but they never replace flowers and insects in the birds’ diet.

Myths about what hummingbirds eat

Myth: Hummingbirds live on nectar alone. They need insects and spiders every day, and their nestlings could not grow on nectar.

Myth: Hummingbirds only visit red flowers. Red attracts them, but they feed at flowers of many colors, including purple, pink, orange, yellow and white, wherever nectar is plentiful.

Fact: They remember where food is. Hummingbirds learn the locations of good flowers and feeders and even track how long ago they emptied a flower, returning when it has had time to refill. Learn how long they live in how long do hummingbirds live?