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Do Hummingbirds Tweet? They Chip, Buzz and Squeak

Hummingbirds vocalise constantly — just not melodically. What the chips and chatters mean, and which sounds come from feathers, not the voice.

By Salma 2 min read Save to Pinterest — opens Pinterest in a new tab
A rufous hummingbird perched on a thorny bramble stem with its beak open mid-call
Photo: Avia5, Pixabay Content License, via Pixabay
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Hummingbirds are noisy. What they are not is musical — and the two most striking sounds they make are not made with the voice at all.

What each sound is

soundsourcemeaning
Sharp repeated chipvoiceterritorial advertising
Rapid chattervoiceaggression, usually mid-chase
Soft quiet chipsvoicecontact, female to young
Buzzy scratchy sequencevoicesong (Anna’s and a few others)
Humwingsflight, not communication
Loud dive chirptail featherscourtship display

The dive chirp was settled experimentally

Researchers established that the Anna’s hummingbird dive sound comes from the outer tail feathers by altering them and observing the noise disappear, then reproducing it in a wind tunnel. It is one of the cleaner demonstrations that a bird sound need not involve the voice at all.

Reading a feeder territory by ear

  • Steady chipping from one high perch — a male holds this feeder
  • Chip rate accelerating — another bird is approaching
  • Chatter plus a chase — the intrusion is being repelled
  • Sudden silence in late summer — usually migration or post-breeding quiet
  • Several birds feeding peacefully — often means the dominant bird has left

Two feeders out of sight of each other

A single feeder is defensible, so one bird monopolises it and everything else is chased off. Two feeders with no line of sight between them cannot both be held, and the result is more birds feeding and markedly less chasing.

Common questions

Do hummingbirds tweet or sing?

They vocalise a great deal but not melodically. The usual sounds are sharp chips, rapid chatters, squeaks and buzzes — functional calls rather than song in the way a thrush or a warbler sings. Some species do have a recognised song: Anna's hummingbird males produce a scratchy, buzzy sequence from a perch that qualifies as song, though it sounds more like static than music.

What does the chipping mean?

Usually territory. A perched male chipping repeatedly from a high twig is advertising ownership of a feeder or a patch of flowers, and the rate increases sharply when another hummingbird approaches. Rapid chatter during a chase is aggression. Softer, quieter chips between a female and fledglings are contact calls. Context and intensity carry most of the meaning.

Is the humming sound their voice?

No — that is purely mechanical, produced by the wings beating somewhere between about 50 and 80 times a second depending on species. The pitch changes with wingbeat frequency, which is why a hovering bird sounds different from one accelerating away. It is the sound that names the family, and it has nothing to do with the voice.

What makes the sharp whistle during a dive?

Tail feathers. In Anna's hummingbird the loud chirp at the bottom of a courtship dive is produced by air passing over the outer tail feathers, not by the syrinx — this was demonstrated by experiments that silenced the sound by altering the feathers. Several other species produce similar mechanical sounds in display, which is why the noise is so precisely timed to the dive.

Can hummingbirds hear well?

Better than their simple-sounding calls suggest. They discriminate fine differences in pitch and rhythm, and at least one species has been shown to hear and respond to high-frequency sounds above the usual range for birds. Their calls carry a lot of information in small, fast units, which requires good temporal resolution to decode.

Why has my hummingbird gone quiet?

Most often the season. Territorial chipping drops sharply once breeding ends and again before migration, and a bird that was noisy in June can be near-silent in late summer while still visiting. A sudden silence alongside a disappearance usually means migration, a nearby nest drawing the female away, or a dominant bird driven off by a new arrival.

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