Hummingbirds and aviaries (sp?).....why not?

People have birds and large cages for them for room, etc. and there are soooo many different types. I LOVE hummingbirds....always have but have never heard of anyone keeping them. Is there a reason why not? They could have a large area, with the flowers they love and/or the food from the hummingbird feeders......I'm just curious....never heard of anyone "keeping" them and pets.

And no, I am not mean --- I don't think animals should be caged -- I'M JUST CURIOUS......and I'm in Florida so it's not like I'm talking about cold weather anyway.

Well first of all it is illegal to keep hummingbirds as pets, they are native birds so are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Also, hummingbirds would be extremely hard to keep alive...their main diet is actually insects. They do drink nectar as well, but that is not their main food source. Not even zoos keep them. Most species are migratory as well and need to move to warmer climates during the winter months.

Seems to me that hummingbirds are a migratory bird which needs to be free to travel where they need to go. By caging them, you are denying them of their freedom.

Hummingbirds are migratory, which means they move from place to place following warm weather. It would be cruel to capture and cage such an animal.

There are a few private aviculturalists and zoos that keep hummingbirds, but they're very difficult to keep. They need large aviaries, with a mix of plantings and open spaces. Since they eat a mix of nectar and tiny bugs in the wild, flowers alone are an inadequate diet - they must be supplied with a vitamin and protein fortified commercial hummingbird nectar (very different from the sugar water sold in garden stores for hummingbird feeders). The food has to be changed every few hours to avoid spoilage. They're also very aggressive and territorial, which makes it hard to keep pairs together for breeding without injury or death.

The most difficult thing about keeping hummers is their high metabolism. While temperate hummers can build up fat stores for migration, tropical hummers feed every 10-15 minutes during the day, and can go catatonic if they don't feed for two or three hours. At night, they go into torpor, a hibernation-like sleep where their body temperature, heart rate, and activity level drop, to allow them to survive the night without feeding. The high metabolism makes these birds extremely difficult to ship, and means that injuries or diseases go from trivial to fatal in a very short time frame.