A. A good way to attract hummingbirds is to plant a hummingbird garden. In addition to providing them a natural diet, it will attract them to your nearby feeders. Since hummingbirds feed by sight on regularly traveled routes called traplines, they are inquisitive and will investigate any possible new food source. Gardens are an excellent place to watch hummers, as well as a beautiful place to photograph them. Selecting a variety of plants that bloom at successively later dates may enable you to have the hummers stay throughout the season.
Since the hummingbirds have no sense of smell, the flowers that attract them may have little or no fragrance and direct their resources toward high visibility and nectar production. Wild strains of plants make more nectar than cultivated hybrids. Some of the plants that attract and feed hummingbirds are: azalea, lantana, manzanita, Turk's cap, flame acanthus, mimosa, red buckeye, coral honeysuckle, cypress vine, morning glory, trumpet creeper, four-o-clocks, lupine, canna, bee balm, columbine, fire spike, fuchsia, impatiens, petunia, scarlet sage, shrimp plant and penstemons.
It is a very bad idea to use pesticides around your hummingbird plants. When you kill the garden pests, you kill the insects the hummingbirds rely on for protein. If the hummingbirds directly ingest pesticides sprayed onto flowers, it could sicken or kill the birds.
In addition to food sources, hummers need convenient perching places in the garden. They spend about 80% of their time sitting on stems, clotheslines, twigs, etc., between feeding and fighting off rivals.
We can think of hummingbirds as miniature flycatchers. They like soft bodied insects and spiders. The nectar and sugar water gives them the energy they need to catch insects. You can set out over-ripe fruit or banana peels to attract flies or other insects to feed the hummingbirds.
When choosing a feeder for hummers, any of the available feeders will work. Most are made of plastic, glass and/or ceramic. The hummingbirds may not eat from them at first, but when they become familiar with the feeders, they will start feeding from them. Another question usually asked is should it have a perch? Photographers prefer ones without a perch so they can get good photos of hovering birds. The feeders with perches help to conserve the hummer's energy by saving the calories used in hovering. Hovering is more tiring to them than normal flight. When they feed from a feeder with a perch, they may drink until they are satiated before they move away from the feeder.
Another think to look for in a feeder is one with a bee guard. This will help keep bees, wasps, yellowjackets and bats away from the feeders. Ants can be kept away from the feeder by placing a cup with a hanging nylon string piercing the center of the cup. This allows the cup to be hung above the feeder. You fill the center of the cup with water and hang your feeder below. The ants will crawl down the string to the center of the cup. They don't swim across to get to the side of the cup to crawl down to the feeder.
The sugar water used to fill your feeder is only a supplement to the hummingbirds' natural diet. You don't need to purchase commercial mix that has nutritional additives in it. The birds get these needs from insects and flower nectar they consume. They get their quick energy from the white can sugar water. The following is a recipe for the artificial nectar (syrup):
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Use one part ordinary, white cane sugar to four parts water. |
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Boiling the water for several minutes before measuring will retard spoilage in the feeder for 1-2 days. If you measure first, some will boil away and mess up the proportions. |
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Stir in the sugar while the water is hot. Let cool before filling the feeder. |
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Store unused sugar syrup in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. |
Note: Do not use red food coloring, honey, brown sugar or fruit in the syrup. Honey ferments rapidly and may kill hummingbirds. The red coloring is not needed to attract the birds and may cause tumors in some hummingbirds.
This mixture approximates the average sucrose content (about 21%) of the flowers favored by the hummingbirds in North America.
During warm weather, the sugar-syrup mixture will spoil quickly. Be sure to keep your feeders clean and filled with fresh sugar syrup every day or two. Be sure to wash the feeders with hot tap water but do not use soap. The birds do not like the taste left by the soap. Watch carefully for the formation of black mold in the feeder. If mold forms, bleach water will kill the mold. If your feeders are not kept clean, the hummingbirds will find another place to feed.
After the hummingbirds have migrated from the area, take the feeders down and clean them before storing them until the hummingbirds return.