My favorite humming birds. We have brought a humming bird
feeder from Canada to Mexico and have enjoyed many hours watching the
little critters. There is a photo of one just after it emerged from the
swimming pool. You can see water drops around it.
It helps to have have a feeder. When you purchase one make sure you can
disinfect it. Boiling works but so does chlorine bleach, just make sure
it is not perfumed. Do not use soap, they hate the taste. I have used
pop corn or pearl rice in half a feeder of water to scrub mold of the
feeder bottle. You can use white vinegar also. Red feeders with yellow
centers work the best. Red is the most attractive
color. Place your feeder near or in some shrubs. Make sure there is
room to fly. If it is to far from shelter it will cost you some visits,
even though the little birds are happy to sit on an antenna or power
line and catch insects. Here is a photo of the
humming bird feeder
that I have been using. Very important, use white sugar only and not any thing else. Cane sugar
is supposed to be better but beat sugar works well also. Honey and
other types of sugars have problems with them. Honey spoils very
quickly. Whole/brown/unrefined sugar is poison to them because the iron
from it builds up in their systems.
The correct solution is 1 to 4. Or 1 cup sugar to 4 cups water. I boil
it to help kill any bugs/germs that may spoil the solution. When your
feeder is first set out you may get some cranky customer who will sit
near by and vigilantly chase others away. They become very
possessive. Try moving the feeder for a few hours. New birds will still
find it. They will learn about the feeder and will recognize it. After a
few short moves, I have found that enough birds know about it to make
guarding it redundant. When the possessive bird is chasing one another
is enjoying a sip.
The feeder has been up for 2 weeks now and there is an amazing amount
of customers. I have been counting and there is between 3 and 6 visits
per minute. And the first 30 minutes before sun rise and the 30 minutes
around sunset are the busiest. It adds up to a lot of visits.