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Scott, Not a good idea to feed hummingbirds refined sugar, water with dye, honey etc. Yeasts spores, bacteria and mold grow on the sugar and this fermentation can kill the birds. I dont recommend it.
Why dont you just grow some self propagating birds of paradise. My garden is full of them and just as full with hummingbirds getting natural doses of sucrose.
If you must feed them here is the most natural and safest way:
In nature, hummingbirds eat flower nectar for energy and bugs for protein. Flower nectar is 21% to 23% sucrose – regular table sugar – so it is very easy and inexpensive to make. Here is the recipe for making hummingbird nectar:Mix 4 parts water to 1 part table sugar in a pan. Do not use honey, Jell-O or brown sugar. Do not use red food coloring. It is unnecessary and can harm the little hummers even in low concentrations because they eat so much nectar. If your feeder isn’t red, tie a red ribbon on it as described in the Feeders section, above. Do not add anything else that you might think of. Just sugar and water, that’s all.
Bring to a boil then remove from the heat. Stir it while it is heating until all of the sugar is dissolved. Don’t boil it for long because that will change the ratio as water is boiled off. The reason for boiling is not to make syrup, but to drive out the chlorine in the water and to kill mold and yeast spores that might be in the sugar. This will help make the nectar last longer both in the feeder and in your refrigerator.
Cover and allow to cool before using or pouring into the storage bottle. I recommend making a large batch of nectar and storing it in the refrigerator in a 2 liter soda bottle (washed thoroughly first.) This makes refilling the feeder so easy that you won’t mind doing it every few days. If you notice that the nectar is turning milky or that white strings or black spots are growing in it, change it more often. Clean the feeder with very hot water each time you refill it.Good luck
Agree very much with the above post although I didn’t read the article that says Scott used the red dye…:( …a definite ‘no no’.
We ‘host’ in our garden in Guanacaste, throughout the year, 11 species of hummers and use no feeders at all.
With having your feeders where Scott lives, at a higher altitude, the ‘liquid’ will stay freshere, for longer, but after 3 days, it should be changed.Thanks for your feedback …
I certainly don’t use red dye and do use the 1 part sugar and 4 parts water solution as you recommend… We only plant flowers, creepers and trees – hundreds of them – that attract birds and butterflies…
Having said that, this is a very natural, undeveloped area and there are zillions of flowers that the hummers were visiting here before we even built the home.
Scott
We live at the base of Cerro Chato and are using feeders, as well at Flowers in our Hummingbird Garden. I use sugar and water and we are lucky enough to have spring water with no clorine, i do change the water every 2 days, we have over 6 species of Hummer´s daily. They are the most beautiful bird and especially the colors and their ability to come so close to us sitting on our porch looking at the volcano…[img][/img][img][/img]
Up close and personal- here is a way to have a fantastic hummingbird experience: Apparantly hummingbirds depend on movement to detect potential predators. If you stand very still next to a feeder and put your finger next to the feeder tube, a hummingbird will perch on your finger to feed. They seem to enjoy a chance to rest their wings and you will get a very close view of the bird. My brother from Southern California told me about this and I didn’t believe him. So he tried it in my backyard in Illinois. It worked. I even got a picture of him with the bird on his finger by standing equally still with the camera to my face and him in the viewfinder. I tried it later and what a thrill it was to have a hummingbird perched on my finger! The keyword here is patience and blink very slowly. Enjoy!
hummingbirds fly into my house on a regular basis. a few weeks ago one got in and couldn’t figure out how to get out despite the fact that i had both sliding doors wide open. it perched on one of my ceiling fans which then started going around, faster and faster and faster, and the poor little bird was desperately trying to hang on. eventually he couldn’t and flew off but was apparently very dizzy and disoriented. he flew towards a window but missed and impaled his beak on the wood paneling above the window and couldn’t get free. i had to call a neighbor, get a 10 foot ladder, and have the neighbor extricate him from the wood. poor little guy. we put him outside and he flew away. . . .
I too use humming bird feeders. I do not use white table sugar as it provides no nutritional value to the birds… or to humans. I usually use the local “brown” sugar in the raw called Zukra or any of the Tapa Dulce brand “Molasses Sugars”. These are much higher in mineral content. We live at higher elevation so usually change every 2 days so it doesn’t spoil… if the birds don’t drink it all in a day! Zukra will last longer than the Tapa Dulce… but Tapa Dulce is higher in mineral content. This time of year they are more abundant so it is refilled daily. A while back there was local news saying this is bad for birds etc… because then the will not pollenate the flowers. I have found this to not be true. They are still feeding daily on the flowers we have planted for them and the butterflies. With the increased wind speed from their wings it has also cut down on our global warming in this area too! A side benefit 🙂
[quote=”maravilla”]hummingbirds fly into my house on a regular basis. a few weeks ago one got in and couldn’t figure out how to get out despite the fact that i had both sliding doors wide open. it perched on one of my ceiling fans which then started going around, faster and faster and faster, and the poor little bird was desperately trying to hang on. eventually he couldn’t and flew off but was apparently very dizzy and disoriented. he flew towards a window but missed and impaled his beak on the wood paneling above the window and couldn’t get free. i had to call a neighbor, get a 10 foot ladder, and have the neighbor extricate him from the wood. poor little guy. we put him outside and he flew away. . . .[/quote]
Apparently, hummers are much sturdier than they appear! I once had one fly headfirst into a large window. I went outside and found it lying dead on the ground. I picked it up and placed it on some cotton in a little box on a windowsill, hoping to show its beauty to my young children when they got home from school. An hour or so later as the school bus arrived and spewed them out, I picked up the silent bird from the box, cupped it softly in my hands and went outside to meet my boys. Calling them over to me, I opened up my hands and much to our surprise, the bird opened its eyes and flew directly away!
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