We have colorful Christmas lights surrounding our trampoline so the kids can have light at night as they sleep out. The poor hummingbirds see the bright colors of the bulbs and try to feed off them.
So I wanna give them real feeders but I’m assuming whatever people put in them is some form of sugar water and probably not the best for them.
Anyone know things about hummingbirds and feeders?
Chris,
Hummingbirds eat mosquitoes, fruit flies, gnats, and spiders.
But they also seek out flowers which produce a high sugar count nectar.
The reason that Hummingbird feeders use sugar water is that what they take from the flowers is similar in content.
Now if you know of a way to provide the pests they eat in a feeder, you might try patenting your feeder. 🤪
My spouse uses 1/4 cup of sugar to a cup of water - as mentioned above - this is standard hummingbird fare. We see several hummingbirds everyday all summer long until they leave in early October. After a few days the water will cloud - pitch it out and replace it with new, clean solution.
I find hummingbirds very challenging - here at home they are pretty nervous and won't sit and wait for one to compose and focus - and chasing a hummingbird with long glass can be very challenging - and I say this as someone who has been photographing birds, owls, eagles for a couple decades....
This little guy or gal was tired in the rain, and was more willing than most to let me photograph it. One really needs to set up multiple strobes to catch them at their best - our feeder is on the north side of our house, so always in the shade, sometimes more, sometimes a bit less, but always lower than ideal light. But the hummers have been coming there for years so we're not about to try to move the feeeders.
7D ISO 3200 1/4 crop 2012
Sugar water is what I’ve heard as well. I think when I was a kid, that’s what we used. Humming birds are super cool. Their heartbeat is the fastest in the animal kingdom, I believe.
One of my favorite birds. Along with the Cardinal. Both very aggressive with an attitude and defend their territory.
We have 4 hummingbird feeders, sipped dry in no time flat. And feed the Cardinals a healthy diet of black oil sunflower seeds (~25# every 2 weeks!).
Fantastic images above!!!
Thanks! A lot of great shots there.
Chris soldmyrt posted a few more today.
I have an update to my post about hummingbird feeders.
My spouse who is in absolute charge of our hummingbird feeder, was wandering through Pinterist, and came across some ideas for multiple hummingbird feeders based on hanging feeders from a chandelier that is painted red.
It took her only a couple days to find a chandelier on ebay or somewhere, some cans of red spray paint, and a couple of unused feeders from a closet, to create a new triple feeder. I watched this effort from afar, witholding judgement. After a few weeks with the new setup, I can say that our hummingbird attendance has gone from usually 1 or occasionally 2 birds, to 2 birds almost all day long and 3-4 fighting for dominance at times. I have picture of the device below, but only with 2 birds shot with an 85mm f1.2 lens to blur the ugly background a bit, as I was reluctant to move the feeder and upset our local sugar thieves.
One other point we learned, was to boil the water after you add the sugar - this helps sterilize the sugar water and tends to prolong the time before it clouds by bacterial or fungal growth which does occur in warm weather after a few days - then you get to wash the bottles, boil some water and add the sugar to it, let it cool down and refill the feeders. And enjoy watching the tumult of the very territorial hummingbirds.
And if you are feeling DIY-ish, a quick search shows quite a number of 3D-printable designs :)
I got this colorful glass feeder from Amazon, filled it with the electrolyte hummingbird fluid they also sell, and hung it in the back yard where we could see the hummingbirds out the kitchen window.
But we're not on hummingbird Twitter and so the word didn't get out and we got no hummingbirds.
So I hung it in the front yard among our purple flowers that they seem to love so much and oh my God, giant sucking sound. Gotta order more of that fluid. When my new Canon and 800mm lens come, if they ever do, I'll take some hummingbird pics.
Even with IBIS, I'll bet the 800mm F11 will do better with some strategic bracing, rather than handheld. I chase my butterflies at home with lenses from 600-840mm equivalents and find them pretty mobile until I rest something on a stable platform, even if its just a thick pillow on a window sill. B&H says my R5 won't show until late October now.
Canon M6 Mk II w EOS 400 DO shot from a bedroom window
Olympus M1X with Oly 300 f4 + 1.4 TC -> 840mm equivalent at ISO 1600
There is a great 1 hour video about hummingbirds by Richard Attenborough on Amazon Prime titled “Hummingbirds”.
@Chris you’ll love the high speed filming - just a great long look at hummers, eating, flying fighting and mating
