Hummingbird feeders - design and visibility

[defspace]

My apartment has an enclosed back porch between the kitchen and garage. It's a really dumb space - maybe 6'x12' with 8' walls. Too small for outdoor lounging. I imagine when you're in solitary confinement your one hour of outdoor time takes place in a space like this.

I'd like to install a few hummingbird feeders and put a few potted plants out in the area and turn the space into something cool.

My questions:
There are so many design variations on hummingbird feeders. What works well?
Will hummingbirds even see this space? It's only open from above and there's not much in the way of greenery around.

[11.4]

There are a million kinds of inverted ornamental bottles with blown glass tips, open bowls, and the like that you can buy. They're all great as wedding gifts and horrible as hummingbird feeders. The one that really works is this:

Aspects HummZinger Ultra

It actually comes in several variations, most of which seem to work just as well as another. Pick one that has a big central reservoir around the hangar; you fill this with water to form a moat as a repellent to ants. Otherwise ants will clog almost any feeder as they go after sugar. Because this thing is already red, you don't need food coloring in the sugar water. This particular feeder is dishwasher safe, simple to clean, it keeps ants out, unbreakable, and hummingbirds love it.

Feeders really benefit from nearby plantings. A hanging planter with fuchsia or other brightly colored blossoms will really attract hummingbirds with the scent and color.

One other thing. Hummingbirds are ferociously competitive. Although you see photos of clouds of hummingbirds feeding together in ads for hummingbird feeders, those are often photoshopped. One hummingbird will drive all others away. So if you hang two, one hummingbird will defend both feeders if they're in view of each other. If one hummingbird comes to feed and then leaves, another will come. I've seen locations where hundreds of hummingbirds come to a row of feeders at a wild bird reserve, but that's not ordinarily the case at a home. So be realistic about your expectations.

[guido]

Another tip to get the feeder noticed is to hang a bright red fabric on the porch. It doesn't have to be too near the feeder but in the general area. The HBs are very visual and are attracted to the red because they think they are a grove of flowers. Once they have found your feeder you can take it down...

Another source of the pictures with multiple HBs around a feeder is during migration when they are more interested in nutrition than territory...

[jumphigher]

I'm planning on getting one of those feeders like the one in the link soon. We just put a suet feeder on our balcony (2nd floor apt) for the other local birds, and I'm hoping to also get some hummingbirds this summer.

Hummingbirds are one of the most interesting birds out there to me. I remember a few years ago our neighbor's cat was sitting on the walkway in front of our old place, and I watched a hummingbird come down and hover inches from his face, then back up fast if the cat responded. I don't think it was doing this to distract the cat because it had young nearby, I think it was just so confident in it's ability to easily get away that it was annoying the cat just for the heck of it :)

[ides1056]

We have a couple feeders out during the season, and I think what matters more than design is what you put in it. I use maple syrup. No food coloring.

[guido]

My hummers are fine on 1/4 cup of sugar in a cup of water. No weird coloring...

[Mabouya]

https://www.firstnature.net/product/...ber=993090-001

In my experience this First Nature feeder gets all the details right:

1) Easy to disassemble and clean.

2) Ant moat

3) Doesn't drip as temp and pressure fluctuate.

4) Comes is multiple sizes

It's also very inexpensive and available at Walmart (around $7)

I've bought several.

Edit: don't do the colored pre-made stuff. Sugar + water is fine. (I don't boil the water, some do)

[ides1056]

I am going to buy one of these. Why? Ant moat. Seriously, they make a mess of the whole operation, and if there is a way to keep them out by design I am all for it.

[j44ke]

When I lived in Arizona, I had 6 or 7 feeders in my yard, and a box of retired models in the garage after they'd succumbed to mold, bees, ants, grunge, etc. There were times when there were so many hummingbirds in my backyard, it was a regular buzz fest.

The single best feeder to attract hummingbirds to your porch initially is this plasticky Perky Pet feeder. Use it to attract hummingbirds and then replace it with a more durable easier to clean model. The Perky Pet has bee-guards over the feeding holes, which is good. Hummingbirds do not like bees or wasps as a single sting can actually be fatal, depending on the size of the hummingbird. Glass fluid reservoir is pretty easy to clean with a bottle brush (get a bottle brush) but the bottom part is hard to really clean well and eventually the combination of mold and sun will do it in. It is cheap, it will break or fall apart, but hummingbirds like it. Once the hummingbirds are coming regularly, switch to a more durable model.



The best, most durable and easiest to clean well, is the Duncraft Best-1 feeder. Glass reservoir and a much more durable feeder base. Again, bottle brush helps to clean it, so get one of these. Small improvement - put a yellow dot or dots next to or around each feeder hole. Gives them a bit more of a target. The hummingbirds in our yard eventually didn't need any markings. They knew what to do. But this hummingbird feeder lasted the longest under sun-wear and was easy enough to clean thoroughly that mold didn't become a problem.



Get ant traps to hang between your hummingbird feeder and the hook so ants don't overwhelm the feeder. The original design was made by someone at one of the hummingbird hotspots in Arizona (I think) using a upside down aerosol spray paint cap. Now they make them prefab, so you don't have to fiddle with it. Perfect.



Only fill with 1/3 more sugar water than your hummingbirds can consume in a day. You want that 1/3 in the hummingbird feeder the next morning when the early riser hummingbirds show up. Otherwise they check, see it is empty and move on. Premix a large amount and keep it in the fridge. 1:4 ration sugar:water is fine. No food coloring needed. The hummingbird feeder red plastic will be enough. Don't allow the sugar water in your feeders to turn rancid and pickle. Again, if it is rancid, hummingbirds will stop, sense that it is bad and move on. 1-2 days max for sugar water lifespan to assure freshness that will keep the hummingbirds coming back for more. Again, make a gallon at a time and changing the water will be quick and easy. Wash out with hot water and soap, but make sure to get all the soap out. Hummingbirds are not a big fan of soap.

I'd put no more than 2 feeders in that space. Put them at opposite ends of the space to help less dominate hummingbirds outmaneuver the inevitable dominant male who will take over and try to chase away all comers. This is what hummingbirds do in the wild. The male stakes out his turf around a nice flowering bush and defends it against all other males and courts any female who shows up. Also consider that sun will both illuminate the presence of the feeder and make the sugar water really hot, too hot sometimes for the hummingbirds to consume. Sun in the morning, shade midday and a bit of sun in the late afternoon/early evening is best.

Hummingbirds actually prefer natural nectar to sugar water. Good potted plants are different types of potted aloes (send up tall spikes of nice red, yellow or orange flowers depending on the species) sage or salvia (red preferred but blue is okay too) penstemon (a salvia-like plant found mostly in the arid west, but will grow in a courtyard that might have a microclimate like the arid west, bright red multiple flowers on stalks) and flowering bush/vines like honeysuckle or trumpet vine (not all trumpet vine, so look for a species that hummingbirds like). Note: I would never suggest planting honeysuckle or trumpet vine in the ground as they tend to take over and cover everything. In a pot, you can control them better.

Hummingbirds also like to have a place to sit, so sometimes just running a wire from A to B in the space gives them a nice perch for chilling out on before diving in for another dose of sugar water or for some more swordplay with the dominant hummingbird oligarch. But you can also set up something more arty or creative. Tough work doing all that hovering.

If don't live in a place with hummingbirds year 'round, then make sure to take the feeders inside around the time that the hummingbirds start to leave. Otherwise you can disrupt their migration and essentially trap them in your yard. They migrate south following the line of diminishing blooms and other food sources (they also eat a lot of insects) so if they get behind that line too far, they can't catch up and starve very quickly. So you want to bring in the feeders probably around the end of September, early October. Local bird clubs can advise you more accurately.

One of the more amazing things about hummingbirds, specifically the ruby-throated hummingbird on the east coast, is that a sizable percentage of the species migrates south across the Gulf of Mexico. No one knows how they do it really. Their metabolism is so high, that they should literally run out of fuel and crash into the water way before they reach their destination on the Yucatan Peninsula. But somehow they take on enough fat or function in some sort of autopilot suspended animation mode while flying that they make it.

Anyway, the keys really are keeping the sugar water in the feeders fresh all the time and cleaning the feeders thoroughly, especially right at the beginning where you are trying to get the message out on the hummingbird network that your courtyard is open for business.

[Mabouya]

The biggest hassle for me (other than having to clean the feeders) is that in hot weather the mix goes bad pretty quickly.