Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Hummingbirds Have Flown the Coop

Need a bit of advice here.

Last summer, I hung up a hummingbird feeder in my yard. We had hummers buzzing all over the place, and we had to refill the feeder a couple of times a week. Amazing little guys.

This past May, I took my feeder out, and cleaned it well. Then I bought some of the powdered nectar mix, mixed it per the directions, refilled the feeder where it hung last summer, then waited for the miniature helicopters to return. Nada. A few visited the feeder very briefly, but they did not hang around. After a week or so, I poured out the nectar, mixed up more, and refilled it. Now we here not even getting hard stares from hummers. They are simply ignoring the feeder. Any thoughts from experienced hummingbird folks about what is wrong, or what i can do to bring back the little guys to our feeder?

Fire ants

It's that #$@&% powdered crap. Throw that poop away. Mix your own using cane sugar, mixed 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. Boil the water, mix in the sugar and allow to cool to room temp. Do not add coloring or ANYthing else.

not an expert........but

keep it out & with clean nectar..........

they'll be back to find it.....

Just going to fill mine.......

as Rocky said......cane sugar......

I don't measure the sugar......

Make your own hummer food using sugar. We tried the store bought liquid this year and they wouldn't eat that either so are making our own again which works great.

Use Rocky's recipe.

Dave, I've had similar results. No using the powder but premixed stuff. In the past label stated dextrose, this year simply sugar. Wonder if they changed to fructose. They still feed but as only a short stop while headed somewhere else.

Rocky, I wonder is sucrose is too much of a good thing for them. Make them too active/aggressive.

Maybe Birdy will have a view.

Alright, I just cleaned out the feeder again, and am going to try Rocky's recipe. I hope it works. We used premix last year and it worked well, but this new powder mix is NOT going over well.

We'll see.

Birds numbers seem to be down from past years. I don't know if it was the late cold spring or what. I'm down a good 70%. I'm hoping the ones I have will raise a couple of broods. I like having them around.

BTW, the best cleaner for your feeders is a dilute solution of white vinegar. I use about the same ratio as the sugar water - 1 part white vinegar to 4 parts water. Vinegar is an anti-bacterial, and it removes hard water scale. Put an ounce or so in the feeder, shake vigorously and scrape out any visible gunk with a bottle brush. Rinse the feeder well.

Daveman,

We are experiencing the same thing. 2 feeders and refilling them every two days, We have seen very few birds. Changed the feed a couple of times but still only seeing the occasional bird.


Lefty

This exactly ! They are all over mine pretty much all day long. No powdered junk.

Well, we get lots of humming birds every year, both nesters and migrants. I buy cane sugar in 25-lb bags and mix it with water (from our well) at the above mentioned 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. I mix enough at one time to fill all the feeders once. Since the birds don't empty them all at once, I keep the extra in the refrigerator until it's needed.

I do make it a point to wash the feeders before I fill them each time I, but I just use a little Dawn dish soap and scrub everything with a brush. They get emptied quickly enough that there is just not much need for decalcification.

We are kind of in the middle of an arid short-grass valley here, and I think that our big cottonwoods and other native trees, along with the availability of water from my drip irrigation here in our yard, work together to attract lots of birds--not just humming birds.

They make an entertaining diversion for an old fart like me.

Sugar is poison. Heard it on the far.

Ok, I live not too far from Rocky, and am putting out the cane sugar mix, and getting very little traffic. Still trying to figure that out.

I'm trying to get a few really good bird pix. That is harder with no birds.

Oops---just had one.

They can be weird. I have two identical feeders hanging on my deck. The past few days, they'd sucked the south one to a few ounces but hardly touched the north one. So I swapped them. And I'll be darned if they didn't then go right back to the one they like. How they can tell beats me.

Thinking that maybe something had crawled into one and died (tiny bees and such do that.) But nope. Both pristine. I cleaned them both anyway, refilled with newly made sugar water, and rehung. We'll see.