Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Feeding Hummingbirds?

The hummers are chasing off my carpenter bees. Earning their keep.

They'll be along before long.

whats the secret to keeping all the sumbitchin red ants away ?

and change the sugar water frequently to keep it fresh.


i like the idea of fly tape on the post to keep the ants off.

Be patient, You have to earn the hummer.

I wonder how many I have hittin it. They can empty my feeder in 2 days.

Let's see if a bright orange plastic lid will work...

Time to get our feeders up, at the new place.

They are in the hanging basket flowers already !

They're like giant skeeters when they buzz me in the yard. Fairly annoying. But damned pretty when they hold still at the feeder. And fun to watch when they spar.

I've had 'em buzz me on lakes if wearing a red cap, or red shirt !

My Mom uses a "moat" of water at the base of all her many stands. Not sure how to incorporate a moat into a stand, but she has and swears by it. She does not use any tree limbs to hang the feeders as those would be impossible to thwart the ants.

I'm testing some wide packing tape at the base of the 4x4 post

sticky side out....

Thanks! All!!

Flowers designed to be pollinated by hummingbirds are generally red in color, at least in the Eastern US, trumpetvine and crossvine being familiar examples. Southbound ruby- throats depend heavily on jewel weed, which is a red to orange flower.

That being said, when the stuff in my feeder gets fermented, even though it looks good he same to me, hummingbirds will fly to it, hover near it, but not try to feed. I believe they can scent close up with their tongues, like a snake. Ain’t seen that in print tho.

Used to feed them, but now I just let them feed off the flowers we have. Cypress vines, trumpet vines, and some others keep the little beggars fat.

If you want a change of pace, get an oriole feeder. Sugar water, grape jelly, and an orange half. Never attracted an oriole, though they are around, but catbirds and even downy woodpeckers slurp up the jelly and clean the orange right down to the rind. I also toss cherries and blueberries to the catbirds and robins. The catbirds come within a few feet. Right now, every bird in the county is hitting my yellow cherry tree, even red-bellied woodpeckers, and rabbits clean up what gets dropped.

I don't get a whole lot, probably the same families year after year about 8-10 different ones.

We feed them with varying degrees of success. Use an upside down lid filled with water on the hanger for ants, but I like the tape idea.

The ones we have had lately look like a big bumble bee, super tiny. Different species or juveniles? Don't let them get in your garage...those dumbsses can not find their way out.

The conc of sucrose in the water is hyper osmotic meaning it can kill the bacteria but fungus and mold remains
Adding a small amt of citric acid food grade will keep it acidic enough to stop them


And it smells like lemons

Any hummingbird out of the nest and flying is already about as big as its ever going to be.

If you live in the Mountains out West you may be seeing Calliope hummingbirds, about 25% smaller than a ruby-throat or black-chin.



The Calliope Hummingbird is the smallest North American breeding bird.....

The Calliope Hummingbird survives and breeds successfully in chilling northwestern montane environments, despite having the severe thermal disadvantage of a high ratio of surface exposure to heat-producing tissue mass. Flight speed, endurance on fuel reserves, and brain size (storage capacity) are some of the size-dependent characteristics that can limit migratory travel, so the Calliope Hummingbird is of special interest as the smallest long-distance avian migrant in the world. Seasonal distribution records tell us that some Calliope Hummingbirds must travel more than 5,500 miles annually.

Only place I've seen 'em was in the Sacramento Mountains of SE New Mexico over July 4th, males, already heading back south after breeding up in the Northwest. They really are tiny.