How to Woo a Hummingbird
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| A hummingbird visiting Salvia guaranitica. Photo courtesy Bud Hensley. |
Hummingbirds are surprisingly constant and will return to your garden faithfully every year--if they find it to their liking, that is.
Seduce them with brilliant flowers of red, pink and orange; hummingbirds adore these shades in the floral kingdom. We find they cannot get enough of the cobalt blue salvia ‘Blue Brazilian’ too!
Garden Tips from a Hummingbird Lover
Win their hearts by offering habitat, water, flowers, and feeders in a pesticide-free environment.
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| Biodiversity Heritage Library collection |
Habitat
Hummingbirds frequent backyard gardens that offer an assortment of trees, shrubs and flowers. Trees and shrubs offer a wide array of nesting sites and twiggy perches that allow the little birds to rest or jealously survey their property, and supply the lichen that cloaks the ruby-throated hummers nests, making them so difficult to locate!
Water Source
Frequent bathers, hummingbirds are partial to spray mist or small shallow baths and waterfalls, so by all means get that water feature you've always wanted-you are helping these little birds!
Nest Materials
Hummingbird nests are a wondrous construction of gathered leaf bits, twigs and fibers and tree lichen, sown together and held fast with spider webs. The hummingbird uses its sharp long beak to add a lining of milkweed silk or fibers from grass plumes, even dandelion fluff, poking each soft fiber into place with a crafters eye. What results is a strong, flexible, enveloping shape - a perfect receptacle for her two jelly bean sized eggs, and accommodating to the growing size of the fledglings that hatch 15 days later.
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Hummingbird Chicks in Nest in Cactus in Mesa, Arizona.
By Kevin Bondelli (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Flowers for Nest Building
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| Seed pod of Asclepias syriaca opening up in fall |
The soft fibers that send aloft their seeds are feather-bedding for nests
- Red Milkweed- Asclepias incarnata
- Common Milkweed-Asclepias syriaca
- Showy Milkweed-Asclepias speciosa
- Species Clematis
- Dandelions
Flowers for Nectar
Floral nectar supplies 90% of a hummingbird's diet. The selections below are the most visited of all hummingbird flowers. Grow in groups of three or more and be sure to offer varieties that bloom at different times of the year.
Native Flowers
- Agastache
- Bee Balm 'Jacob Kline'
- Cardinal Flower
- Eastern Bee Balm
- Honeysuckle 'Major Wheeler'
- Salvia
- Wild Columbine
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| Native Lobelia cardinalis (Cardinal Flower) and a hummingbird visitor. Photo courtesy Bud Hensley. |
Non-Native Flowers
- Blue Brazilian Sage
- Cleome
- Cypress Vine
- Flowering tobacco
- Foxglove
- Fuchsia
- Lantana
- Petunia
- Scarlet Runner bean
- Zinnia
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| A coral pink zinnia being visted by a hummingbird. Photo: Christina Rollo / Alamy Stock Photo |
Feeders
It's perfectly ok to supplement your supply of natural nectar with sugar water, especially in spring when the summer bounty of flowers is still months away, or during the spring and fall migration times.
Keep it Clean
Clean once a week with a 1:4 solution of white vinegar and water, Rinse well several times before refilling.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology recommends this mixture:
"During hot, dry weather, when hummingbirds risk dehydration, it's best to make your mixture no stronger than a quarter cup of sugar per cup of water. But during cold, rainy spells, making the mixture a bit stronger, up to about a third cup of sugar per cup of water, will not hurt your birds and may help them."
Pesticide Free Gardens
Hummingbirds get lots of protein for growth and feather development and as a major component of regurgitated food for their babies from small insects they find among their favorite flowers and from insectary plants. They are also agile hunters that can snap up small insects mid-flight! Pesticides should be banned from your lawn and garden for a healthy environment for your birds.
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| Cypress Vine is a hummingbird favorite patio plant! |
No Room for a Hummingbird Habitat?
Never fear- you can add their favorites to containers or add trellises to carry aloft the vines they frequent, and successfully attract these aerial acrobats to your garden.
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