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How to Invite Hummingbirds to Your Backyard

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Article and photos by FMN Barbara Saffir

THEY’RE BAAAACCCCCKKK!  Flying fairies — ruby-throated hummingbirds — returned to Virginia in April so now it’s time to invite some to your house or apartment.  It’s easy and cheap.  Just serve up some irresistible food and an inviting home.  That means a clean hummer feeder, native plants, and nearby trees for them to eat, nest, and snuggle in.  A water source is a huge plus for all birds and critters, especially to help them survive summer’s searing heat.  And it’s also paramount to avoid insecticides in your yard since bugs are the main course and high-octane fuel for these feisty, flying jewels that can beat their wings about 53 times each second, according to Cornell’s respected “All About Birds” website.  Ruby-throats are the only hummers that nest east of the Mississippi.

First the flowers.  Even if you can’t plant salvia, cardinal flower, bee balm, coral honeysuckle, trumpet vine, or other hummer-magnets in time, or if you live in an apartment with a pint-sized balcony, you can still buy them in containers.  It’s best to place them near your hummingbird feeders so they can slurp some sugar water for desert after gobbling down their bug buffet.  Cornell says they especially love the bugs that humans sometimes hate, including disease-carrying mosquitoes, gnats, fruit flies, small bees, and spiders.  And your local big box store is NOT the ideal place to buy hummer plants. Native plant nurseries appear to be the best sources for hummer-preferred flowers.  When you go shopping, if you can, chose the plants with butterflies or hummers already feeding from them. And gobs of other wildflowers and flowering trees seduce hummingbirds, not just the ones you typically hear about.  Virginia Tech offers some suggestions below.

Second, the feeders.  All you need is a $4 hummingbird feeder (see below) and some plain white

granulated sugar.  But NEVER hang any hummingbird feeders unless you’re willing to clean them every couple of days in the heat because dirty ones can form mold, fungus, bacteria, and fermentation, which can hurt or kill your hummers.  The National Wildlife Federation says you need to refill the nectar “as often as every two days when summer temperatures remain above 90 degrees F.  Rinse the feeder thoroughly—without soap—before refilling. Clean it once a month with a very mild, diluted bleach solution.”  It also helps to hang the feeders from a ($4 and up) ant moat to prevent ants from monopolizing the nectar.

Don’t add anything to Audubon’s standard nectar recipe: “The best (and least expensive) solution for your feeder is a 1:4 solution of refined white sugar to tap water. That’s ¼ cup of sugar in 1 cup of water. Bring the solution to a boil, then let it cool before filling the feeder.”
Hummers love water but ordinary bird baths are too big for little ruby-throats, which only reach 3.7 inches long and weigh 0.1-0.2 ounces, roughly the weight of a penny.  Instead, they love to take showers in misting sprinklers and they sometimes flock to bubbling fountains, says “The Spruce” website.
Male hummers (only adult males have full red throats and they only appear red in the sun due to the feather structure) start to return to Florida and Central America by August. But keep your feeders up through October because some young males and females are hungry stragglers. And when autumn rolls around, offer orange jewelweed wildflowers to your hummers.  If you can’t wrangle up a supply, just stroll along the W&OD Trail by Hunter Mill Road or any other trail or garden with lush jewelweed and if you listen and watch carefully, I almost guarantee that you can find some happy hummingbirds.
TIP SHEETS:
AUDUBON’S HUMMINGBIRD FEEDER TIPS:
CORNELL UNIVERSITY’S GUIDE TO RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRDS:
FIRST NATURE $4 HUMMINGBIRD FEEDER:
JOURNEY NORTH HUMMINGBIRD GUIDE:
LOWES’ ANT MOATS:
NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION’S HUMMINGBIRD TIPS:
PLANTNOVANATIVE TIPS:
THE SPRUCE’S WATER TIPS FOR HUMMINGBIRDS:
VIRGINIA’S NATIVE PLANT SOCIETYS’ GUIDE TO NATIVE NURSERIES:
VIRGINIA TECH’S HUMMINGBIRD PLANT RECOMMENDATIONS:

Making Friends with the Hummingbirds

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Article by Margaret Fisher, Plant NOVA Natives

Fall is a great time to work on the guest list for next year’s garden party. Hummingbirds make some of the best guests of all, or to put it more accurately, we can make ourselves better guests of them by providing what they need around their homes, otherwise known as our yards. Our local Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are migratory, departing Virginia in September for Central America and returning to the place they were born in mid-April. It will not surprise anyone to know that what they need when they arrive back is not sugar water but an intact ecosystem that provides food and shelter for them and their offspring.

It is well known and indeed true that hummingbirds are attracted to bright colors, especially red, so for viewing opportunities, do plant Eastern Red Columbine and Coral Honeysuckle for spring blooms, Scarlet Beebalm for early summer and Cardinal Flower for late summer. It is fun to watch the hummingbirds make the rounds from plant to plant, timing it exactly to when the nectar has had a chance to re-accumulate. All of these plants co-evolved with hummingbirds and have the tubular-shaped red flowers that fit the bill – literally. Hummingbirds have incredible memories and know the location of individual flowers not only around their own homes but along the thousands of miles of their migration routes. They also recognize humans as individuals, learning to trust you and hovering in front of you when they are wondering when you are going to refill their feeder, if you have been in the habit of providing one.

Although we think of hummingbirds as nectar eaters, the great majority of their diet is made up of insects and spiders. We can provide them with insects by planting native plants. Because most insects can only eat the plants with which they evolved, a yard full of European and Asian plants such as turf grass and Japanese azaleas is largely an empty yard, devoid of food sources not only for hummingbirds but for songbirds in general. The red-flowering plants that were named above are all native to our area, as are hundreds of other garden-worthy plants which are increasingly being planted in our yards as Virginians start to recognize the beauty of our own flora as well as its value for the non-human residents of our properties.

The ideal time to plant is in the fall, which gives the plants a chance to become well established before facing the heat and droughts of summer. To help you plan, the Plant NOVA Natives website has a plant finder function in which you can search specifically for plants that attract hummingbirds. There are also lists of local garden centers that specialize in native plants as well as lists of conventional garden centers where Plant NOVA Natives volunteers are labeling the natives with red stickers. Just for fun, check out our silly one minute video of local hummingbirds and other critters interacting with native plants. And when your neighbors stop by to gawk at the sight of hummingbirds in your yard, you can give them this pamphlet so they can learn about planting natives in their yards to attract hummingbirds, too.