Attracting Hummingbirds With Plants And Feeders

The best way to begin attracting hummingbirds to your backyard is by adding a combination of things: feeders, nectar rich flowers and plants and even water misters that hummingbirds love.

The following information will help you in attracting hummingbirds to feed and nest around your home.

Hummingbird Feeders

The easiest way to begin attracting these birds is to use a hummingbird feeder designed to attract these birds. Fill with a sugar water mixture. (1 part sugar to 4 parts water) Boil for 2 - 3 minutes, let cool and fill your feeder. This little recipe has been attracting them for a longtime.

Hummingbirds can be very territorial when it comes to protecting food sources. By placing several hummingbird feeders around the yard, you can make it more difficult for one bird to protect all of them.

When using feeders, it sometimes helps to fasten a 12 inch strip of surveyor's tape to your feeder, this will help the birds to find your feeders faster. Red or Orange are the best color choices.

Providing feeders for attracting hummingbirds comes with its own concerns. Feeders must be kept clean. During the summers heat, the solution should be changed at least every other day. Otherwise, it will ferment or get moldy.

The feeder should be cleaned every week with a wash of vinegar and water. Using a bottle brush will aid the bird watcher in doing this job.

Never use honey in attracting hummingbirds. The use of honey can cause a fatal fungal infection on the birds' tongues. Most feeders are colored red and food coloring in the sugar water solution should not be used.

Place your feeders in an area where there are flowers that attract humming birds. If you have none, consider potting up a few flowerpots with annuals and place them under your feeders.

Bird House
for Hummers

In general, birds have a weak sense of smell and hummingbirds are no exception.

Discovering food sources by sight rather than smell. With this in mind, fragrance of flowers has little effect on whether hummingbirds will feed from them.

Nectar rich flowers will be more inticing to them.

The chart below shows a few nectar rich plants that will help in attracting hummingbirds. For more plant ideas, we recommend getting a copy of Attracting Birds and Butterflies

Favorite Plants For Attracting Hummingbirds

Annuals	Perennials	Vines	Shrubs
Fuchsia	Bee Balm	Coral Honeysuckle	Butterfly Bush
Impatients	Canna	Cypress Vine	Flowering Quince
Jacobiana	Cardinal Flower	Morning Glory	Lantana
Jewelweed	Coral Bells	Scarlet Runner	Manzanita
Petunia	Four O'Clocks	Trumpet Creeper	Mimosa
Salvia	Foxglove	Canary creeper	Red Buckey
Shrimp Plant	Hosta	Carolina jasmine	Tree Tobacco
Snapdragon	Lupine	Glory vine	Turks Cap
Nicotiana	Columbine	Cypress vine	Weigela

When gardening to attract hummingbirds, select a variety of flowers and plants with different bloom times, spring, early summer, late summer, and fall. Read the labels of any plants you purchase or ask the staff at your local garden center for this type of information.

Avoid using pesticides around any flowers you select for these birds. Hummingbirds eat tiny insects as part of their diet and pesticide use can be fatal to the birds.

You may want to provide nesting materials to encourage these birds to nest in your backyard.

Downy like materials, spiderwebs, ferns, moss and lichens are the prefered nesting materials of the hummingbird. Willow and eucalyptus trees provide downy like materials as mentioned above.

Water

Hummingbirds do not use traditional types of birdbaths. Instead, they prefer ones that spray a mist or have fountains. Rather than splashing in a bath like most of our back yard birds, Hummingbirds fly in and out of a spray of water. You may want to consider adding a solar fountain kit to your exsiting birdbath. You can check one out here - Solar Fountain Kit

By incorporating a few or all of these suggestions you'll greatly improve your chances of having hummingbirds filling your yard all summer long.

More Resources About Planting For Birds: Bird Gardening

Check Out Our Hummingbird Gifts, Ideas, and Products

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Hummingbird Facts

Migration and Hummers

Back to List of Birds

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