Create the Perfect Hummingbird Haven With These Methods

It's that time of year again, spring, and with it comes some amazing creatures, some of the coolest creatures on earth, hummingbirds. But did you know that there are incredible ways to attract hummingbirds to your yard? Let's dive in. Hummingbirds are absolutely amazing little tiny birds. They're some of the smallest birds on the entire planet, but they still manage to travel incredibly long distances during their migrations, and they come in and they leave at different times of the year. Because they are such rapidly moving creatures, they have to constantly feed their bodies for energy. In fact, hummingbirds have to eat every 15 minutes during the day, and they must visit between 1,000 to 2,000 flowers each day. But how can you help these little critters out and invite them into your yards? Here's a few things that you can do to bring hummingbirds straight to you. The first thing on this list is flowers, one of the most obvious steps to attracting hummingbirds is to plant flowers in your yard. But not just any flowers get the job done, some are better than others. It's important to actually plant native flowering plants in your yard as well as native trees and shrubs if you can. You don't even have to have that many flowers present to bring the birds in. Even a small flower pot or a flower box or hanging flower box is enough to attract hummingbirds to your area. Hummingbirds also really like the color red, so any native flowers with red or orange petals that are tubular in nature as well with that nectar inside are great to bring hummingbirds to your area. It's also important to have cycling patches of flowers. Some of these flowers come in at different points of the year, and if you just have flowers for a month or two in the warmer months of the year and then they die out, you're not gonna have hummingbirds the entire summer. You're not gonna maximize your chances of having hummingbirds the entire summer. So make sure you have a cycling patch of flowers that come in at different points during the warmer months of the year. That way you can maximize your chances of bringing in a lot more of these incredibly small and beautiful hummingbird species. The next thing on this list is feeders. Now it's important to fill the feeder using one part sugar and four parts water. Make sure it's mixed up super well. Some sites say that you have to boil your water. That's not necessarily true. Yes, it helps to dissolve the sugar into the water, but in reality, if you're making sure that you just stir super thoroughly, it is okay to just stir in one part sugar, four parts water. It's also unnecessary to use any dyes in your water. You see some people dyeing their hummingbird water red. This is not necessary at all. Most hummingbird feeders are going to already have red present on them, and the dye is actually not great for the birds, so just stay away from dyes and just use that one part sugar, four parts water recipe. It's also important to try to hang your feeders in the shade if possible. Obviously, sugar water is something that can get moldy and ferment really easily. There's even documented evidence of hummingbirds drinking fermented sugar water and then flying around a little bit drunk, so you're gonna wanna take down those feeders every two to three days, especially in those warmer months, that warmer weather, just to make sure that there's no mold growing in and you're keeping your feeders healthy for the birds that are going to be visiting them. If you want to hang up multiple feeders, a way to maximize your chances of having more hummingbirds is to put those feeders far apart from one another. Maybe put them in places that are not visible to each other if you have a larger yard. This is because, just like any species of bird, there's going to be a dominant bird at that feeder that might drive away other hummingbirds and dominate both feeder setups at once. This isn't always the case, but if you wanna maximize your chances of having a larger crowd there, space out your hummingbird feeders so one bird doesn't dominate both of the different setups that you have going. The last important thing about feeders is making sure that you have them filled consistently. If your water's sitting out for too long a period of time, then the birds are gonna stop coming, or if you run out of that nectar that the birds are relying on for their food source, they might stop visiting your yard in favor of someone else's hummingbird setup that's a little bit more consistent than you. So make sure that, as much as possible, you're cycling your water, you're cleaning them and refilling them on a regular basis. This'll indicate to the birds that this is an important place to visit with reliable food. Also, real quick with the feeders as well, shout out to the Bird Feast Smart Bird Feeder. This is the feeder I've been using for over a year now. It has two cameras built into it. It's absolutely incredible. It's one of the coolest things that I've ever been sent here on the channel, and I think it's really, really perfect for those that love hummingbirds. You can live stream from it. You can see just video captures that come directly from the feeder to your phone. It's a perfect way to view the hummingbirds when you might be at work or you might be missing them during the day and only be able to see them on certain times of the week. You can always catch up with the Smart Bird Feeder. So definitely check that out. I'll link it in the description below with a coupon code. But let's move on with the next tip to attracting hummingbirds to your yard, and that's a full course mirror. Make sure you're not just offering them the sugar water in the feeders or the flowers in your yard. Hummingbirds also require protein to survive. So this can be pollen, of course, and hummingbirds don't typically eat that much pollen, at least if I'm remembering correctly. Correct me in the comments below, though, if that is not the case, but insects are integral for hummingbirds' survival. So it's important that you stay away from pesticides in your yard. Spiders and insects are super important for hummingbirds to consume, and especially for young hummingbirds. They're obviously not bringing nectar from flowers to their young in nests. They're bringing them little spiders and insects to feed to their young. So if you're spraying your yard with pesticides, just leave it up to nature. Nature is the best pesticide or best solution to reducing insects in your yard, and it'll really benefit the other flora and fauna that are around your area and create a thriving ecosystem for everybody. Another big thing, native plants are super important here. Native plants are going to bring in healthy other species of pollinators as well as other insects, and it'll just create, again, this harmonizing ecosystem just right in your backyard. Another thing that's important to have in the yard is a water source. This can come in the form of a birdbath, but also you can just leave out some little dishes. Although they're drinking sugar water, they also just sometimes like to drink water, and then they also like to bathe and clean themselves. This is really important for birds. So having a water source in the yard really rounds out the entire experience for them and really creates a perfect paradise right in your yard to attract these beautiful visitors. Now, the last term I went with is fortress just because all of the other tips that I had started with F, and so I wanted to keep that going. But shelter or fortress, right, is important for hummingbirds. They want to nest, they want places to perch. It's important to have some type of perching area for your hummingbirds up in your yard. This can obviously come in the form of trees or shrubs. And also just having a tree or some type of canopy in your yard is really important because hummingbirds also have nests, and they lay eggs, and they have to feed their young. So this shelter is another great way to bring hummingbirds into your area. Again, if you're going to plant trees in your yard, native trees are always best to choose from if you already have established trees in your yard that are non-native. You might want to consider just leaving them there. It's probably more productive. Of course, this is depending on the species that you have some established shelter in your yard. But if you're just starting out or you want to create more areas for hummingbirds and other species to thrive, planting native trees is really important to their well-being. So just to illustrate this point that you can attract hummingbirds to your yard, and that comes in all forms, shapes, and sizes, I want you to take a look at what I did to my balcony. So if you didn't know, I live in a second-story apartment with no personal yard, but I still wanted to make a paradise for hummingbirds. So I went out to my cement-ridden balcony, and I put together a plan to make it and transform it into a place where hummingbirds could thrive. So we got a box garden for the balcony, and this was not super expensive, actually. We were able to fill it with some soil, some dirt, and then we went to a local greenhouse to purchase some perennial flowers. We then spent time planting the flowers and even picked out a tree for the balcony. Now, our biggest mistake in this is that we did not pick a native species, and I don't even know if the flowers were native to the area as well. If I could do it all over again, that's what we would do. Even on that small little place on your balcony, having some form of native flowers or native shrubs or a native tree is much better than introducing a non-native species to the area. But as you'll see in a minute, despite the flaws, it still worked. So the crown jewel of the balcony setup was, of course, the Bird Feast Smart Bird Feeder. And then once everything was complete, the hummingbirds started to show up just days later on the setup. And it was amazing to transform a relatively unwild place into a small paradise for a very small bird species to thrive. They visited the entire late summer and fall, and it was incredible to observe them and watch them throughout that time period. So as I mentioned before, if you're interested in getting your own Bird Feast Smart Bird Feeder, check out the link in my description. You can get 10% off of your purchase if you just use that code down there. And they really are really, really fun to have around. But I would like to hear from you as well. What tips do you have for attracting hummingbirds to your yards? Let me know in the comments below. Make sure to check out Brad Eyed Birding where we go out into the wild and we look for birds on a weekly basis on these fun birding vlog adventures. I'd love to see you over there as well. If you'd like to support the channel, links to my merch and my membership program are in the description below. As always, I really appreciate your support. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope to see you all next time on Brad Eyed Birding Learn.