Hummers disappeared??

[terryger]

Originally Posted by Stealther

I'm jealous, thats a LOT of hummers terryger! How often are you filling that feeder?

if you look closely you can see two more feeders in the back and another in front. i have a total of 9 right now,front and back

i fill at least half once a day right now during migration. but you have to understand it took 7 years to get to this point. the first year i had 30-40 birds and thought i had a lot them. sitting on my porch is like sitting in a hummer hive

as i said it's training. once they know it is there they will always come back as will the offspring year after year.

[spotz04]

I'm a few hours drive south from OP and there's plenty of hummers feeding even though we're experiencing extreme drought conditions this summer and sustained 100+ temps. My front yard has turned to straw. The backyard isn't as bad since I have a lot of shade trees.

I saw at my neighbor's he had between eight to a dozen hummers feeding from his two feeders in his yard this past weekend. I believe he told me this was the first year he put out feeders. He had them placed about 10 feet apart within his patio size vegetable garden. He also told me he's had to refill his feeders every day because the birds are having them self a feast.

I know if there's a dominant male hummer then that one might be chasing the other hummers from the feeder. They're territorial birds, from what I understand. Usually when this happens you have to separate the feeders at a good distance, or place feeders on the other sides of your yard.

After seeing my neighbor's I decided to construct a homemade feeder from food safe plastic containers I had for the recycling bin. After attaching some red colored 1" strips cut from a red "Solo" drinking cup onto the outside of feeder's reservoir, since hummer are attracted to red, and filling it with a 4:1 nectar (pure cane sugar dissolved in water), within an hour of hanging it from a tree limb I had a couple hummer feeding off it. It's not a whole lot of birds but those two quickly found it, so I felt that project was a success.

Btw - this is the nectar recipe I used from the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park's website -

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/scbi/migra...tar_recipe.cfm

[ardeekay]

Originally Posted by spotz04

I'm a few hours drive south from OP and there's plenty of hummers feeding even though we're experiencing extreme drought conditions this summer and sustained 100+ temps. My front yard has turned to straw. The backyard isn't as bad since I have a lot of shade trees.

I saw at my neighbor's he had between eight to a dozen hummers feeding from his two feeders in his yard this past weekend. I believe he told me this was the first year he put out feeders. He had them placed about 10 feet apart within his patio size vegetable garden. He also told me he's had to refill his feeders every day because the birds are having them self a feast.

I know if there's a dominant male hummer then that one might be chasing the other hummers from the feeder. They're territorial birds, from what I understand. Usually when this happens you have to separate the feeders at a good distance, or place feeders on the other sides of your yard.

After seeing my neighbor's I decided to construct a homemade feeder from food safe plastic containers I had for the recycling bin. After attaching some red colored 1" strips cut from a red "Solo" drinking cup onto the outside of feeder's reservoir, since hummer are attracted to red, and filling it with a 4:1 nectar (pure cane sugar dissolved in water), within an hour of hanging it from a tree limb I had a couple hummer feeding off it. It's not a whole lot of birds but those two quickly found it, so I felt that project was a success.

Btw - this is the nectar recipe I used from the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park's website -

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/scbi/migra...tar_recipe.cfm

Hey Spotz, congratulations-you're off to a running start! Could you post a shot of that homemade feeder? Thanks.

[spotz04]

Originally Posted by ardeekay

Hey Spotz, congratulations-you're off to a running start! Could you post a shot of that homemade feeder? Thanks.

I'm hoping more begin to arrive! Here's a very quick pic I happened to shoot last night. I didn't use a flash to freeze the bird's motion, but you get the idea.

This is a juice bottle attached to a take-out food container from a restaurant.

[ardeekay]

This thread has wandered a bit but that's OK- I certainly enjoyed(and envied) Terryger's post. But what is now post-worthy is we had our first thunderstorm since I don't know when pass thru yesterday and before the storm was even over, hummers started arriving at my feeder in droves! And this continued the rest of the evening. What I consider "normal" activity here is a visit every 5-10 minutes; this was like every minute and sometimes only 15-30 seconds between visits. Don't know how many birds were involved but it sure was fun to watch. (Too dark and drippy to photograph.) Today the sun is out but visits are still a little above what I called normal. Unfortunately, the bees are here too and they disrupt the feeding routine and it's harder to predict the hummers' movements. Anyway, "all is well" here, now if we could just get some more rain along w/ the rest of the country.

[mpontiff]

Several possible scenarios.

-lack of something to attract them
-stocking up for the migration south (bugs)
-possibly early departure due to weather conditions

RT Hummers should be done with nesting by now and the young birds on their own. However, their numbers should boost the birds at your feeders...

Matt