Blooie, how are you and your hummers today?
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
I always make my own mix. I do think the red is attractive to them though, so I put a tiny bit of Kool-Aid powder! I think black cherry flavor is what I use, it reddens up the water only a tiny bit of the powder. It could likely be the same bad red stuff, I haven’t watched the video you attached yet, but I will do some more research.@WVduckchick - So nice to hear you are seeing hummingbirds in your parts! I sure love seeing photos of other hummies out and about.
I saw your feeder and wanted to share something with you. A lot of people still don't realize red dyes could do harm to the hummers, though to be honest I always grew up seeing it in the feeders. The big birding organizations all recommend making it yourself with no dyes - 4 parts water to 1 part sugar. I can testify we use this in our feeders and have been making it that way for years now, and they will definitely use it no problem. In the end, it also comes out cheaper than the store mixes and better for them too. It's very simple to make, and the red on your feeders alone will get them coming to it (some people hang a little red ribbon nearby to flap in the breeze to get their attention as well). The video below does a perfect job of explaining why red dyes should be left out of our feeders.
Been off BYC for couple of weeks. We have company coming the first week in September so we’ve been hard at work making everything look spiffy. The yard has been a work in progress - I knew when the construction on the new house was going on we’d be fighting bare dirt on our lot for a long time, but I never thought it would be as bad as it was! Now the grass is coming in nicely, but the fill dirt that was used to level the property came from the sugar factory and is just full of weeds. It’s the dirt that they clean off the sugar beets when they bring them in for processing…..it’s free, so we just had to pay for the transport, spreading, and compacting. We’ve been fighting bindweed and tumbleweed ever since. The grass is still too young to use anything on it yet. <sigh> The fill is also very sandy and even with topsoil it’s still hard to coax anything into getting a good start. Once it gets started, it does well, but it’s quite a process.Blooie, how are you and your hummers today?