Homemade Hummingbird Food
Hummingbirds are amazing. They are the only bird species that can fly backwards, and their hearts can beat up to 80 times per second. They also visit and feed from 1000-2000 plants a day making them some of the best pollinators for our gardens.
Let’s make some homemade hummingbird food and attract them to your garden.
Part 1: Preparing Hummingbird Feeders
(If you want to jump to the recipe for Homemade Hummingbird food, scroll down to Part 2 below).
Before we make our homemade hummingbird food, we should prepare more than a single feeder to fill up.
Hummingbirds are territorial. Once a hummingbird has found your feeder, they will fight with, and chase off other hummingbirds that attempt to feed at that feeder. One hummingbird in your garden is very cool but having three or four constantly visiting your garden is really amazing. So, purchase more than one feeder and place them around your garden to maximize the number of hummingbirds that will visit you.
PRO TIP: If ants have found your hummingbird feeder and are eating your homemade hummingbird food, here is a tip to keep them out of the feeder. Apply Vaseline to the string or hook that is holding your feeder up. The ants won’t be able to get thru the Vaseline down to the homemade hummingbird food.
Part 2: Homemade Hummingbird Food Recipe
This is REALLY complicated so don’t feel bad if you have to read this twice….
4 parts water
1 part sugar
And that’s all folks! Mix this homemade hummingbird food up and pour it into your hummingbird feeders.
Don’t add any red dye or food coloring. Although hummingbirds have no sense of smell, they will be attracted to the red and/or yellow color of your feeder and adding coloring isn’t necessary. In fact, It can actually hurt the hummingbirds, so don’t add any food dye or food coloring to your homemade hummingbird food.
Part 3: Attract Hummingbirds with Native Plants
OK, we’ve put up more than one feeder. We have filled those feeders with homemade hummingbird food. What else can we do?
At our house, we plant native flowers and flowering shrubs in and around our garden to attract all kinds of pollinators, including hummingbirds. A good resource to determine what plants to purchase or grow from seed where you live is the Xerces Organization.
In addition to using the Xerces Organization as a resource to find pollinator attracting native plants for the area where we live, we also shop locally on the spur of the moment. Sometimes we just find something we like while at Home Depot or Lowes and we always Google it for more information. We’re able to tell before we buy if the plants we like will attract pollinators and specifically hummingbirds.
Pro Tip: Red and Yellow flowers, and especially tubular shaped red and yellow flowers will almost always attract hummingbirds.
Conclusion:
Hummingbirds are such a great addition to our garden every year. We never get tired of watching them.
Just remember:
Put up more than 1 feeder. Hummingbirds are territorial.
Mix up your homemade hummingbird food and check regularly if ants have found it. If they have, apply Vaseline to the attachment hook/string.
Search out native flowers and flowering shrubs to plant in and around your garden to attract even more hummingbirds.
Happy Gardening!
Riley
