HettieŽ wrote:
Sheldon wrote:
William Wagner wrote:
If you have one humming bird feed you have one hummingbird. If you
have two humming bird feeders you have one hummingbird. If you have
three humming bird feeders you have one hummingbird if they are in sight
of each other. So place your feeds about your house not in sight of
each other that way one little beast can't protect it and you may have
many hummers .
I keep reading such presented as fact but in my experience I've not
found that to be true. I put out two feeders about two feet apart,
each with four stations, and have counted as many as six hummers all
feeding at once, and with others perched on a wire fence mere inches
away or hovering within a few feet.
http://www.hummzinger.biz/humzinger.htm
I won't buy feeders with a plastic food container, plastic becomes
etched and breeds bacteria. I use only glass, scrubbed once a week
with salt and soaked over night in a 4 to 1 water and white vinegar
solution... never use soap. It's really not necessary to feed
hummers, they do fine foraging as they've done for millions of
years. We feed hummers strictly for our own amusement, so it
behooves us to feed them responsibly.
Thank you all for the advice. I wanted a really pretty one because I
was hoping to photograph some, and I didn't like those ugly plastic
ones. I bought an expensive blown glass one, and will try to keep it
sanitary as you suggested. I really ought to have a spare that matches
in case all or part of it breaks, but I don't dare :-). Even the
"flower" inserts are glass. Plus like a bunch of other pretty garden
things I have, there is the worry that someone will steal it. Sometimes
you just have to take the risk.
I was planning on hanging it on a shepherd's hook amidst the flowers or
might suspend it from a tree branch on the east side of the house so I
can watch for them out the window. So I'll probably end up with two
anyway, but one will have to suffice for now.
I've been wanting one for a few years now but wasn't sure I could
attract any until we spotted that pair that evening.
I won't say which one I chose (went with my newly painted house well);
they are all pretty expensive.
http://www.bestnest.com/bestnest/blo...rd_feeders.asp
I've always wanted to try to attract goldfinches, too, so that is next
but I was worried about thistle seed spilling out. I let a volunteer
thistle grow one year so I could watch it (Sottish national flower) and
took many photos of it for practice mostly, one with a Monarch
butterfly. I tried not to let too many seed pods explode, but was busy
with other things. The next year quite a few thistles all over the
yard. I got them all dug out and under control, so don't think I'll do
that again.
One year I put out pumpkin seeds for the birds, and one seeded itself on
the side of the stoop where I feed them, took and grew to be a huge vine
in my front yard which I let it be just for that year, annuals anyway,
but I wondered what a watermelon there might do :-). It produced three
beautiful pumpkins, we just mowed around it, and it kept the grass
underneath from coming through IIRC. No, that's not how it was at all.
I had a pumpkin for my kids on Halloween, and it fell off and
decomposed or something. I put squash seeds out whenever I cook those
and never gotten any squash plants there.
If the feeder gets residue, I will give it the vinegar treatment.
Otherwise, why can't I just soak it in bleach and rinse it out very well?
Is refined sugar good for hummers? I was inclined to buy the nectar.
Oh one of my long ones again, but while we're on the subject, I was a
gourmet feeder for my birds. One pile for the carnivores, one pile for
the other birds, roasted unsalted peanuts for the squirrels, a bag of
nuts for the winter (oh how they loved to get an English walnut, but
they aren't too picky, I did have to ration those). I even cracked open
the Brazil nuts because I thought the shells would be hard on their
teeth, but black walnuts all around here must be just as bad.
Anyway, I bought bags and bags of extra large striped sunflower seeds
because the kernel is bigger, and the squirrels love them. Now after so
many years of that, I have read that the shells poison the ground where
I'd like to plant something nice now. So I switched to shell free mix
which is more expensive and wish I could go back to the other. I was
told not to plant this or that there, scattered some wildflower seeds as
a test, they came up but were filled with crabgrass and were a mess.
Then my son sprayed them (thought they were weeds, not because of the
crabgrass, forgot to tell him I was trying to grow wildflowers there,
kind of spindly) so I don't know if they would have done anything or
not. How long does it take for the ground to cleanse itself from
sunflower seed toxins? I had shells all over the front steps which
accumulated over the years and swept them off from time to time onto, of
course, the ground around them. I planted sweet peas, and they did ok,
but I didn't have anything for them to climb high enough and it's super
dry there, needs to be watered constantly. So now I have large clay
pots with flowers in them (a neighbor had to move in a hurry and left
them behind full of whatever had been in them the previous year, said I
could take them), and I emptied them out and scrubbed them. I had to
water them a lot, too, as it turned out, but they looked nicer to me.
You'll find answers to a lot of your questions in rec.birds and
specifically to your questions about hummingbirds at
http://www.hummingbirds.net/, created and maintained by Lanny Chambers,
who is a frequent contributor to rec.birds. There's lots of information
about choosing and maintaining hummingbird feeders (plus a migration
chart every Spring).
I've tried blown glass hummingbird feeders a few times but have found
them to be useless; as soon as they warm up the liquid expands and they
start to leak, since the feeder tips face downward. I've ended up
embedding them in the ground, "business end" down, and pretending
they're decorative glass globes. I imagine you'll want to try yours
anyway; above all don't put it where the sun will shine on it, as that
will make the expansion and leakage much worse.
You might find black oil sunflower seeds are easier for the birds to
handle than the striped. I'm not sure how poisonous they would be to
plants underneath.
The thistle seeds used for birds are heat treated so they won't germinate.
HTH
helco