Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: New to Hummingbirds, 0 by tabasco

tabasco wrote:
zville, you are in prime hummingbird territory over there in Southeast Ohio. And the HBs stay late in the fall there too because of a certain wildflower (whose name slips my mind right now) blooms late into October in the hills.

We have had HBs here since April 20th or so, but they are elusive in springtime darting in and out of the trees looking for insects and not often at feeders. The experts say that their diet is about 75% insects and the rest nectar, and when they are breeding they really like the protein.

We have a number of HB feeders up, and not too many red flowers---only the geraniums I bought at HD a month ago and put into hanging baskets around the feeders. I use red bows and cheap fake flowers from the dollar store in early spring time as lures to get the HBs to stop here and hopefully nest too. I am not sure it works, but we have seen at least 10 HBs at the feeders at a time here in the hot summer time, so some must nest around us.

Good luck with your HBs. We will want to see some pics later on in the summer!

You can see my one feeder decked out in fake flowers...I use the red plastic feeders usually, but this year I picked up a couple of the colored glass ones at Lowes. I think the feeders with little perches work well, but I notice none of these in the pic have them...