Oh you wanted a Snow Cone instead, my bad.
Do you want you Drink Straight Up or on Ice?
cute picture....I love it
Poor little guy!
oh, how cute !
Hummer soda fountain! :-)
very nice!!
Thanks for sharing,
Chuck
Great picture. I am just concerned about the red dye that is being used in the nectar.
What a great photo!!
Wonderful snow picture on Easter weekend in Waco!!!
Almost everyone down here uses the red coloring, the pre-mixed comes with it.
This message was edited Apr 9, 2007 7:47 PM
You have got to be kidding!!!
Minidi, she is not kidding that is all I can find so far this year. Like I said on the other post I did find some last year without the dye in it, but I haven't found any this year yet.
Clayton
It is so easy to make it. One part sugar to 4 parts water and just heat it enough to dissolve the sugar.
Not only easy but cheaper. After reading the opinions of Lanny Chambers, Nancy Newfield, Bob Sargent, and Fred Bassett I would never give food with red dye in it to the hummingbirds that visit my yard. Red dye has not be proven to hurt the hummingbirds but it has been proven that it doesn't hurn them.
I had rather be safe than sorry.
As fast as they suck it down....how can you afford to buy it? I use the recipe above and and just store the extra in the fridge, which doesn't last too long with the two feeders I have. I wanted to get mine out this weekend, but with the cold weather I have waited. I'll get them out this weekend.
:) Kim
There has to be a flower or something you could drop some petals from into the boiling water to dye it -- something totally non-toxic.
Anybody?
Perhaps....but frankly I don't think they need the red coloring to know it's there. I couldn't keep them off the feeders if I wanted to and I never had the coloring.
Kim
I have to change the food in my hummingbird feeders twice a week. I don't put any dye or anything other than sugar and water (1 part sugar to 4 parts water). I don't bring it to boiling ; I just stir it well. The birds keep coming back for more.
This is the recipe that is etched into the feeders I have. They were a good buy from the Brid Shed on the East Coast.
Thanks,
Chuck
The recipe is on the box some of my feeder can in too. One cup water and 1/4 cup sugar. Easy as pie. I make it up by the gallon. I know I don't have the humming birds others do but at the height of migration last year I was going through 3 gallons of sugar water a week.
I have brought the water to boiling and then poured in the sugar and I have also just ran hot water from the tap and added the sugar. I do need to add that I have a deep 4in well with nothing added to the water. All natural.
You're probably right about the dye. They're attracted to red, and you can manage that on the feeder. They don't seem to have a problem with my plain sugar water, same recipe. The only thing I do a little differently is I boil 1 par sugar with 1 part water, then add 3 parts cold water so I don't have to wait so long for it to cool. Seems to work.
Same here, one part sugar to 4 parts water heated, then cooled with a few ice cubes, LOL Oh and one year I had a plain clear feeder, and the zoomed in like mad :) Also one day i got out of the car and was walking to the house when a hummer came right up to me got in front of my face and was in mid-air looking at my red neck scarf!!
The water and sugar should not be boiled together; just add the sugar after your done boiling.
It changes the composition too much if done together.
Learned that from Nancy Newfield.
ROFL, tootsie! The Vampire Hummingbird of Bay City... I can see you throwing down tic tacs to divert him as you ran for the door...
Didn't know that, pelletory. I'll do it that way next time.