Friday, August 31, 2012

Still trying for Hummers!


If you remember from my post last spring, I was on a mission to attract Hummers. I first put a feeder out in mid April to get them but had no luck so I finally took my feeder down early July. About two weeks ago my local bird store said the hummers were coming down from the mountains and being seen in record numbers. I put my feeder back up but this time I moved it to my front yard ( that faces west) by my Zinnias and petunias.   Well a few days later, I was in my backyard and a hummer showed up for about 2 seconds to investigate the red rim of my basketball hoop then headed toward my front yard. I quickly ran to look out my front window and the hummer was nowhere to be found and my feeder was swarming with bees. I did some research and found that hummers won't visit a feeder with all the bees so I decided to move the feeder farther away from the flowers while the bees weren't looking  to see if that would help and it didn't. Next day, I was in my backyard again and once more a hummer flew near a colorful umbrella I have very close to the basketball hoop. I also have a pot with some zinnias there too but only a few. Once again, the visit was so brief like 5 seconds or less. So, I decided to go to the bird feeding store and buy a new hummer feeder that is less attractive to bees...
I moved it to the backyard near the location the hummer has been visiting. I made a fresh new batch of sugar water, hung the feeder and waited. On the fourth day, a hummer came right up to the feeder and hovered above it for about 3 seconds ( not drinking from it) and flew away. The next morning, I changed to sugar water thinking 4 days may have been too long but the hummer has not been seen again and that was 3 days ago. Here is a photo of the current location of the feeder now in my backyard where he has been spotted...