Our post, today, features the Ruby-throated Hummingbird. As its name implies the males of this species have a bright ruby red throat. They have a beautiful iridescent green head and back. A female ruby throat does not have any red at its throat. Ind if you see a hummingbird that has just a couple little red gorget feathers, it’s probably a juvenile male.

If you have feeders for our fast flying friends, it’s important to keep your feeders clean and full of fresh sugar water during late spring and summer because there’s going to be an increase in number of hummingbirds at your feeder this time of year. That’s because the adults that you see in your area in the spring – that migrated here from Mexico and Central America – they’ve already made their nest, and the young have fledged and so there’s a lot of hummingbirds out there. And they are all competing for food.

When a hummingbird is drinking, a long tongue shoots out and grabs the nectar. When it is flying, a hummingbird’s wings can beat 100 times a second – the fastest of any bird. They’ve got to maintain a crazy high metabolisms. And as summer progresses, they need to fatten up in preparation for their journey back south.

So what can you do to keep your feeder full of fresh good nutrients for your hummingbird? Rather than use the ready-made mix that has red dye in it, which could be harmful, your should use regular ole granulated cane sugar. And so, I take a quarter cup of sugar and I put it in one cup of boiling water and dissolve it really well and then cool it and then refill my feeder. But even before I do that, I want to make sure that my feeder is clean.

So I’ve dumped out any any sugar solution that’s been in there for a few days because it could get rancid or it can ferment. It can grow bacteria. So, even if you have some left in there, in a hot sun, it could go bad. So make sure you dump that out. Then before you refill the feeder, you want to rinse it with really hot water, maybe even a weak bleach solution every now and then. And then use some brushes, like little bottle brushes, to get at any of those mildewy spots. Finish up with an itty-bitty brush to get in those flower ports and then I refill the feeder and enjoy the show.

But it’s important to remember, too, that your hummingbird feeder is really meant to just be a supplement to their natural foods. Such foods would which would be the nectar from flowers – they especially like tubular shape flowers so you can plant those in your yard. Hummingbirds also eat a lot of soft bodied insects their diets include: ants, aphids, beetles, gnats, mites, mosquitoes, spiders, wasps and weevils. They really need that protein to keep up that metabolism.

I recommend you refrain from using pesticides in your yard for that reason – let the birds eat those insects.

I hope you continue to enjoy fast moving hummingbirds in your backyard.

As found on Youtube

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