About a week ago before I really started feeling bad again, I made a batch of sugar nectar, that's what I call it, for a couple of hummingbirds. I got the recipe from this woman here on her YouTube channel. She caters to hummingbirds and other types of birds in her Southern California backyard. She talks about what hummingbirds need for food and how to make it.
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| We have the feeders out of the sun under the eaves near the media room window. |
Well, I've been making her recipe of 1 cup white granulated sugar with 1 cup semi-boiling water. I use DI water. After the sugar is completely dissolved in the hot water, I add 3 cups cold DI water and continue to stir. I wash out the hummingbird feeders completely with a tiny drop of dish soap and rinse the pieces twice over. I don't want these delicate little ones to get sick and die from a contamination of soap or anything else. Then I pour the mixture of sugar nectar into the feeders and the rest of it goes into ice cube trays. I use the ice cubed nectar to keep the feeders cool. I keep the cubes in a baggy in the freezer until needed.
When I started doing this recipe I didn't think I would get any thing but bees coming to the feeders. Then I saw one hummingbird. Then 3 days later there were 3 little drinkers. Next day 5. And then now we have 7 that David counted this morning and he took the picture to prove it to me. These little shits are telling the whole neighborhood about the new Alfresco restaurant with one Michelin Star that has the best food around.
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| There are 7 hummers in this picture. 4 sitting and drinking and 3 fluttering. |
So the recipe that I got from watching Robbie on her channel was a good thing. I have never gotten this many hummingbirds in one year, EVER. It has always been just one or two and we used the store-bought red junk. Robbie is right, hummingbirds don't care what color their food is just as long as it's good. Tonight I'm going to have David pull the feeders so I can wash them and restock their food for the morning. I'm putting in new hummingbird food every night now because they drink it all up. David says he'll pick up two new feeders at HEB this coming weekend if the population keeps expanding like this.
Next is hummingbird baths. Yeah, she shows how to make them on her channel too.
5 comments:
Wow, you're becoming a hummingbird wrangler! I love watching hummingbirds -- I get to see them only rarely, but it is a true treat!
I live near Dallas. It is amazing each year that the birds come at almost the same date, about April 1, and leave about October 15. When I put out the feeder in the spring, they show up within a few hours.
What is DI water and how is it different from regular tap water or well water? You're going to have to buy sugar by the truckload soon :)
I can't stand the taste of our tap water. It's high in calcium and other salts. Deionized water is like distilled water and it's mostly the cleanest water you can drink so I drink bottled water. All the salts and particles like calcium etc. are removed through ionization. You would have to Google how it's done because it's too much for me to explain here. Distilled is boiled water per se. Both distilled and deionized water is the cleanest water you can drink. The reason I use it for the hummingbirds is that the fewer impurities the better for these little birds. As for the sugar, I buy a 4lb. bag every two weeks anyway for my baking of cookies, so I don't mind. It's a pretty good price right now.
I usually have at least one that hangs around all year, generally see it in the morning visiting the flowers when I'm outside. I tried putting up a feeder but I didn't really get any takers while my neighbor has them swarming. but then I read or someone told me that if there are flowers hummers will go to them instead of a feeder and I usually have some flowers blooming.
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