11 Odd Things Hummingbirds Love That Most Gardeners Overlook
Red feeders get all the attention. The things that keep hummingbirds nesting in a yard and returning to it are stranger, cheaper and probably already in yours.
A feeder full of sugar water will bring hummingbirds to your yard. It will not make them stay, nest or come back next year. For that they need building materials, protein, water and somewhere to sit.
Think about what a female hummingbird has to do each spring. She weighs about as much as a penny. With no help from the male, she builds a nest the size of half a walnut shell, lays two eggs the size of navy beans, incubates them for roughly two weeks and then feeds two chicks for three weeks more. Sugar gives her the energy for all that flying. It supplies none of the materials.
The materials come from the parts of a garden we are quickest to tidy away: cobwebs, lichen, seed fluff, gnats, dead twigs and overgrown shrubs. A yard that is swept, sprayed and clipped offers her a drink and nothing else, so she drinks and moves on.
Here are eleven things hummingbirds look for that most gardeners overlook. None of them costs more than a few dollars, and most cost nothing except a little restraint with the broom and the pruners.
Read all the way to the end. The last one costs nothing and means doing less work, not more.
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Nest glue
1. Spider webs
Seen this in your yard?Hummingbirds bind their nests together with spider silk. The female wraps strands around the twig to anchor the base, then works silk through every layer of the cup. Without it the nest would be a loose pile of fluff that the first breeze would scatter.
Silk is the right material for three reasons. It is sticky, so it holds plant down and lichen in place. It is very strong for its weight. And it stretches. A hummingbird nest starts out about an inch and a half across, and by the time two chicks are ready to fledge they have outgrown it. The silk lets the walls give without tearing.
AdvertisementA female makes dozens of collecting trips over the six to ten days it takes to build. Watch for a bird hovering under the eaves, at a porch light or along a fence rail, darting in and backing out with a thread across her bill and chest. She prefers old, dusty, abandoned webs to fresh ones.
In most of the United States this happens from April through June, and as early as December for Anna's Hummingbirds on the Pacific coast.
AdvertisementWithout spider silk there is no hummingbird nest.
Try thisStop knocking down cobwebs under the eaves, on the shed and along the fence from early spring until midsummer. They are a hardware store for a nesting hummingbird. -
Camouflage
2. Lichen and moss
Seen this in your yard?Once the cup is shaped, many species shingle the outside with flakes of lichen, each one pressed onto the sticky silk. Ruby-throated and Blue-gray Gnatcatcher nests are famous for it. From below, a finished Ruby-throat nest looks exactly like a knot on the branch, which is why so few people ever find one.
AdvertisementWestern species use what is at hand. Anna's Hummingbirds add lichen, moss and sometimes flecks of paint. Black-chinned nests are often plain, pale plant down with little decoration. Bits of bark and bud scales serve the same purpose where lichen is scarce.
The camouflage matters because the nest is unguarded for much of the day. Jays, crows, squirrels and snakes all eat eggs and chicks, and a female hummingbird cannot fight any of them off. Her only defense is to be overlooked.
Lichen does no harm to the trees, fences and stones it grows on. It is not a parasite and takes nothing from the bark. It simply needs a surface that stays put and air that is reasonably clean.
AdvertisementTry thisDo not scrub or pressure-wash lichen from tree bark, old fences or stone walls. It harms nothing, and the pale gray-green leafy kinds are the ones the birds take. -
Sweet and sticky
3. Tree sap
Seen this in your yard?Sapsuckers are woodpeckers that drill neat rows of small holes in tree bark and return again and again to drink what leaks out. Hummingbirds follow them. Tree sap is mostly water and sucrose, at a strength close to that of flower nectar, so a sap well is a natural feeder that somebody else maintains.
AdvertisementIn the East, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird's spring arrival in the northern states and Canada closely tracks the return of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Ruby-throats reach the north woods in early May, before most nectar flowers have opened, and sap wells carry them through. They have been found nesting near active wells and trailing sapsuckers from tree to tree. In the West, Rufous and Calliope Hummingbirds do the same with Red-naped and Red-breasted Sapsuckers.
The wells also trap small insects in the sticky flow, so the hummingbird collects protein with its sugar.
Sapsuckers favor birch, maple, hickory, apple and many conifers. The shallow holes look alarming but rarely trouble a healthy, mature tree.
A sap well is a natural feeder that somebody else maintains.
Try thisIf a sapsucker is working a healthy mature tree, leave it be. Watch the fresh rows of holes with binoculars in April and May and you may see the first hummingbird of the year.Advertisement -
Protein
4. Tiny insects
Seen this in your yard?Nectar is only fuel. It contains almost no protein, fat, vitamins or minerals, and a hummingbird cannot build muscle, feathers or eggs from it. That comes from small, soft-bodied arthropods: gnats, midges, fruit flies, mosquitoes, aphids, leafhoppers, tiny wasps and small spiders.
Hummingbirds catch them two ways. They hawk, which means flying out from a perch to snap an insect from the air, and they glean, which means hovering along leaves, bark and spider webs to pick prey off the surface. The lower half of the bill flexes and snaps shut in a fraction of a second, which makes the bird a far better flycatcher than its needle of a bill suggests.
AdvertisementThe demand peaks when there are chicks. Nestlings are fed a slurry of nectar and insects, pumped straight into the crop, and they grow from the size of a bean to full adult weight in about three weeks. A female feeding two chicks catches insects by the hundreds every day.
A swarm of gnats dancing over the lawn at dusk is a hummingbird buffet.
AdvertisementA yard with no insects is a yard with no baby hummingbirds.
Try thisSkip the broad-spectrum insecticide and the mosquito fogging service. Both remove the food that chicks depend on, and both kill the spiders whose webs the nest is built from. -
Fly bait
5. Overripe fruit
Seen this in your yard?Hummingbirds do not eat fruit in any quantity. Their bills and tongues are built for liquid. Now and then one will sip juice from a split peach or a pecked orange, but that is not why they hang around the compost heap.
They come for the fruit flies. A soft banana on a warm day draws a cloud of them within a few hours, and fruit flies are an ideal size for a hummingbird: small enough to swallow whole, slow enough to catch, and present in the dozens.
This is the simplest way to add protein to a feeding station. It works best from late spring to early fall, when the weather is warm enough for the flies to breed quickly and when females and newly fledged young need protein most.
AdvertisementKeep it modest. A whole bowl of rotting fruit will bring yellowjackets, raccoons and, in some parts of the country, bears.
Try thisPut a banana peel or a few soft grapes in a mesh onion bag and hang it in the shade, six to ten feet from the feeder. Replace it every few days and take it in at night if raccoons are about. -
Bath time
6. Fine mist
Seen this in your yard?A standard birdbath is two to three inches deep, which to a bird that weighs three or four grams is a lake. Hummingbirds will not wade into it. Their legs are short and weak, good for perching and little else, so they bathe on the wing or on a wet surface.
AdvertisementThey fly back and forth through fine spray, hover in it with tail fanned, or settle on a wet leaf and rub chest and chin across it. After a rain shower you will see them sliding over the dripping leaves of a broad-leaved shrub. Then they move to a perch and preen for several minutes.
Clean feathers are a serious matter. Nectar is sticky, pollen cakes on the forehead and throat, and a hummingbird's flight depends on feathers in perfect order. Bathing is daily behavior in warm weather, most often in the heat of the afternoon.
AdvertisementA sheet of water a quarter inch deep, such as a bubbler spilling over a flat stone, works too.
Try thisClip a mister attachment to a garden hose and aim it at a leafy shrub or a rose arbor. Run it for an hour on warm afternoons. It will get more use than any bath. -
A lookout
7. Bare twigs
Seen this in your yard?Hummingbirds look as if they never stop moving. In fact they spend most of the daylight hours perched, by most counts around three quarters of the day. Hovering is the most expensive form of flight there is, and a bird that burns energy that fast has to sit still between meals while its crop empties.
AdvertisementThe perch is chosen with care. A male wants a thin, bare twig with an open view over his flowers or feeder, where he can see rivals coming and where the sun lights his throat. He will use the same one for weeks, returning to it after every chase.
Females and young birds perch lower and deeper in cover, but they still want a twig thin enough for small feet to grip. Anything thicker than a pencil is awkward for them.
A tidy garden has surprisingly few such perches. We prune out dead wood and cut back the spent stems that hummingbirds like best.
AdvertisementA hummingbird spends most of its day sitting still, and it is particular about where.
Try thisLeave a dead branch tip or two on a shrub, or push a few thin, branched sticks into the ground within fifteen feet of the feeder. A tomato cage or a wire plant support serves the same purpose. -
Minerals
8. Ash and sand
Seen this in your yard?Now and then a gardener sees a female hummingbird on the ground, picking at the cold ashes of a fire pit, a patch of sand or the crumbling mortar of an old wall. It looks like a mistake. It is a mineral supplement.
An eggshell is nearly all calcium carbonate, and each of her two eggs is large for her body. Nectar has almost no calcium and small insects have little. So during laying, females seek out concentrated sources. Wood ash is rich in calcium, and old lime mortar is the same material as eggshell.
AdvertisementThe behavior has been recorded in several species, including Anna's, Ruby-throated and Rufous Hummingbirds, and almost always in females during the nesting season. They take a few flicks of the tongue and leave, so it is easily missed.
Many other small birds do the same thing, which is why swallows and finches gather on gravel roads in spring.
Try thisSet out a shallow dish of clean sand mixed with crushed eggshell in an open spot. Bake the shells for ten minutes at 250 degrees first, then crush them fine. If you burn untreated wood, leave a handful of cold ash where you can watch it.Advertisement -
Soft lining
9. Plant fluff
Seen this in your yard?The inside of the nest is lined with the softest material in the neighborhood. It has to insulate two eggs that are each about half an inch long, and later two chicks that hatch naked and cannot keep themselves warm for the first week or more.
The favorites are seed down and leaf fuzz. Dandelion, thistle, milkweed and cattail supply the down. Willow and cottonwood shed drifts of cottony seed in late spring just when nests are being built. In the East, Ruby-throats strip the tan wool from the unfurling stems of cinnamon fern. In the West, the pale felt from the underside of sycamore leaves is a staple.
AdvertisementThe female packs the down with her bill and then presses her body into the cup, turning as she goes, to shape it exactly to her own size. She stamps the floor with her feet to firm it.
Avoid setting out dryer lint, yarn or pet hair. Lint falls apart when wet and long fibers can tangle a chick's legs.
Try thisLet a few dandelions, thistles or milkweed plants go to seed in a back corner, and grow lamb's ear or cinnamon fern if you have room. Natural fluff is safer than anything you can buy.Advertisement -
Natural nectar
10. Native tube flowers
Seen this in your yard?Hummingbirds and certain flowers shaped one another. The classic hummingbird flower is a long tube, red or orange, with no scent and no landing platform, because it is advertising to a bird that sees red well, smells little and feeds in the air. The tube keeps most bees out and saves the nectar for the bird, which carries pollen away on its forehead.
The best garden plants follow that pattern. In the East, plant wild columbine for April and May, coral honeysuckle and bee balm for early summer, and cardinal flower, jewelweed and trumpet creeper for late summer. In the West and Southwest, penstemons, California fuchsia, ocotillo, chuparosa, autumn sage and hummingbird mint carry the season.
AdvertisementNative species and old single-flowered forms usually reward the birds better than heavily bred hybrids. Doubled flowers have often lost their nectar or hidden it behind extra petals.
Timing matters as much as choice. A bird defending a yard needs something in bloom from the week it arrives to the week it leaves.
Try thisPlant in groups of three or more of each kind so the color shows from the air, and choose at least one plant each for spring, midsummer and fall. Cardinal flower and autumn sage are the best late-season fuel for migrants. -
Shelter
11. An untidy shrub
Seen this in your yard?A hummingbird is small enough to be eaten by a great many things: sharp-shinned hawks, kestrels, shrikes, roadrunners, cats, large praying mantises, and now and then an orb-weaver spider or a bullfrog. It needs somewhere to vanish.
AdvertisementA dense, twiggy shrub or small tree does that job. It also breaks the wind and sheds rain. At night a hummingbird drops into torpor, a deep energy-saving sleep, and for those hours it cannot fly off quickly, so it roosts on a thin twig well inside the foliage where little can reach it.
Nests go in similar places. Most are saddled on a slender, downward-sloping branch with leaves overhead for a roof, anywhere from five to fifty feet up and often near or over water. Females commonly return to the same tree in later years and sometimes build on the remains of an old nest.
AdvertisementA hedge sheared tight every month offers none of this. A shrub allowed to grow a little shaggy offers all of it.
Try thisHold off on pruning shrubs and small trees until late summer, when nesting is over, and plant a native evergreen such as holly, juniper or wax myrtle within twenty feet of the feeder for cover.
The short version
The best hummingbird garden is a slightly messy one. Keep the webs, the lichen, the bugs and a dead twig or two, add water in the form of mist, and the feeder becomes a bonus instead of the main event.
The reason is simple. A feeder meets one need, which is energy. A nesting female has at least six others: silk to build with, lichen to hide the nest, down to line it, calcium for the eggs, insects for the chicks and thick cover to keep them all alive. A yard that supplies those is a yard where hummingbirds breed, and birds that breed successfully come back to the same place.
Start this coming spring by doing less. Leave the cobwebs, put the sprayer away, let one corner go to seed and delay the pruning. Then add a mister and a few native tube flowers. By midsummer you will be watching more than a bird at a feeder. You will be watching a family.
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