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| Dear Yahoo!: |
| How can I attract hummingbirds to my yard? |
Linda
Florence, South Carolina |
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| Dear Linda: |
There a number of ways you can make your backyard more inviting to these beloved birds. Here are a few suggestions to get you started: - Plant a hummingbird garden. Hummingbirds have little sense of smell, so the flowers that attract them tend to be highly visible varieties (pink or red in particular) that produce a great deal of nectar, rather than fragrant ones.
- Install feeders. Hummingbirds mainly eat flower nectar, but you can make your own artificial nectar from a simple sugar and water recipe. (Be warned, however, ants, bats, and bees are also attracted to hummingbird feeders.) Decorate your feeder with fluorescent surveyor's tape from the local hardware store. The tape is thought to reflect ultraviolet light and attract the birds.
- Avoid using pesticides. These nasty chemicals kill the insects that serve as a good source of protein for hummingbirds, and can also sicken or kill the birds if ingested.
- Provide water. A shallow birdbath or a mister will do the trick.
- Add plenty of places to perch to your backyard. Hummingbirds spend around 80% of their time sitting on twigs, shrubs, clotheslines, and
other convenient resting places.
Follow these tips and there's a good chance your backyard will soon be humming with action. As we learned at one hummingbird web site, "in a given year, not a square meter of the U.S. or southern Canada goes unchecked by hummers in their relentless quest for food."
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