Attracting Hummingbirds to Your Yard

October 3, 2014

Attracting Hummingbirds to Your Yard. It is surprisingly simple to attract tiny, beautiful hummingbirds to your yard. And it you live in a more temperate area, it is actually a good idea to provide nectar for hummingbirds over the winter season, when their food supplies are more scarce. Here are five interesting facts about hummingbirds, and one super-simple homemade recipe for hummingbird nectar. Put it in a red feeder (see why below), sit back, and enjoy watching and listening to your perky avian visitors!

Top 5 Fun Facts About Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds in flight have the highest metabolism of any animal on earth (with the exception of insects). Ever heard someone refer to a skinny person as “having the metabolism of a hummingbird”? Well, it’s true! Their heart rate can reach as high as 1260 beats per minute, nearly 20 times that of humans!
Hummingbirds eat about twice their own weight in nectar each day! If they don’t get enough food in a day, they can die overnight. However, they have a natural survival mechanism for this which is called “torpor”, which is kind of like a single-night hibernation. The hummingbirds go into a deep sleep, and can lower their own heart rate and breathing so that they don’t burn so much energy.
Hummingbirds are attracted to the color red (and orange and bright pink). The simplistic reason for this is that many flowers that hummingbirds eat from and pollinate are in these colors. These same flowers are not as visible to insects, which is nature’s way of ensuring there is enough nectar left for the hummingbirds. So to attract hummingbirds, it’s a good idea to use feeders which incorporate these colors. And to provide natural food for them, you should plant flowers in these colors as well!
The average North American hummingbird beats its wings more than 50 times per second! It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? And some varieties of hummingbirds actually have a wing-beat speed of up to 80 beats per second!
Should you be lucky enough to attract hummingbirds to your yard, they are really fun to watch, as well as beautiful! They can fly forwards, backwards, sideways, and upside down, and they can even stop in midair! Enjoy these wonderful, fast, tiny little visitors!

Super-Simple Nectar Recipe: Mix together one part white sugar to four parts water. Slowly heat up the mixture until the sugar dissolves in the water. Cool completely before adding to your feeders. (Note: Use only white table sugar, not confectioners, raw, etc. And no honey either)