How to Attract Hummingbirds

Now Cathy Isom looks at how to attract hummingbirds to your backyard or garden.  That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.

There are many reasons to want to attract Hummingbirds to our backyards and gardens. Aside from being beautiful and doing great work like protecting our gardens, these fast-flying aerobatic creatures are downright entertaining! They simply go about their daily chores, without much concern for humans being around.

The best way to attract these little guys is to offer up some free food. Hungry little hummingbirds will eat half their weight in sugar every day,  so that means they need plenty of pollen around. One popular method is to hang up a hummingbird feeder. Just make sure the sugar water is a mixture of between a quarter and a third cup of sugar to one cup of water. And never use red dye to color the water.

Also, it important to know that hummingbirds are very territorial, so it is best to have several small feeders with one feeding port, as opposed to one large feeder with many feeding ports.

You could also offer natural sources of food for a much healthier option, like plants, flowers, and herbs. They will not only attract hummingbirds but butterflies, too.

I’m Cathy Isom…