Attracting hummingbirds to
my garden is a high priority. Hummingbirds have the basic needs of any
hotel guest. Good food, something to drink and a nice place to sleep
and hang out. To these ends I give them a wide variety of
plants so something is always in bloom. They like protective cover
and a mixture of trees and shrubs helps. The Hummingbirds most often
rest up in an Oak Tree here in my garden and then feed on the flower of the moment.
A mixture of plants heights is very helpful. The hummingbirds will
find a safe place to rest with a good view. And some tinkling water
helps attract hummingbirds too. In the hummingbird photo below, you
can see a hummingbird about to get a drink. And a few minutes later
the same hummingbird took a bath in one of the small basins with the water
running over his back. You can attract hummingbirds to your garden
using plants with tubular red flowers or red colored hummingbird
feeders. Here is our hummingbird
recipe. And our list of plants that will make your hummingbird
garden full of life and color.
The hummingbirds are the smallest birds in the world. They weigh
less than a nickel. They are also the fastest. They have the
fewest feathers and the smallest nests, no surprise there. And they
have the fastest heartbeats. There are 338 species and only 23 species
have been recorded in the United States. Of those only 16 species have
been recorded nesting north of the border with Mexico. That means
that most of the hummingbird species live in South and Central America and
never make it here.
Hummingbirds are native to the Western Hemisphere. They have
coevolved with the plants from this Hemisphere. Their migrations are
legendary. Some go from South America to North
America. The amount of food required to keep such a small
organism warm and moving so fast has to be huge, they often eat their own body
weight in nectar every day. You can talk about a dog's life as
being pretty relaxing much of the time. Hummingbirds are quite the
opposite and have to eat and
drink constantly. I put out trickling fountains for attracting
hummingbirds. They love falling water and are attracted to the
sound of it. They require nectar laden plants. I plant
varieties of plants that they already know while they move North and
South through the seasons, this makes attracting them much easier because
they already know what their food looks like.
In general long tubular orange or red flowers are great for attracting
the hummingbirds. Many of the tropical
Salvia's already have fulfilled all of these requirements for the birds
as they went through South and
Central America and the plants will grow quite well here in Southern
California too.
Non-natives that work well are the Aloes, Red hot pokers, and other plants
in the mint family.
There is recently found fossil evidence that the hummingbirds once lived
in Europe too, 35 million years ago. A number of African and
Himalayan plants look like they would easily be pollinated by hovering
birds.
I catch a swarm of hummingbirds in their fall migration in my
yard. One of my primary plants I use for attracting them at that
time is Cuphea
micropetala, one of the cigar plants. The tubular flowers are
orange with yellow tips and sticky with nectar. The plants bloom for
us from October until the first hard frost and there is always a bird that
is the owner of
the bush and 2 or more that think it should be theirs.
The natural Winter food for the resident Anna's hummingbirds locally
are the flowers of the Manzanita
and Gooseberry
species. Salvia
spathacea, hummingbird sage is just starting to bloom as well.
I have been intrigued watching a hummingbird work on plants that are
not native to our area. They have learned about a number of other
plants and feed on them differently. I spent watched a hummingbird
all through lunch one day feeding from a pink
Abutilon. Instead of feeding from the inside of the flower it
came in from the outside and reached in between the petals. It would
feed for 2 or 3 minutes and visit about a third of the flowers and then
fly off. Then after a short break it would return but rarely visit
the same flowers. Hummingbirds have an uncanny ability to remember
which flowers were visited recently. At first it looks so random, the way
they move from flower to flower but as you watch them you can see that
they rarely come back to the same blooms.
The hummingbirds defend their territory fiercely,
chasing off all of their competitors. A hedge of Cape honeysuckle can
wear you out doing maintenance on it. But watching the swarm of
hummingbirds that work the length of it is tremendously amusing. One
bird cannot possibly defend all of it, though they each try.
I have seen similar hummingbird efforts on large Bottlebrush trees.
