Plant Honeysuckle And The Hummingbirds Will Come

[NoOption5L]

A few years ago, when we first moved to our north Florida home a hummingbird was a rare sight, even though we had a feeder hanging (always with fresh food) near our house. But that all changed after we planted honeysuckle -- Lonicera sempervirens and a gold "John Clayton" variety -- in our yard. Now we have, I kid you not, an uncountable number of little hummers jockeying for position at our feeders. We have so many in fact we had to recently add a second feeder, and we're already thinking about adding a third to handle the overflow! So to any of you who enjoy watching these magnificant little birds, I say

*first* plant some flowers in your yard that will attract them, *then* hanger a feeder.

Patrick

[paghat]

When we first bought our house years ago, it had almost no trumpet-shaped flowering anything & for the first couple years we rarely saw hummingbirds. But I planted trumpet vines, honeysuckles, penstemons, sages, beebalms, deciduous azaleas, cape fuchsia, red hot pokers, passionflower vines, & much else that hummers like, so now we get them every year, & don't have to put out feeders to keep them around since they prefer & benefit more from the flowers.

-paghat the ratgirl

[bungadora]

IMHO the feeders are of the greatest benefit during the spring migration, when flowers are less common.

I'm in Calgary, Canada, and most of the hummingbirds leave to go south by this weekend. Glad to hear you're keeping the little blighters well fed.

They're supposed to go nuts for bee balm. Dora