Hummingbirds are garden jewels, as beautiful as they are valuable. Each weighing less than a nickel. Hummingbirds play an important role in the garden as pollinators and insect predators. And,
When hummingbirds visit flowers, they are not only feeding on the nectar, they pollinate the flowers. This, in turn, allows plants to produce fruits or seeds. As insect predators, they eat spiders and make their nests out of cobweb
Although a hummingbird weighs between two and eight grams (a penny weighs 2.5 grams), they eat frequently in order to power their hearts that pump 1,200 times per minute and wings that beat seventy times each second. To survive, they must eat several times their weight in nectar everyday! For protein, they supplement their sugary diet with small insects.
Hummingbirds have long beaks and even longer tongues, which allows them to feed on flowers that are too long and thin for anything else.
When a hummingbird inserts its beak into a flower to drink the nectar, sticky pollen grains cling to the side of its beak. When visiting the next flower, some of the pollen grains are transferred. And if both flowers are of the same species, pollination occurs.
Hummingbirds are strongly attracted to red flowers. They also frequent pink, orange or other colored flowers. They prefer flowers shaped like a tube or trumpet.
Good choices are plants with red or orange tubular flowers, such as fuschias, red-flowering currant, columbines, coral bells, salvias and penstemons. They also love bush and vine honeysuckles, hollyhocks, nasturtiums and petunias as well as blossoms from black locust, flowering crab apple and hawthorn.
What is it that makes hummingbirds so unique and different from other birds we see in our backyards?
The bird’s diminutive size, quickness of flight – they can fly up to 45 miles per hour – and, clearly stand out. But they also possess an amazing ability for incredible acrobatic flight and feats; and the ability to hover, as if suspended in the midair.
This “life in the fast lane” lifestyle that hummingbirds lead and it provides us with clear direction on how we can attract nature’s flying jewels to our gardens and enjoy them all season long.
Want to know more about attracting hummingbirds to your garden?
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Yours truly for a great garden with outstanding berries,veggies and flowers.
Polly-organic gardener
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I am not a huge bottlebrush fan at all, but I leave all ours up, because they attract hummingbirds. We have quite a few resident Anna’s. They yell at me “gerroff my lawn!” when I go out to garden. I can’t imagine living in the eastern hemisphere, and not having hummingbirds. I can barely stand the idea of living somewhere that they leave every winter.