Banish Hum Drum Hummingbird Feeders!

Have you seen the “high end” hummingbird feeders out there? Hummingbird feeders have come a long way from those red and yellow plastic feeders. Some of the feeders out there now that are truly works of art!

It is really easy to incorporate a hummingbird feeder into a balcony garden. Simply hang the feeder from a shepherd’s hook (found at most garden centers) stuck into a large pot filled with dirt (and plants, no reason wasting gardening space!). You could even train a vine that attracts hummingbirds to grow on the shepherd’s hook, maximizing the attractiveness of your garden to hummingbirds (and humans!).

Looking Glass Hummingbird Feeder

Landmark Hummingbird Feeder

Red Cherries Hummingbird Feeder

Hummingbird Design Feeder

Triple Bouquet Hummingbird Feeder

Related Posts:

December 8, 2008 | Filed Under Attracting Birds Bees and Butterflies, Container Gardening, General | 5 Comments

Winter Container Gardening…for the Birds

If your gardening season is nearing its end, you can turn it over to the birds and enjoy watching their antics all winter long. You don’t need a huge yard to attract birds, especially in the winter, when the pickings are pretty slim. If you provide what birds need, they will come.

Photo by dbarronoss

So what do birds want in the winter? Basically, seeds and water. Many of the birds that stick around during the winter are seed eaters. Insect eaters migrate because there aren’t very many insects to eat in January. If you allow your plants to produce berries and seeds, or if you put out a bird feeder with the right kind of seeds, birds will be thrilled to visit your garden.

Some people are worried that feeding birds is actually bad for them, that it encourages them to be lazy and only look for food at your bird feeder. The thinking being, that if you had to remove your feeder, the bird would starve. However, studies have shown that birds do not frequent just one feeder or food source. They like visiting multiple locations, a skill developed over thousands of years of evolution. Even before feeders, birds figured out that it was best to search for food in multiple places to limit their risk of starvation. So rest assured, you need not commit to having a feeder in the same location for the rest of your life.

How Your Plants Can Help Birds:

Instead of deadheading the last of the season’s native flowers, allow them to go to seed. Coneflowers (echinacea), for example, provide great bird food and even look attractive without their petals. If you plant ornamental grasses for fall color, allow them to go to seed.
Other plants that are good for birds during the winter: coreopsis, sunflower, Virginia creeper, and hyssop. I am letting my sunflower, which is blooming profusely at the moment, go to seed so that birds will be able to stop in for a snack. I am sure my cats will love watching them on Cat TV (i.e. the front window).
Honeysuckle is another good winter food source. My aunt has one that is trained into a 4 foot topiary tree that lives in a pot on her patio. It looks nice, is balcony friendly, and birds love it. Trifecta!
Hollies look nice in winter and have red berries birds like eating. They also provide safe shelter for birds.

Water:

Birds still need water during the winter. Be sure to locate your bird bath in a location that doesn’t make the birds who visit it a sitting duck (pardon the phrase) for cats who are also on the lookout for winter food.
If you live where water freezes during the winter, check out this heated bird bath. It’s like a bird spa!

Where to Put Feeders and Seed:

Provide feeders at multiple heights, as some birds like to eat seeds near the ground, some at table-height and some higher up. Most container gardeners don’t have trees to hang feeders in, but you can buy sheppard’s hooks meant for hanging baskets at your garden center. Simply place the hook in your largest container and hang the feeder from that instead. Small hanging feeders that swing in the breeze are attractive to many small agile birds.
You can also simply sprinkle seed on the ground. Sparrows, juncos, doves, and bobwhites prefer to feed on the ground, and all you have to do is scatter the seed there.
Another way to provide a raised feeder is to nail a platform (with edges to prevent seeds from falling off) onto a wooden post. Or, if your apartment or condo is not on the ground floor, you can simply nail the platform to a window sill or balcony railing. Purple finches and evening grosbeaks like that set up.
Be sure to locate the feeders in front of a window where you can enjoy watching the birds who come by for a snack.

What Seed to Provide:

The favorite bird seed is black sunflower. It attracts cardinals, woodpeckers, blue jays, goldfinches, purple finches, chickadees, titmice, and nuthatches.
Another good bird seed is niger. Goldfinches love niger. But it’s expensive, so use it sparingly.
Safflower, a white seed, slightly smaller than a black sunflower seed is another essential. Squirrels don’t like it. However, neither do grackles, blue jays, or starlings. Cardinals, titmice, chickadees, and downy woodpeckers love safflower.
White seed millet is good for sprinkling on the ground.

On a totally unrelated topic, be sure to check in tomorrow, I’m announcing a fun contest with good prizes!

October 6, 2008 | Filed Under Attracting Birds Bees and Butterflies, Winter Gardening | 2 Comments

Beautiful Modern Bird Feeder

Check out this beautiful Take Away Bird Feeder from Eva Solo. It won the IF Design Award in 2007, and it’s not hard to figure out why. You can purchase it here for $60.

Now is a great time to start thinking about bird feeders, as Fall is the time when many birds migrate South (in the Northern Hemisphere). Also, birds that stick around for the winter might appreciate some healthy snacks to supplement their diet.

September 4, 2008 | Filed Under Attracting Birds Bees and Butterflies, Outdoor Decor | Leave a Comment

Can You Name 8 Beneficial Bugs To Keep in Your Garden?

Anyone who has ever pushed a seed into some moist soil has thought about how to kill the bugs that almost certainly tried to do their plant harm. But do you know which bugs you should keep around?

Answer

August 13, 2008 | Filed Under Attracting Birds Bees and Butterflies, Pests | 2 Comments

Rufous Hummingbird in my Garden

Using WhatBird, I was able to identify a really beautiful hummingbird I saw in my garden today as a Rufous Hummingbird. It seems that these guys breed in the Pacific Northwest and spend the winter in Mexico, so he must have been taking a break in my Southern California garden on his way to Mexico.

Photo by Janruss

Some interesting facts I learned from WhatBird:

The Rufous Hummingbird has the longest migration route of all North American hummingbirds.
This bird has an excellent memory for location. They have been observed investigating where an absent feeder was located the previous year.
A group of hummingbirds has many collective nouns, including a “bouquet”, “glittering”, “hover”, “shimmer”, and “tune” of hummingbirds.

August 9, 2008 | Filed Under Attracting Birds Bees and Butterflies | 2 Comments

Easy Ways to Attract Butterflies to Your Urban Garden

The other day I stopped dead in my tracks as a beautiful orange, black and white butterfly looped and fluttered among the plants along the side of my apartment building. It was so beautiful and peaceful to watch. After a quick internet search, I learned that the butterfly I most likely saw was the relatively common, Painted Lady Butterfly. Common or not, it got me thinking about attracting more of its kind.

Photo by Wildlifeshot

Of course, there are many good reasons to lure butterflies to your garden, least of which is that butterflies are beautiful. Butterflies, like bees, pollinate plants. Some plants rely almost exclusively on butterfly pollination. Butterflies are also an important food source for song birds.

Why not try this window box idea from Better Homes & Gardens? It features Salvia, a butterfly favorite.

A. Petunia ‘Supertunia Royal Velvet’ — 4
B. Salvia guarantica ‘Black and Blue’ — 2
C. Angelonia ‘Serena Lavender’ — 2
D. Nierembergia ‘Purple Robe’ — 6
E. Nemesia ‘Blue Lagoon’ — 6

If you plant a few windows in close proximity to one another, you’ll have a better chance of getting a butterfly or two to take notice. Be sure to check out BH&G’s other butterfly container recipes.

Another great way to attract the butterflies local to your area is to find out which native plants they like, and create a container or two featuring those plants. If you Google the words “butterfly,” “garden” and your state or region, you should be able to drum up a page from a local university that will give you authoritative advice on what to plant in your area.

Sources: University of Kentucky Entomology, Colorado State University Extension, The Butterfly Site, and The Garden Helper.

July 30, 2008 | Filed Under Attracting Birds Bees and Butterflies, Container Gardening | 2 Comments

How to Help Bees Do Thier Work When It’s Hot Outside

Some areas of California (where I live) have been having record breaking summer heat this year, which is only making the honey bee problem worse. My local extension office has an article explaining how honey bees are stressed by temperatures over 100 degrees. Apparently when the temps get too high, the worker bees stop foraging for pollen and start trying to find water to bring back to the hive.

Photo by autan

Those of us living in urban spaces have a responsibility (I think) to help support the bee population. Urban sprawl, pollution, chemical pesticides, and the wide-scale introduction of pretty but pollen-free exotic plants are all bad news for bees.

One thing we can do during the height of summer is to have a water source–such as a bird bath–readily available. You can also check out this post I wrote with more tips to attract and support bees.

Have you had success attracting bees to your garden? What did you do that works?

July 28, 2008 | Filed Under Attracting Birds Bees and Butterflies | 3 Comments

Colony Collapse Disorder and Attracting Bees to Your Garden

Colony collapse disorder has been in the news quite a bit lately. Basically, a significant amount of honey bees have been disappearing without a trace for no known reason. American agriculture is heavily dependent on pollination from honey bees, so bees mysteriously disappearing during a time when food prices are already skyrocketing is not good, to say the least…

Photo by Dalantech

Some bee facts:

The honey bee is the number one pollinator in the U.S..
1/3 of the human diet comes from crops that require insect pollination and honey bees pollinate 80% of those crops.
36% of all honey bee hive losses in the U.S. last year appear to be related to colony collapse disorder, where all of the adults in a hive mysteriously disappear.
There are over 4,000 native bee species in the U.S., most of which live solitary lives and are not aggressive like “social” bees such as honey bees.
Native bees can supplement and sometimes improve the work of honey bees [pdf] in pollinating crops.

Fortunately, all is not for naught, and even those of us with small outdoor spaces can help support native bee populations. The upside of attracting native bees to your garden is that they give as well as take. In the process of snacking on the pollen and nectar your plants produce, bees will pollinate your plants, increasing the amount of flowers and fruit your garden produces. For example, native bees are actually better than honey bees at pollinating cherry tomato plants, which are a great fruit to grow on a balcony or patio.

The best way to support native bee populations is to plant flowers and plants native to your region. A good plant nursery in your area can point out the natives and steer you away from exotics. Then add into the mix old heirloom varieties of flowers, such as Cosmos and Black-Eyed Susans. You can get a free packet of bee-friendly wildflower seeds from Burt’s Bees, although buying your own seeds is extremely affordable. Heirloom varieties and native plants provide bees with a high reward for their hard work, while newer creations often have little or no bee food (pollen and nectar). Check out this fact sheet covering plants that are good for native bees [pdf]. Try to plant at least ten varieties of flowers that bees like, as this seems to be the magic number for attracting bees. Also, try to make sure that your bee garden will be blooming continuously from Spring to Fall by planting flowers with different blooming seasons.

There are few other things that bees need. First, they need a source of water. This could be provided simply by filling a bird bath with water or planting a water garden (stay tuned for a future post on container water gardens!). Second, depending on the type of wild bees in your area, they may need materials to build their nests. Some bees need mud to build their nests while others use downy plant fibers and small pebbles. Some types of bees build their nests in the soil, so you may also want to leave a little bit of bare dirt available. If you really want to be a bee benefactor check out this tip sheet for creating a bee nesting site [pdf].

Once you’ve attracted bees to your garden, be sure not to slam the door in their face by spraying with harsh chemical pesticides. Luring bees with your pretty flowers only to kill them with pesticide kind of defeats the purpose! See this post for organic pest control ideas.

Last, but not least, see if you can convince your neighbors to plant some bee friendly flowers. If you can create a large tract of balconies and patios with bee friendly plants, then you’ll be more likely to attract bees and because they will have a large swath of plants on which to feed and hide.

See these sources for more info: What’s the Buzz on…Planting a Bee Garden, Urban Bee Garden, Bee Spotter, Garden Writers Talk About the Birds and Bees, Lawn Care Tips to Help Save Native Bees.