This week I did a video on how to properly feed hummingbirds. There is a lot of terrible info out there about feeding these cool birds so I thought a video covering all the aspects of how to do it correctly would be good. I tried to make it flow well and moving along as there is quite a bit of info in the video.

Hope you enjoy it and please let me know what you think about the video.

Thanks, Anthony

Feed my hummingbirds the same way. I don't change the fluid as often you state but I don't let it get cloudy.
I have filled my moat 1/2 full with vegetable oil and never had a problem, my moats are 3 1/2 inches deep. I've never seen anything even look in the moat. Probably pull my feeders in a few days. Most of ours have left along with the orioles. Every Labor day around here they migrate away and you could just about set your clock by it. Thank you for posting this I really enjoy watching and continuously learning about hummingbirds

Great video once again, Anthony.

I have three species , the US smallest one also. I have those large feeders you featured, they are so easy to clean. I use a little bleach in dawn soap to clean them. Three of them, set around my cabin, near the windows, where the Rufus ones , usually the bullies, cant guard them all.

Today I had one straggler , probably from Canada or Alaska visiting. I leave one up until Im certain they are all south.

I'm still smiling at your stoic expression, holding up the two pot plates , in your honeybee water video...you own the market on English humor !

Turtledale - I have seen hummers drink out of moats on more than one occasion. Please don't put vegetable oil in them - it isn't toxic to the birds, but if it gets on there bill and they preen their feathers with it they are dead as they can no longer thermoregulate. It doesn't take much of a temp spike to kill a hummer.

Sharon - we had a rufus show up one winter (it was flying in front of our windows looking at the red drapes!) and it stayed all through the winter and left when it started to warm up. We kept a heated feeder up for it and even got to help the banding crew catch it and band it.

That's cool, Anthony ! He sure came to the right house for help.

I've had , many times, first thing in spring, hummers appear and go right to where I hang the feeders. Before Ive had the chance to hang them back . So I know they were here last year. I like that.

love hummers .we use bout 90 or 95 pounds of sugar feeding them. have caught 189 so far this year.and 623 in 5 years.put bands on them so alot are recaps .

After reading this I had to ask my other half how much suger we have used so far. She said we are on our 5th 25# bag. We keep 10 -12 feeders going all season.

Cool video, nicely presented.

We are able to feed with refills ever 3 days on four feeders. It starts off hot and heavy late April through first week of May and then kinda plateaus for a month. We remove the feeders third week of August, logic is to not keep them on an artificial food source as migration time comes.

Hummingbirds are right up there with bats on my list of cool critters around the house.

mad-mike : leaving feeders up won't stop them from migrating. They start to head south based on day length, food availability has nothing to do with it. There are always a few stragglers that will find the late feeders helpful as flowers may be in short supply. There is also a good chance of having a rufous or Anna's hummingbird show up late in the season. When hummingbirds are still around late in the fall or into the winter they are almost always rufous or Anna's.

Butcher - that is a ton of banding! We had the bander for our area come to our place when we had a rufous on a feeder one winter. Caught it and had it banded in about 5 minutes. Pretty cool. I've banded a lot of ducks and geese, and my wife has banded all sorts of songbirds at her previous job, but that was a first for both of us.

We like to have flowers like fuchsia and others in the area for supplementing the feeder. Nothing like watching them feed naturally.

Thank you, Anthony. This helps a lot. I do have one question.
I had heard that, because they are territorial, feeders should not be within sight of each other. I see you have many clusters of feeders.

Old pup - It is best to spread feeders out across a property. Where that video was taken there were many clusters of feeders like that spread out. There were hundreds of hummingbirds so it was also tough for a bird to really defend against all the others.

Well produced as always