Yes I know all birds are useful to some extent. My yard is free of mosquitoes and other flying pests because I have three or four Hummingbirds and about six Swallows that eat them up. One swallow, for example, can eat eight hundred mosquitoes a day.

Attracting Hummers is easy especially if someone nearby has feeders out. We have two kinds here, the year around resident, Anna’s and the Rufus, which shows up here in April and leave in August.  Just having plants such as Honeysuckle will attract these birds but not for long. What you want is a pair of Hummers that will raise their young in your yard year after year. To do this you must have clean feeders and you must not let them run out.



Feeders get black mould in them. The mould grows more quickly when it gets warmer, but staying ahead of this problem is easy. Get feeders that are durable and most importantly, easy to take apart when you need to clean them. Go to a bird store to get any type of feeder, forget Wal-mart, their feeders and bird food are poor value for your money. I make my own feeders because I am a glassblower but I keep a ‘’perky pet‘’ four-flower feeder around as well; they last for years. I have about ten feeders out but you need at least two, space them so you have at least twenty feet between them; you get more birds that way.  Just use a sugar/water four to one solution, no red dye. Boil it up for a short while. I keep excess nectar in the fridge in a glass bottle.

Bears don’t really care about your Hummer feeders but will chew them up if you make it really easy to get hold of.  Raccoons, as well, can be a nuisance but if you put it up out of their way that will solve the problem

We have two kinds of Swallows here, the Tree Swallow with a green back and brown Barn Swallows. I have the Tree Swallow at my place. These guys are up hunting insects before dawn; that’s right they start their daily hunt in the dark.  You can hear them making a chit-chit kind of sound.  I've often wondered if they echo located insects like bats. The common wisdom is that these birds can’t do that but there are similar types of birds called Swiftlets that do; who knows?  They have two separate kinds of nests.  The nests can be easily ordered on the Internet. As well, information on how to place nests is very important. The Tree Swallow nest is a freestanding box, the Barn Swallow nest is a shelf under a dry spot.

Hummers and Tree Swallows have other things in common besides being beautiful and incredible fliers. They have gorgeous iridescent feathers; the green on a Tree Swallows’ back is as beautiful as the blue on a Peacock.  They can see ultra violet light which we can’t and it’s possible they can see polarized light as well.

They are both ‘’time shifted’’. As their insect pray is very fast, and the birds that prey on them are even faster, these two birds are so time shifted the can catch raindrops falling through the air.  Other animals are time shifted in the other direction, for example rabbits are adapted to slow movement such as a Coyote sneaking up on them.

My next article will be about birds that clean pests from your garden.

Cheers,
Lawrence
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