How to Make Hummingbird Food

Hello, my friend, hello again; today we come together to talk about How to Make Hummingbird Food and hope the blog can help you.

Invite hummingbirds into your backyard by offering them a feeder filled with the sugary nectar they love. It’s easy, quick, and economical to make your own hummingbird food.

Like tiny flying jewels, hummingbirds are a treat to observe zipping, perching, or sipping in your garden. There are around 300 species of hummingbirds, but only a handful venture north of South America and when they do, it’s typically during the summertime. The ruby-throated hummingbird is one of the very few that travels to the eastern half of North America, while in the west, you might see rufous, Costa’s, Allen’s, or black-chinned hummingbirds. Anna’s hummingbird is one of the few hummingbird species that doesn’t regularly migrate and remains year-round in North America, mostly along the Pacific coast.

What do hummingbirds eat?

Although hummingbirds do eat tiny insects and spiders, and also feast on sap and pollen, it’s nectar that makes up the bulk of their diet. Their incredibly fast metabolism is the highest of any animal on earth: A hummingbird’s heart can beat an astounding 1,200 times per minute, their wings can flap over 50 times per second (which is what creates the buzzing or humming sound that gives these birds their common name), they reach speeds of 25 to 30 mph in flight, and their long tongues can dip in and out of a flower or feeder 18 times per second. To maintain their enormous need for energy, the average hummingbird consumes between 1.5 and 8 times its body weight each day in sugar. To match that, you’d need to consume roughly 150,000 calories each day.

The most effective way to draw these nectar-hungry birds to your yard is by planting the flowers they naturally seek out, which are typically tubular-shaped blooms in bright red, pink, purple, or orange. Some hummingbird favorites include lantana, bee balm, foxglove, salvias, lupine, flowering tobacco, petunias, and zinnias. If you don’t have a garden or you just want to admire your feathered visitors up close, consider installing a hummingbird feeder filled with the high-calorie, sugary nectar these birds need to survive.

Learning how to make homemade hummingbird food is simple and economical, particularly if you have a lot of visitors draining your feeders each day. Here’s how to make hummingbird nectar—you’ll never have to buy the premade stuff again!