Humming Bird Feeder techniques

[phillane]

My wife and I moved into a new home recently which has presented me with new photo ops via my back yard as we have humming birds on our regular visitors list. A few years ago I seem to recall an article in a Nature Photography Magazine on Humming bird photography. As I recall the author used plastic tubing that delivered nectar. The tubing was hidden inside a stem so from the cameras point of view(profile) it appeared like the hummer was approaching a natural object as opposed to a feeder. Long and short I cannot recall the specifics of this set up and wonder if anyone here remembers or can shed some light on this.




Cheers


Phil



nature photography (http://www.lanenatureimages.com)

[LouBuonomo]

use a hypodermic needle to seed the flower and you'll be all set

[Dave Hassell]

Buy The Hummingbird Guide at https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=55
It is excellent.

Regards,

Dave Hassell.

[Peter Hawrylyshyn]

Phil -
You can thread a 25 gauge spinal needle thru the stem/stalk into the flower and then hook it up to IV tubing with an attached IV bag that you've filled with sugar water. This just gives you a continous fine drip/flow of sugar water into the flower

Lou's suggestion is much simpler,although you periodically have to repeat the process. But because there's more sugar water in the flower, you'll tend to attract more bees/wasps

It also helps to trim away some of the surrounding flowers increasing the chances that the HB will come to your flower "laced" with sugar water.

Good luck

[Jim Neely]

I use a water bottle with a tube that is used for hamsters. I bought it at a pet store. I have used it alone, with a red ribbon tied to the tube, and have twistied flowers to it. Using an eye dropper of hypodermic to add sugar water to the flower is useful, too.


jn

[Charlie VanTassel]

I have approximately 50-100 hummingbirds here at my home on a daily basis. One technique I use is to simply set up some flowers in a vase near the feeders, and then take down the feeders. Every bird will go to the flowers to check them out. You get about 10-15 minutes before they figure out that there is no sugar in there, so after about 10 minutes I put the feeders back up. Works for me.