For The Union-Tribune

Among life’s most magical moments is when you stand quietly in your garden and a hummingbird hovers less than a foot away in front of your face, seemingly taking you in and letting you do the same.

It’s not exactly interspecies communion, but it can feel like communication of some kind. Especially when it happens more than once. Which it can if you have hummingbirds visiting daily because you’ve created a space that welcomes and nourishes them.

Apparently a lot of us in the U.S. have been doing just that. According to Emergen Research, the hummingbirds feed market, which includes nectar solutions, feeders and supplements, was valued at half a billion dollars in 2024 and is expected to reach $1.2 billion by 2034.

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But hummingbirds don’t live on sugar water alone, so while hanging some feeders is useful, creating a holistic habitat that provides them with other nutritional and life needs is just as critical.

Keep in mind, caring for hummingbirds is a commitment to maintenance:

• Making sugar water, keeping it fresh and the feeders clean and protected from ants, bees, wasps and other intruders.

• Providing clean water for bathing in sheltered, clean bird baths.

• If possible, growing native plants that not only flower but attract the insects that hummingbirds eat and the spider webs they use to create their little nests.

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• You have to keep your cats indoors, too, and be strategic when placing feeders and fountains to protect the birds as much as possible from other potential predators, like hawks.

Creating an ecosystem with food sources

Birds find most of their nutritional needs in nature, explained Dan Payne, owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Scripps Ranch, which sells feeders, food and other backyard bird gear.

“What we do is supplement their feeding in a way that helps bring them closer to us so that we can see them and enjoy having them in our lives,” he added.

Essentially, he said, what we’re doing is a hobby.

But it’s a hobby that potentially goes beyond satisfying our enjoyment. By creating an ecosystem in our gardens, we’re contributing to the health of our environment. We’re attracting pollinators. Some will do their jobs and fly off. Others become a source of food for hummingbirds and other birds.

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Colorful, tubular blooms of Mexican honeysuckle at McLeod’s home fit the birds’ long beaks. (Luke Johnson / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Hummingbirds are frequent visitors to McLeod’s yard, especially in early morning and at dusk. (Luke Johnson / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

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Colorful, tubular blooms of Mexican honeysuckle at McLeod’s home fit the birds’ long beaks. (Luke Johnson / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

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Hummingbirds, said Kelcy Coleman, conservation coordinator with the San Diego Bird Alliance, use nectar for most of their diet, and sugar water is a great replacement for that if you don’t have native plants.

“But they eat protein for a complete diet,” she noted. “They feed on small, tiny little bugs, and especially during breeding season, they will feed the bugs to their chicks, so the chicks will have more protein and grow faster. They also need shelter plants, like bushier plants or trees, to be able to rest on, as well as build nests, so a layer of habitat.

“What I mean by a layer is blooming and flowering plants,” Coleman added, “And then, bushes or coastal sage scrub habitat, where the bushes are taller than the smaller plants, and then sporadic trees as well.”

Native plants are recommended for several reasons. You’ll have more success with plants that prefer the soil and climate where they naturally grow. Many have low water needs. Wildlife is dependent on them for food and shelter. And if you plant natives, you’re connecting your habitat with others, including in our canyons and fields, giving the birds a broader home base.

Making plant choices

What native plants are we talking about? The most often mentioned is the California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum), with its brilliantly colored tubular flowers — designed for those long hummingbird bills. Coleman also recommended Dudleya, a succulent that flowers from spring to midsummer, again with vibrantly colored tubular flowers.

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Then there are monkey flowers: The bush monkey flower has orange and yellow blooms, while red bush and scarlet monkey flowers, of course, have red, trumpet-shape flowers.

Others suggested to me were coral bells and Western columbine.

Fuchsia-flowering gooseberry (Ribes speciosum) at Anstine Nature Preserve, seen during a nature walk, is a plant that attracts hummingbirds. (San Diego Bird Alliance)

Bush sunflower (Encelia californica) at UC San Diego’s Kendall-Frost Mission Bay Marsh Reserve, in Mission Bay. The blooms also draw hummingbirds. (San Diego Bird Alliance)

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Fuchsia-flowering gooseberry (Ribes speciosum) at Anstine Nature Preserve, seen during a nature walk, is a plant that attracts hummingbirds. (San Diego Bird Alliance)

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If you’re sensing a pattern, you’re right, hummers have great vision and are drawn to bright colors, especially reds. (That’s why the most popular hummingbird feeders are red.) So a good way to attract more hummingbirds is to grow native plants that have those brilliantly colored flowers. You can find them at nurseries across San Diego County.

A good source for finding both plants for your specific needs and nurseries that sell them is the Calscape website, calscape.org. Also, advised Coleman, try to choose plants that bloom in succession. Anna’s and Allen’s hummingbirds are species that tend to be year-round residents in San Diego, instead of migrating, so we need to have a variety of plants that can bloom throughout the year.

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And don’t have anything to do with pesticides. Use the bugs to your advantage: They’re the food that hummingbirds — and other birds — need as part of their diet. You don’t want to poison what you’re working so hard to attract.

All this may lead you to think that if you don’t have an in-ground garden, you can’t attract and keep hummingbirds. Renee McLeod, a Certified Access Birding Outing leader who leads tours for the San Diego Bird Alliance and inclusive tours with EveryBody Birds San Diego, would beg to differ.

McLeod and her husband’s outdoor space is a large deck, which she’s outfitted with several feeders, a couple of birdbaths, platform feeders for other birds and some flowering shrubs. Not only does she get visits from hummingbirds throughout the day — although mostly in early morning and at dusk — there are times when more than half a dozen hit the bar together.

Over the years, McLeod has changed feeder types as she realized they were harder to clean, were getting moldy or were hard to fill.

“When we first started, we were using purchased powdered food, and we stopped doing that pretty quickly,” she said. “That stuff is not good at all, and just the regular sugar is great.”

In fact, you may find something called electro nectar for sale, with ingredients such as sucrose, potassium sorbate, citric acid, sodium bicarbonate and potassium bicarbonate.

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“I don’t think we need to feed birds anything except for just the sugar,” said McLeod. “They get all the rest of their stuff from tiny little gnats. In fact, when they’ve got a lot of babies, and we go to empty the feeder, it’ll have all these little, tiny gnats and bugs inside, and that’s because they’re dipping their beaks into the nectar with them into the feeder, and then going to feed the babies.”

Choosing a hummingbird feeder

How do you choose the right feeder? According to Mark Hocking, the former owner of California Backyard Birds in Encinitas (who still works there part-time), try to buy a feeder that has at least some red on it.

“They see red at farther distances, and it tends to be their favorite color,” he said. “You want to buy a hummingbird feeder that’s easy to clean, because you want to clean it thoroughly, and you want to clean it every third day, and to get all that gunk out of there. The sugars ferment and that’s bad for the bird — and it ferments faster in hot weather.”

McLeod recommends a simple-to-make sugar water solution for the feeder, using granulated sugar, not powdered food. (Luke Johnson / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The sugar solution ferments, especially in summer heat, which is bad for the birds, so feeders should be cleaned out every third day, says Mark Hocking of California Backyard Birds in Encinitas. (Luke Johnson / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

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A hummingbird perches on a feeder on McLeod’s deck. (Luke Johnson / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

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McLeod recommends a simple-to-make sugar water solution for the feeder, using granulated sugar, not powdered food. (Luke Johnson / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

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Look for feeders that have large necks that allow you easier access to clean inside. Try to find ones that have raised ports, not ones with replaceable flowers, because mold can get trapped in them. The ones with yellow flowers on the ports are also said to attract bees and wasps, so skip them.

And look for units with water moats, either built into the feeder or that you can hang the feeder from. They prevent ants from crawling in. Just remember to keep the moat filled with water.

Cleaning the feeder

You’ll need scrub brushes to get inside the bottle for cleaning. There are different opinions on how to clean. Some experts suggest using distilled white vinegar, others a 9-to-1 ratio of water and household bleach. McLeod said she’s been cleaning her feeders for years with dish soap.

“I think the thing is to wash them,” she said. “The big thing is you don’t really need to disinfect them unless they get full of mold.” Examine for black dots inside and around the feeder. That could be mold.

Also scrub the threads of the bottle neck, the feeder section and its threads, as well as the ports. You can find tiny brushes that look like mascara wands to clean inside the ports. Rinse it all thoroughly and dry.

Filling the feeder

Once the feeder is cleaned and prepared, fill it with a solution of 1 cup water to a quarter-cup of granulated sugar (not powdered sugar, and not honey). The easiest way to dissolve the sugar is to measure and boil the water in a kettle and add it to sugar in a bowl. Stir and let it come to room temperature before filling your feeder.

When you start out, just fill partway to get a sense of how many birds you’re feeding to avoid wasting the sugar water. One way to expedite feeding is to make a larger batch and store that in the refrigerator for up to a week. But again, bring the sugar water to room temperature before filling the feeder.

Placing the feeder

There are a few factors to keep in mind when selecting a spot to hang feeders: sun exposure, territorial behavior and safety.

“If you’re looking at a small space, keep it away from windows, because bird strike is a very common issue when they go into a feeder and they don’t realize how close that window is,” said Hannah St. John, conservation assistant with the San Diego Bird Alliance and coordinator for the 11-acre Anstine Nature Preserve in Vista. “There are decals you can put on windows so birds register it’s actually a solid surface.”

She added that if possible, keep feeders in the shade to keep the nectar from fermenting. If you put up multiple feeders and you find that you have territorial male hummingbirds (they’re the ones with all the color), place feeders as far from each other as possible and even blocked from one another.

Considering water needs

Another crucial component for hummingbirds is a clean water source. According to St. John, they enjoy water, not just for drinking, but also baths.

“Hummingbirds also might get pollen on their feathers, so maybe that’s a way to clean themselves off, but most birds do enjoy taking baths, and so they’ll splash around a bit, and then that will kind of help them realign their feathers, and they usually preen after a quick bath.”

Some birds will come to still water, but moving water is attractive. Buy a fountain or place a small solar fountain in a flower pot saucer filled only an inch or so. Add rocks for perching. And clean it weekly to keep it free of debris and algae.

Most of your setup will start as trial and error. It takes patience when you start — and even as you continue. You may get a single hummingbird for a while, then a couple and then, hopefully, more. Then not as many for a few days. If there are males, you’ll see them driving off other males to protect what they see as their territory. Some may not return.

Some weeks you’ll need to fill the feeders daily and then think, “Where did they go?” But stick with it. You’re both witness to wildlife in all their behaviors — and because hummingbirds seem to be very tolerant of people, you can get truly up close and personal with them.