Lesson 4: YOUR HUMMINGBIRD GARDEN
In this lesson, you will learn how to create a natural hummingbird garden, which flowers to plant in your part of the country, and how to photograph your new hummingbird visitors.
THE NATURAL HUMMINGBIRD GARDEN
Hummingbirds, of course, love to feed from flowers more than from feeders. If you can plant a natural hummingbird garden, plant as many flowers as you can. Try to use annuals that bloom all season or perennials that will flower one after the other, so that you always have flowers available for the hummers. Just as it is recommended to keep feeders shielded from too much wind, it is also better to keep hummingbird flowers in areas where they won’t be blown around too much.
Nectar-bearing flowers tend to be colorful, often tubular shaped, and have no scent (because hummingbirds have acute vision but no sense of smell.) Insects are more likely to pollinate blue and yellow flowers, bats prefer scented white flowers, and hummingbirds prefer red, orange, and pink. Of course, both hummers and insects will adapt if their favorite colors aren’t available. Survival takes precedence over preference. Insects and bats are unable to penetrate tubular flowers, so those flowers are left for the hummingbirds.
The efficiency of nature has created a co-adaptive relationship between flowers and hummingbirds. The birds need the flowers to survive, and the flowers need the birds to pollinate them. When a hummingbird feeds, the flower’s anther brushes pollen onto the bird’s body, and the stigma of the next dozen blossoms or so brushes the pollen off so that the flower can reproduce. Each species of plant leaves the pollen on a different part of the hummingbird’s body in order to keep from interfering with the pollen of the other flowers. The placement of the anther and stigma are such that no pollen is ever wasted. Now, that’s evolution at work!
Nature has endowed hummingbirds with an excellent memory, which is why they tend to visit the same gardens every season. Once you have established your yard as hummingbird territory, the birds should visit you year after year.
Besides planting nectar-bearing flowers, give your garden some plants with downy materials, such as willow, moss, eucalyptus, and lichens. This will offer the hummers perfect nesting materials.
To help you create the perfect garden, check out these SuiteU courses: "Planning and Caring For Your First Garden," "Make Your Own Plants," and "Gardening the Square Foot Way."
