Bird feeder
[2] Black oil sunflower seeds also contain a large amount of fat; therefore they are especially good to use in the winter.
Yeasts tend to grow in hummingbird feeders and spoil the solution, so they must be refreshed frequently and kept very clean to avoid harm to the birds.
When placing a hummingbird feeder, the feeder is best suited 15 to 20 feet from windows; 10 to 15 feet from the nearest cover, like shrubs or bushes; and in an open area that receives partial sun, so that hummingbirds can move from nectar source to nectar source.
[7] Hummingbird top-fill feeders are popular among bird lovers because they are easy to fill and clean and also because they do not need to be turned upright which means that there are less chances that the nectar is spilled.
In 1899, Clark University professor Clifton F. Hodge wrote in Bird-Lore magazine about feeding a hummingbird that had flown into his classroom by adding drops of honey to flowers.
The following year, Carolyn B. Soule successfully fed hummingbirds with an experiment involving a colored paper trumpetflower, a small glass bottle, and sugar water.
[10] Research conducted by self-taught ornithologist Althea Sherman from 1907 to 1913 revealed that hummingbirds preferred to drink sugar water from plain bottles instead of imitation flowers.
Between 1927 and 1929, Benjamin Tucker and Dorothy May fed hummingbirds with cocktail glasses covered with tin or wood hole-containing tops.
[11] Tucker subsequently developed early automatic hummingbird feeders, which were partially adapted from drinking apparatuses used for farm-raised chickens and featured spherical containers at the top with narrow necks leading down to a perching area that could feed eight hummingbirds simultaneously.
[12] Also during the 1920s, Margaret L. Bodine successfully experimented with feeding hummingbirds using two-inch-long bottles made of brightly colored materials and filled with sugar water that she left among clematis flowers.
[13] Inspired at least partially by Bodine's work, Edith Webster similarly experimented with feeders and herself tasted nectar from various flowers to better replicate the sweetness level preferred by hummingbirds for her sugar water solution, arriving at two parts water to one part sugar as the optimal ratio.
[14] In 1932, W. R. Sullivan invented a feeder designed to prevent other birds or insects from drinking from it, which he produced and sold locally around Kerrville, Texas.
[15][16] Most of the early commercial hummingbird feeders used bottles or vials full of sugar water that was dispensed via various imitation flower designs, as had their noncommercial antecedents.
[17] Prominent examples of hummingbird feeders sold between the 1930s and 1950s were those designed and built by H. R. Davis, Robert Morgan, Winthrop Packard, and the Tucker Sanctuary.
[18] Since the start of commercialization, hummingbird feeders have largely evolved into designs of two distinct types: "vacuums", which are inverted cylinders with feeding ports at the bottom, and "saucers", which resemble two bowls or dishes fixed together in a top-to-bottom orientation, with feeding ports on the top side.
Suet is high in fat which helps to keep birds warm and nourished during the cold winter.
[29] Birds may contract and spread diseases like salmonellosis by gathering at feeders; poorly maintained feeding and watering stations may also cause illness.
Birds at feeders risk predation by cats and other animals, or may incur injury by flying into windows.
[34] In this article, Rogers explains how the use of bird feeders is inherently fraught with negative impacts and risks such as fostering dependency, altering natural distribution, density, and migration patterns, interfering with ecological processes, causing malnutrition, facilitating the spread of disease, and increasing the risk of death from cats, pesticides, hitting windows, and other causes.
