Texas Hummingbirds

The Hummingbirds Are Back!

If you spend any time on a back porch in Central Texas in the spring, sooner or later you’ll hear it before you see it – a high-pitched buzz that materializes out of nowhere and locks into a hover at the nearest flower or feeder. The hummingbirds are back!

In the Austin area, the most common visitor is the black-chinned hummingbird, Archilochus alexandri. They typically arrive in late March or April, and once the first one finds your yard, the rest tend to follow.

Hummingbirds Eat Bugs!

Most people think of hummingbirds as nectar feeders, and the feeders don’t help that impression. But somewhere between sixty and eighty percent of a hummingbird’s diet is actually small insects and spiders—gnats, fruit flies, aphids, soft-bodied bugs plucked out of the air or off leaves. Sugar keeps them moving, but bugs build them, and protein is what they feed their chicks.

A hummingbird’s heart beats around 1,200 times a minute. They consume roughly half their body weight every day just to stay functional. What looks like play—all that dashing and hovering around the yard—is actually nonstop calorie-chasing. A hummingbird that goes a few hours without eating is in real trouble.

Which also means a yard full of pesticides is a yard without hummingbirds. They need those bugs. A healthy, lightly managed yard with some native plants is doing more for the local hummingbird population than any number of feeders.

Hummingbirds’ Favorite Plants

Hummingbirds evolved alongside tubular flowers in the Americas, and their preferred blooms tend to be red, orange, or coral—the color range their eyes are most tuned to. They’re not particularly drawn to the petunias and impatiens at most garden centers.

In Central Texas, the plants that do the most work for hummingbirds are mostly native, and they’re tougher than most of what gets sold as landscaping. A few worth planting:

• Turk’s Cap is probably the single best hummingbird plant for a Central Texas yard. It blooms red and tubular from late spring through fall, tolerates shade, handles drought, and is hard to kill.
• Flame Acanthus does similar work through the worst of the Texas summer, when a lot of other plants have quit.
• Autumn Sage holds up to the heat and blooms reliably through the season.
• Coral Honeysuckle – the native one – will climb whatever you give it to climb and the hummingbirds love it.
• Desert Willow and Mexican Buckeye are worth mentioning separately. A single mature tree in bloom right when the spring migrants are moving through will pull more hummingbirds in than a whole bed of smaller plants. Trees do disproportionate work, and these two are among the best for pollinators and hummingbirds alike.

The feeder is a supplement. The yard – and what grows and lives in it – is the real meal.

About Hummingbird Feeders

If you do put up a feeder, skip the pre-mixed red nectar from the store. There’s no solid evidence the dye helps birds find the feeder, and some research suggests it may cause harm over time. A simple homemade mix of one part white sugar to four parts water – boiled to dissolve, then cooled – is all they need. Keep feeders clean and change the nectar every few days in the heat.

One more thing about feeders: black-chinned hummingbirds are considerably more aggressive than their size suggests. Two of them at the same feeder usually turns into a small aerial dogfight. If you want to keep the peace, put up more than one feeder and spread them around.

Hummingbird Feeders Make Great Gifts – Not Just for Mother’s Day

Hummingbird feeders have a way of becoming an obsession for the people who love them, and they make genuinely good gifts – not just for Mother’s Day, though that’s a natural fit with the birds arriving right around the same time each spring. For anyone who spends time in the yard or on the back porch, a quality feeder is the kind of gift that keeps giving long after the occasion.

The camera feeders – the ones that photograph and video every bird that visits and send the footage to your phone – are surprisingly good. High-definition footage of a hummingbird’s wings from inches away is a different experience than watching from across the yard. A classic glass feeder is also a fine call. You can’t really go wrong either way.

Humming Bird Feeders + Flowers = Mosquito Control!

And while you’re at it, plant some tubular red flowers nearby. The hummingbirds will find it. They’ll work on the mosquitoes while they’re there too – they won’t make a serious dent on their own, but the dragonflies and the Mexican free-tailed bats are on the same job, and between the three of them, everybody gets a meal and you get to sit outside without slapping your arms every thirty seconds.

Want Help Attracting Hummingbirds?

Give us a call! We can help you choose and plant the best trees and flowers to attract hummingbirds to your yard throughout the season.