Attracting hummingbirds (and convincing them to stay a while)

Photo: Ruby-throated Hummingbird with Scarlet Beebalm, Sarah Holtz

Plant NOVA Natives

Hummingbirds may be the tiniest birds on the planet, but they are among the easiest and most delightful to observe. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are especially common in northern Virginia during the spring migration months of April and May and are the only species of hummingbirds who breed here. Most Ruby-throated Hummingbirds we spot through mid-May are flying through to other destinations. But some will choose to stay for weeks if the landscape offers them what they need.

With forethought and some planning, you can have a clear and frequent view of these 3.5-ounce, dive-bombing, backward-flying, shimmering, drama-obsessed, and Ferrari-engine-powered birds. If that sounds like fun, here are some tips to attract them now and get them to linger for the season.

Feed them nectar 

Hummingbirds have extreme metabolisms. A Ruby-throated Hummingbird’s heart beats up to 1,200 times per minute and its wings beat 53 times per second. They must consume very specific foods to survive, and they eat almost constantly.  

At least 20 percent of a hummingbird’s diet is nectar. They can’t taste “sweet,” but the nectar is a source of high-quality carbohydrates for their energy needs. They are therefore attracted to areas with nectar-producing native plants, many of which you can purchase, plant and grow. Before you make your plant selections, however, consider this. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds need to find and consume nectar through spring, summer, and fall. You should therefore select nectar-producing plants that flower at different times during the growing season.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird with Scarlet Beebalm, Sarah Holtz

Cardinal Flower, Eastern Red Columbine, and Coral Honeysuckle are considered the “big three” wildflower nectar sources for hummingbirds. Their flowers are all red, which signals the presence of carbohydrates to hummingbirds but not to bees who can’t see the color. They have also developed long tubular flowers with a pendulous and perch-less form, making them ideal sources of nectar for hovering, long-billed hummingbirds.

Of these three, Coral Honeysuckle is probably the number one recommended native plant for attracting hummingbirds. It blooms continuously through the growing season, timing its first bloom in northern Virginia close to the arrival of migrating Ruby-throated Hummingbirds in April. Eastern Red Columbine blooms in the spring and provides an early source of nectar, while Cardinal Flower begins blooming in July and lasts approximately 6-8 weeks. Planting all three around your property ensures a steady flow of nectar for many months.

You can also supplement your nectar-producing plants with hummingbird feeders filled with sugar water that mimics the carbohydrate content of nectar. Feeders can be purchased at any wild-bird center and hung near your window for close up views of the birds. Make sure you select a feeder that is easy to open and clean. Bacteria and fungi grow quickly in them, especially if placed in the sun. Once a week, or more frequently in warm weather, disassemble and clean your feeder thoroughly in hot water with mild dish soap. Scrub the pieces with a clean brush, rinse in cold water, and air-dry before refilling. 

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology provides a recipe for making your own hummingbird feeder solution. Use ¼ cup of granulated cane sugar per cup of unsoftened, hot, and non-distilled water. In cold rainy weather you can make it a bit stronger if you like with up to 1/3 cup of sugar per cup of water. While some people boil their sugar water solution, that is not necessary if your drinking water is safe and your feeder is kept clean. Never use food coloring in the solution.

Feed them protein and fat

Although we tend to think of hummingbirds as mostly nectar eaters, that isn’t close to the truth. According to Doug Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware and national proponent of incorporating native plants in residential landscapes, only 20 percent of a hummingbird’s diet is nectar while 80 percent is composed of insects and spiders. Cornell’s “Birds of the World” reports that rough estimates from fecal samples indicate a large percentage of insects in the birds’ diet, perhaps as high as 50-60 percent. Whatever figure further study indicates, it’s clear that only biologically diverse ecosystems that have incorporated a range of native plants and native trees can produce enough insects and spiders to feed any species of birds consistently and well. This is because native plants and trees co-evolved with specific insects, so they are entirely interdependent upon one another.

An adequate supply of insects, particularly caterpillars that birds use to feed their young, is simply necessary to attract and keep hummingbirds. Spiders, flies, aphids, caterpillars, and gnats are all common sources of protein and fat in a ruby-throated hummingbird’s diet. Dr. Tallamy believes that hummingbirds are actually insectivores who happen to eat nectar. If your yard is bereft of native plants and trees, hummingbirds can’t stay there, especially when you consider that they build their nests using spider silk to bind and hold the construction materials together. Such a landscape can neither feed them nor help them to successfully breed. It also follows that you must not spray your yard with insecticides, since chemicals intended to kill ticks or adult mosquitoes will kill all the other insects as well.

Know when to expect them next year

If you are able to attract hummingbirds this year, remember to put out your clean feeder once again in mid-April to welcome them back. There is evidence that they have strong “site fidelity,” meaning they tend to return to their favorite feeding and breeding sites year after year, a remarkable feat for such small and graceful creatures.

For more details, see the Plant NOVA Natives website, the Wildlife Sanctuary Program's website, and Cornell’s All About Birds. 

Attracting Pollinators to Upton Hill Park

Photo: Pollinator Garden, Musa Murawih

Musa Murawih

Starting in 2020, I worked with volunteers to move some of the native plant bounty from my yard into Upton Hill Regional Park, in Arlington. What started as an isolated project has evolved into one element of a larger ASNV program, Stretch Our Parks. The program brings ASNV together with parks, partners, volunteers, and the communities surrounding the parks to increase valuable native habitat. But let’s back up and review how I got here.

My first memory of connecting with birds was when I was 6 years old. My brother and I were walking among sunt trees (Prickly Acacia, Vachellia nilotica) on the edge of the Diwaimi wadi in the desert of North Kordofan, Sudan. A male of what was likely a Nile Valley Sunbird was feeding on nectar of the abundant yellow flowers, jumping from branch to branch as it sang. It flashed its wings and long tail feathers showing the stunning yellow, green, blue, and other iridescent colors. I was immediately enchanted. When my dad came back from work, I told him I wanted a shirt as pretty as the sunbird! 

Birds enchant us for many reasons. It is not just their central role in supporting life on this planet. They are the very embodiment of some of the ideals we cherish most: beauty and freedom. 

The sunt trees in the valley were sort of our backyard. I say that only figuratively because our home was a wool tent, and we only stayed there for the summer season, before moving to higher grounds in anticipation of the rain. The birds, the animals, and my community all shared the trees. Our tent was pitched under a group of them for extra shade. Their gum was our candy. We used their fruits to heal ailments or tan animal skins. For us to survive, they needed to survive. 

Many years and places have passed since that childhood memory. My home is no longer North Kordofan, but northern Virginia. My camel is a Subaru Forester. The wool tent is a home in suburbia. Yet the basics remain: regardless of where we reside and what passport we carry, we need to share this planet with other creatures, and trees and other plants are front and center in this resource-sharing equation.

The author planting his pollinator garden, Houda Karrar

That is why ASNV, on whose Board I sit, is currently embarking on an exciting endeavor that is close to my heart. The Stretch Our Parks collaborative project is intended to link some of the existing area parks with the neighborhoods and backyards around them. Audubon is working with management, stewards, and neighbors of those parks to improve habitat so that birds and wildlife can also find refuge in our neighborhoods. As an immigrant who came to America seeking refuge, I can certainly relate.

We can all help in this effort, and no help is too small. We can hang a bird feeder in our property or put a birdbath in the yard. We can stop using harmful pesticides on our lawns. We can remove invasives at our homes. We can choose to plant a native tree next time we want to plant one. 

My pollinator garden, Musa Murawih

On my end, I removed a three-foot wide strip of lawn along the wall of my townhouse and replaced it with a native pollinator garden. The project was so successful that I did not know what to do with my excess flowers. Then, as I was teaming up with other volunteers to remove invasives at Upton Hill Regional Park, I had a small eureka moment: why don’t I transplant some of my flowers to Upton Hill? So I did. With the help of Upton Hill’s manager Evan McGurrin, Park Steward Jill Barker, my fellow ASNV Board member Joan Haffey, and a team of park volunteers, we cleared three small areas where I began to transplant flowers starting in the fall of 2020. 

Cleared area for plantings at Upton Hill Regional Park, Musa Murawih

The beds are now in their third season. My goal is to make these pollinator gardens self-sustaining, and I am hopeful they will be in the next couple of seasons. 

The Stretch Our Parks work shows how important it is to see habitat and wildlife as one thing. When I think back about that sunbird childhood memory today, I don’t only see the sunbirds; I also see the row of sunt trees, the habitat that fed and supported them.

The author with Showy Goldenrod in its second season, Jill Barker

Want birds and butterflies? Plant native shrubs!

Photo: Shrubby Saint John’s Wort, Margaret Fisher

Margaret Fisher

When it comes to the curb appeal of our houses and other buildings, the difference between starkly naked and softly clothed is the shrubs. What is a shrub, anyway? According to famous bird expert David Allen Sibley, “If you can walk under it, it’s a tree; if you have to walk around it, it’s a shrub.” Other than being multi-stemmed and relatively short, a shrub is pretty much the same as a tree and therefore provides the same environmental benefits, albeit to a smaller degree. And the difference between a native shrub and a non-native one is that the former will not only beautify a property but will turn it into a living landscape that supports the butterflies and birds.

Many people are looking at their yards and at public land and realizing that a lot of the space is being wasted. Turf grass has its advantages for certain purposes, such as providing a place to walk or play sports, but as a non-native plant, it does nothing for the ecosystem and requires a lot of input to maintain. Chipping away at the lawn with native shrubs can quickly cover the ground at a very low cost. Beyond the initial watering to get them established, they will require little or no maintenance from then on.

Shrubby St. John’s Wort, Margaret Fisher

For small spaces, there are some native shrubs that naturally stay short, such as Shrubby Saint John’s Wort (Hypericum prolificum) with its bright yellow flowers. There are also smaller cultivars of larger shrubs, such as Winterberry Holly (Ilex verticillata) with its red berries that persist into January until they finally soften up and become a food source for hungry birds. If you use shrubs whose ultimate height fits the space you have in mind, the yearly shearing task will be eliminated. These and many other native shrubs are described on the Plant NOVA Natives website, which also points to places to buy them.

Some native shrubs grow tall enough to provide shade and can be an alternative to a small flowering tree. Common Witch-hazel is an example of that. So named because of the cute bumps it gets on its leaves in the shape of a witch’s hat, this native shrub is also magical for flowers that are revealed in November after the leaves fall off. Those bumps, by the way, are caused by the reaction of the plant to a chemical injected by a tiny insect, the Witch-hazel Cone Gall Aphid. The cone-shaped bumps provide food and shelter to the female aphids as they lay their eggs.

Native shrubs can fill in the spaces between trees. From an environmental perspective, this arrangement is ideal, providing shelter and food at multiple heights, something we have lost in many of our woods to excessive browsing by deer. (In fact, although “Nature’s first green is gold,” if you look into the woods of Northern Virginia right now, there is a suspicious amount of green, much of which is due to invasive species such as Multiflora Rose and Asian Bush Honeysuckle. The leaves of invasive plants often emerge earlier and persist later than those of our native shrubs.) In our own yards, we can take steps to protect plants from deer and to swap out invasive shrubs for native ones and thus help support our local ecosystem.

The Virginia Department of Forestry (VDOF) is collecting data on how many trees are planted in Northern Virginia as it works toward the goal of 600,000 by 2025. For this purpose, shrubs count as trees, so VDOF is encouraging everyone to report plantings of both. A reporting form can be found on the Plant NOVA Trees website.