"Dish-Style" Hummingbird Feeders

Here is it again: Here's a rerun of the picture of the dish-style feeder I recommended about a month ago. This post will give you leads on how to find one, or one like it. Except for this one, all of the photos in this post are from the respective manufacturers' websites.

SINCE RECOMMENDING "DISH-STYLE" HUMMINGBIRD FEEDERS about a month ago, I've had several inquiries from people who have had trouble finding one. Several large companies do make them, however, so with a few tips (which will arrive shortly) anyone who wants a dish-style feeder should be able to locate one for sale.

First, let's quickly review the advantages of dish-style feeders. In my book, the main advantage is that they're easy to clean: Just remove the top and you can clean the inside thoroughly, without having to use a bottle brush. Another advantage is that because the feeding holes are above the water level, there is no risk of dripping as there is with styles that place the holes below the liquid. This style also deters some of the larger insects that are attracted to sugar water, because their tongues aren't long enough to reach the water. (If the insect is small enough to crawl in through the feeding hole, however, it will do so.)

So how can you find them? I'm aware of three companies that make this style of feeder.

Yule-Hyde

The one in the photo above is made by Yule-Hyde Associates Co., a Canadian company. It has most of the characteristics I recommend in a hummingbird feeder:

1. Dish style for easy cleaning.

2. Perches for better viewing of the birds.

3. Mounts on the window. This allows better viewing of the birds, but another advantage is that window-mounted feeders are rarely troubled by sugar-seeking ants.

The one drawback of this inexpensive feeder is that the perches seem to break off easily. For that reason, a more expensive feeder made out of tougher plastic may be a better investment.

Now oddly, I cannot find this feeder on the Yule-Hyde website. In fact, I can't seem to find this feeder available online or even mentioned online. I purchased mine at a local feed store, but have no idea how anyone who doesn't live near me can get one. All I can suggest is that you ask local stores whether they are able to order them. Ask for Model Number HBW1.

Aspects

Meanwhile, two U.S. companies also make dish-style hummingbird feeders, and their products are widely available. These feeders are more expensive than the Yule Hyde, but they are also made of tougher plastic. So they may well be a better deal in the long run.

Right, the Aspects HummZinger "Mini" holds 8 ounces of sugar water, which is usually plenty as you should replace the food frequently anyway. Note the perches and the ant moat around the hanging stem.

Aspects makes several versions of its dish-style "HummZinger" brand. All are hanging styles (in other words, not window mountable), but they do have perches. They come with a lifetime guarantee and also have built-in ant moats, which is a convenient feature on a hanging feeder. (An ant moat, as the name implies, is a trough that you fill with water. This helps to prevent ants from reaching the sugar water in your feeder.) An ant moat is nice to have but not essential on a hummingbird feeder as ant moats can be bought separately from companies such as Lee Valley.

Aspects also sells a window-mounted dish-style feeder which they call the "Nectar Bar". Unfortunately, the Nectar Bar does not have perches.


Right, the Nectar Bar from Aspects. I like the little roof that prevents rain from getting into the sugar water, but I wish it had perches.





Droll Yankees

Droll Yankees is one of the best-known and most respected makers of bird feeders, and they also make dish-style hummingbird feeders. They offer a hanging style and a window mounted style, both in a sturdy plastic with a lifetime guarantee. Both feeders also have a perchable rim.


Right, dish-style feeders from Droll Yankees. The top one is a hanging style, the "Happy Eight 2", while under that is the window-mounted "Window Hummer 2". Both have perchable rims.

I think all of the feeders described here are good ones and would be happy to have any of them. However, by a hair I think my favorite would be the Droll Yankees window-mounted dish-style hummingbird feeder, shown at bottom.

Where's your garden?

This map created by Steve Baskauf of Vanderbilt University shows North American ecoregions as defined by the World Wildlife Fund. For a much larger, interactive version of the map see Steve's Bioimages website. For a short stack of legalese pertaining to this image, please see the bottom of this post.

IT'S A GOOD THING I'M NOT INTO CONSPIRACY THEORIES. If I were, I'd be casting a very suspicious eye on plant hardiness zones.

This concept originated with the U.S. Department of Agriculture but has become very popular in gardening circles. The idea is that plants can be assigned a numerical rating based on the minimum temperatures they are able to withstand. This gives you a rough idea of whether a given plant can survive in your garden, regardless of where the plant originated.

Imbedded in this concept is the notion that a garden can and should be free of any ties to its location. Bring in rhododendrons from China or four-o'clocks from Peru, it doesn't matter as long as the plant can survive on your site. Gardeners are even admired for their ability to grow plants from far away places. And if they are able to grow plants not rated for their zone (tropical plants in upstate New York, for example), why, they are considered positively heroic.

Now, if I were prone to believe in conspiracies, I'd say this is part of a plot cooked up by the horticulture industry to sell more plants--especially plants that are likely to struggle and die in new homes to which they are poorly suited. And then no doubt the sellers would be shocked, shocked to learn that these plants have to be replaced.

But I'd rather just propose an alternative. What if we stop admiring gardeners who pay no attention to where they live? (They can go on gardening that way if they want to. I'm suggesting that the rest of us quit just praising them for it.) Instead, let's start to admire gardeners whose work conveys a sense of place. What if, instead of worrying about plant hardiness zones, we start thinking about ecoregions instead?

I'm not sure whether anyone knows precisely where the ecoregion concept originated, but the World Wildlife Fund (aka the World Wide Fund for Nature) has done the most to define and develop it. Their less-than-wieldy definition of an ecoregion is "a large area of land or water that contains a geographically distinct assemblage of natural communities that (a) share a large majority of their species and ecological dynamics; (b) share similar environmental conditions, and; (c) interact ecologically in ways that are critical for their long-term persistence."

But you get the idea. According to the WWF, there are 825 terrestrial ecoregions on the planet, so figuring out which of them you live in can be a challenge. Fortunately, Steven Baskauf, a senior lecturer in Vanderbilt University's Department of Biological Sciences, used the WWF's GIS files to develop a map of the ecoregions in North America. I've provided a glimpse of this map above, but to see it in its full glory you have to visit Steve's Bioimages website.

There, you will most likely be able to home in on your very own region. (Currently the map represents 76 of 125 ecoregions on the continent.) For instance, I clicked on Eastern Canada and, from there, easily found that I am in the New England/Acadian Forests, known to the WWF as NA0410.

What's more, from Steve's site I was then able to link back to the National Geographic's "Ecoregion profile" of my region, which linked me to the WWF's scientific report. Back at the Bioimages site, I was also able to find a link to the WWF's list of species found in this region, as well as other images and information.

OK, "Hail to thee, NA0410" doesn't have much of a future as a bioregional anthem. But at least NA0410 is home, and the plants that come from dear old NA0410 tie me to the place I live. "Plant Hardiness Zone 5", on the other hand, is marketing. And its plants tie me to nothing except somebody's desire to make a buck.

The map shown above is copyright 2002-2004 Steve Baskauf, who used data from Olson, D. M, E. Dinerstein, E.D. Wikramanayake, N.D. Burgess, G.V.N. Powell, E.C. Underwood, J.A. D'amico, I. Itoua, H.E. Strand, J.C. Morrison, C.J. Loucks, T.F. Allnutt, T.H. Ricketts, Y. Kura, J.F. Lamoreux, W.W.Wettengel, P. Hedao, & K.R. Kassem. 2001. Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth. BioScience 51:933-938

The Six Word Memoir Meme

SO PINE NUT TAGGED ME WITH A MEME. An interesting one, too. I like haiku; the "six-word memoir" seems to be similar, an attempt to capture a moment in just a few words.

This meme requests that you write a six-word memoir "of your inner birder." At first I was ready to settle for something wordless yet charged with symbolism, like the clip art above, which I purchased many years ago from an outfit called ArtParts.

I still like this idea, but then I started thinking that I don't really consider myself a birder. I mostly enjoy so-called backyard birds myself. I like to feed birds; in fact, I like to feed most things. My first reaction, on seeing almost anything, is to wonder what it would like to eat. And then of course, because I wasn't looking for it, my six-word memoir popped into my head.

Which I think is how haiku and their friends are supposed to work. So here it is:

Hello there. What do you eat?

If you'd like to participate in this meme, consider yourself tagged. Here's Pinenut's original post.

Gardens BEE Very Important!

Long-horned bees, Melissodes spp., are among the native bees being studied by scientists at the U. of California, Berkeley. The researchers found that males of this genus like to sleep overnight in cosmos flowers. (The flower shown in this photo, however, is a verbena.) The photo was taken by Johnny N. Dell, bugwood.org, and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

THERE'S A GREAT NEW ARTICLE about native bees in the March/April issue of Orion magazine. In "The Headbonker's Ball," Matt Jenkins visits a U. of California Berkeley entomologist and grad students who are studying California's native bees. What makes the work of entomologist Gordon Frankie unusual is that he focuses on cities rather than on rural areas. He has found that native bees are doing better in urban areas than they are in California's agricultural regions.

Gardens As Reservoirs

This finding is similar to one I reported last July. That study, conducted in England, found that wildlife-friendly gardens were critical to the survival of threatened British bees. Likewise in the very different environment of California, Frankie and his grad students are finding that properly designed and maintained gardens are now better habitat for bees (and presumably for other pollinators as well) than agricultural areas where farmers grow only one crop and also may make frequent use of pesticides.

In other words, here is still more evidence that what we do in our gardens can be vital to the survival of species. As Frankie puts it in the Orion article, a garden can be "a reservoir of genetic material" helping to keep species alive when their natural habitat has been lost.

Findings From a Bee Garden

In order to explore the contributions gardens can make to survival of native bees, Frankie et al. started an urban bee garden in Berkeley back in 2003. Among their findings: Although a few non-native plants do seem to be helpful to bees, native bees are six times more likely to visit native plants than non-natives. At least in California, plants in the Salvia family (that is, sages) seem to be among the best bee-attracting plants. But Frankie stresses the importance of planting a variety of plants, as different plants attract different bees and plants that bloom at different times provide food throughout the growing season. He also encourages gardeners to dead-head plants as they finish blooming, in order to encourage a second flush of bloom.

Also important: Leave patches of bare earth so that native bees that nest in holes in the ground can find somewhere to live. "Bare earth" means not just soil that is free of plants but also soil that is free of plastic or even thick mulch.

For more information on what Frankie and friends are up to, check out their Urban Bee Gardens website, and don't miss the excellent article in Orion.

Birds and Windows

On sunny days, glass can be so highly reflective that humans as well as birds are fooled into thinking that they are looking at open sky, trees, or other scenes in nature. This is a serious hazard for birds, which are often injured or killed in collisions with window glass. Photo by MIROSLAV VAJDIC for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike

WITH SPRING WE OFTEN GET LOTS OF BRIGHT, SUNNY DAYS--good for gardeners, but not always so good for birds, who may crash into windows that are reflecting what look to them like beautiful open skies. If you have this problem, here are a few tips to help you and the birds do better this year.

Why they do it

Typically birds fly into windows for one of two reasons: 1., the window is reflecting sky or trees or some other scene the bird thinks it can fly into or, 2., the bird sees real daylight through a window and thinks it can fly through to the other side.

No fly-throughs

Situation number 2 is fairly easy to prevent. The trick is to avoid having uncurtained windows either directly opposite one another or kitty corner from one another. So for instance, if you have a large open living area with windows that face each other on the north and south sides of the house, make sure that the windows on one side are always covered with curtains. That way a bird will never get the idea that it can fly through your living area and come out safely on the other side.

Situation number 1 is more difficult. There are only two ways to deal with this situation. One is to put up a barrier that prevents birds from hitting windows. The other is to make your windows reflect less light.

Upon reflection ...

Let's look first at ways to make windows less reflective.

The easiest way to make your windows reflect less (and definitely the one that appeals to me) is just to let them get dirty. The dirtier the windows get, the fewer bird strikes you'll have.

Don't want to wait several years for your windows to get seriously murky? You can soap the outsides. Yes, people do this.

If you want clean windows, however, preventing bird strikes gets harder. But here are some ideas. I can't guarantee that any of these will work every time, but they probably will help to prevent at least some window strikes.

Idea number one: Glue small stick-on decals or use window clings (which are a lot easier to remove) all over the outside of the window, placing them about 8 inches apart. Yes, they have to be on the outside because putting them on the inside won't prevent the window glass from reflecting light. And yes, they do have to be that close together because if they're not, birds may try to fly between them. The window clings sold under the brand name of Whispering Windows are bird-themed and quite attractive.

Don't want pictures on your windows? Idea number two: Some people try hanging strips of shiny tape, often referred to as bird-scare tape, in front of windows. In theory the fluttering tape frightens birds so that they stay away from areas where it is hanging. (This trick is also used to scare birds away from orchards.) The Wisconsin Humane Society even sells a holographic bird-scare tape.

Idea number 3: For those who want a more conservative look, there is now a product called CollidEscape. It is a film that can be applied on the outside of window glass. I haven't tried it myself, but supposedly it makes the window glass much less reflective. From the outside (in the pictures anyway), it looks like a very tidy-looking version of soap. However, unlike soap it allows you to continue to see out the window, or so the manufacturer claims. Warning: This stuff is expensive: $3/square foot if you are referred through the Fatal Light Awareness Program, a worthwhile organization that is working to preserve the lives of migratory birds in urban areas.

Bird Barriers

Another technique is to put up a barrier that you can see through but that birds will bounce off of.

If you're a do-it-yourself type and your house lends itself to this modification, you may be able to install fine garden-protection netting from below your eves to below the windows. The netting will be almost invisible from inside the house or from the street, and if it is taut enough birds will bounce off it without being hurt--you are, in effect, making a bird trampoline. You might have to stretch the netting on a frame before installing it in order to get the desired effect. Please note that if the netting is not taut enough, birds might get tangled up in it. The netting also must be far enough away from the glass so that the birds bounce off the netting without striking the glass.

If you'd rather not do this yourself, the Bird Screen Company makes fiberglass window screens that can be attached to the outside of a window using hooks and suction cups. I haven't tried this product, but according to the manufacturer, the hooks hold the screen far enough away from the glass so that birds will bounce off unharmed. Though pricey, this product is quite a lot cheaper by the square foot than CollidEscape is.

And the winner is ...

Dirty windows! But that's at my house. If I were going to try anything other than good old-fashioned grime, I'd probably give the fiberglass Bird Screens a try. They seem to be practical and good looking, and I think there's a good chance they would stop most if not all window strikes. If you decide to try any of these techniques, please let me know how they work for you.

More Good News

Dear all,

Earlier today I wrote a sort of two-faced post in which on the one hand I said it was great that Douglas Tallamy's new book Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens is getting a lot of publicity--but at the same time I gave a gigantic ho hum to the arrival of the book itself. I received a good comment from blogger Benjamin Vogt, who is relatively new to this style of gardening and liked the book a lot. He suggested that I haven't given the book enough credit and referred me to the review he wrote for his blog, The Deep Middle.

Having read Benjamin's summary and a list of fun facts he pulled from the book, I have to say that it sounds as though Tallamy's book is one of the better ones that have come out on this topic in the last decade. If you are new to native-plant gardening and looking for a book to get you started, see what you think after reading Benjamin's review and the other links provided in my original post, which is below. If you're not already familiar with the material, this book will probably kick start your enthusiasm for native plants and give you a new appreciation for the value of insects in the garden.

Cheers,

Wild Flora

Good news from the New York Times

The Victorian-era illustration above is from the Full Color Decorative Bird Illustrations CD-Rom and Book. This example was kindly provided by the publisher, Dover Publications.

HAVING WORKED AT THIS FOR SO LONG, I'm always a little amazed, and a lot thrilled, when mainstream publications start to promote ideas I've been talking about for at least a decade. So you can imagine how pleased I was when the New York Times "Home and Garden" section recently published an article titled, "To Feed the Birds, First Feed the Bugs."

Yes!

For the article, writer Ann Ravner visited the home of Doug Tallamy, author of a new book that has been gaining a lot of attention for naturalistic gardening: Bringing Nature Home was published by Timber Press last November. Tallamy is an entomologist at the University of Delaware. You can see his academic resume (and a nice photo) at the university's website. His book has its own website, which includes a couple of items that appear to be excerpts from the book:

• "Gardening for Life" makes the argument for why it is so important for us to use native plants in our gardens and otherwise try to make these spaces wildlife and environmentally friendly.


• "Gardening for Biodiversity" is a list of what Tallamy considers to be "the 20 best native woody and perennial plant genera for supporting biodiversity in East Coast suburban landscapes."

The latter illustrates why books such as these are often a disappointment to anyone who is beyond the beginner level of native-plant gardening. Because books such as Tallamy's have to appeal to a wide audience, they are often too general to be of much help once you are actually trying to create a native plant garden in a specific region. For instance, Tallamy lists all the usual suspects of the native plant world. And because he lists genera rather than species, you will still have to find out which plants are appropriate for your region.

To be honest, I'm not all that interested in Tallamy's book (which I hasten to admit I have not read--so if I'm wrong about it, please tell me). I'm very glad he wrote it, but my initial investigation suggests that it's another in a growing list of books that cover more or less the same ground. Probably the first of them, or at least the first to get a lot of attention, was Sarah Stein's Noah's Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Back Yards, which was published in 1995. In the late 1990s, I bought a lot of these books. But eventually I tired of reading the same information over and over again. Now I spend my money on reference works that are specific to my region.

That isn't to say that these books should not be published! On the contrary, every time one of them comes out there is a chance it will catch a wave of publicity, as Tallamy's has. Each wave of publicity attracts new people to native-plant gardening. Many people who are avid native-plant gardeners today caught the bug by reading Stein. Ten years from now, it looks like we'll have another batch who were inspired by Tallamy's work.

Witness the article in the New York Times, which allows us to pay a vicarious visit to Tallamy's garden in Pennsylvania, where he and his wife have removed non-native, invasive plants such as Oriental bittersweet, Japanese honeysuckle, and multiflora rose, and replaced them with natives such as white pine, black cherry, and goldenrod. The best part of the article is Tallamy's argument in favor of encouraging insects in the garden. He is quoted as saying that 96% of North American birds other than seabirds feed their young on insects.

None of this is exactly new, but it probably is new to a lot of New York Times readers. So let's celebrate. With its lovely pictures of native plants and the insects that depend on them, the New York Times article is a great advertisement for native plant gardening.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to learn more about Tallamy's book, I recommend the following:

• A review of Tallamy's book by Susan Harris at the Garden Rant blog.


• Interview with Tallamy at the Garden Rant blog.