Today we’re sharing a recipe for DIY Hummingbird Food. Here’s one way to encourage these amazing little birds to your backyard or porch by giving them a delightful treat.
All about DIY Hummingbird Food
Don’t you just love these birds amazing little creatures! Hummingbirds zipping around your garden with wings that beat at 90 times per second. And these tiny birds must eat every 10 to 15 minutes by visiting up to 2,000 flowers per day.
Because about 90 percent of their diet is sugary nectar, putting out hummingbird food in a feeder is a great way to provide a supplementary food source for your aerial acrobats. They especially need this help from people during nesting and migration times in the spring and fall as they might not be able to find enough flowers to fulfill their needs.
The great thing is that you can easily make DIY Hummingbird Food to fill your feeder. It takes just two ingredients; white sugar and water and is super simple to make. You simply heat the water and mix in sugar until it is dissolved. Once it is cool, you can fill up your feeder.
You need to be sure to only use white sugar and boiling water to make their food. Do not substitute brown sugar, molasses, or honey, which can promote dangerous microbial growth. Also, do not use red food coloring, which is not necessary and may be harmful to the birds.
DIY Hummingbird Food
Make your own Hummingbird Food quickly and easily with just 2 ingredients!
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup white sugar
- 1 cup water
Instructions
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Heat water and sugar until sugar is completely dissolved.
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Do not add red food coloring.
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Fill your clean hummingbird feeders once the sugar water is completely cooled.
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Extra sugar water can be stored in the refrigerator.
Recipe Notes
We have found the perfect amount of Hummingbird Food to make for our feeder is 3/4 cup of sugar and 3 cups of water. That is the perfect amount so it fills the feeder and we don’t have leftover syrup to be stored.
The ratio is 1 part sugar to 4 parts water:
1/4 cup sugar + 1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar + 2 cups water
3/4 cup sugar + 3 cups water
1 cup sugar + 4 cups water
Hummingbird Feeder Tips
Choose a feeder that’s easy to take apart and clean as you’ll need to do this regularly. In hot weather, empty and clean it twice a week. In cool weather, once a week is fine. Just be sure to clean your feeder every time you refill it.
We’d love to hear what you think about this recipe. Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for visiting Sunup to Sundown! Please subscribe, like or share this post with others who could benefit from it.
