Question:
When should I remove or take down my hummingbird feeders. I still have several birds feeding but it is fall and I do not want to keep the hummingbirds here with the cold coming and flowers blooming are gone.
Donna – Lea County
Answer:
That’s a great question Donna. Let me correct a misconception about keeping the hummingbirds around too long. In my recent newspaper garden articles, I keep stating keep your hummingbird up and replenished with fresh sugar water. September to the end of October are the annual fall migration times for hummingbirds coming through New Mexico from northern States to Canada as they wing their way back to Mexico and Central America for their wintering ranges. Even last year I had straggler ‘Hummers’ at my feeders during the first two weeks of November.
Leaving your feeders out will not delay or cause the hummingbirds to stay around and be caught by cold temperatures. That does not happen!
The lack of food sources whether flowering plants and the hummingbird feeders has nothing to do with keeping the birds from migrating South. It is all about this tiny bird’s internal biological controls, scientifically the circannual rhythms in the brain of that bird. As migration times approach, the hummingbirds start to put on body-fat, which fuels its journey south. The fat, and the bio-rhythms create the overwhelming urge to migrate, this is fine-tuned within the bird by the changing day length of fall.
The amount of food in their environments does not affect the migratory instinct. ‘Hummers’ leave their summer ranges while food is still plentiful. Within these confines, nature has provided food sources all along the entire migration route until these uniquely different little birds reach their wintering grounds
Thanks, Donna for this timely question.
PS: Send gardening and nature question to Dr. Dirt. He will answer you by a phone call, email, answers in his newspaper column or our Newsletter.
