HUMMINGBIRD ENJOYS FAST FOOD! What about you?
Posted: June 20, 2019 Filed under: Aging-in-place, geezerEats, My Backyard, Uncategorized | Tags: fat, Hummingbirds, processed food 1 Comment »I feed hummingbirds a mixture of one cup of sugar to four cups of water. The sugar is pure white, cane sugar. It is cheap; and must provide a sugar high.
Hummingbirds are at the trough all day and empty two feeders every day. They also eat at natural plants around the yard, but not so much.
I wonder if eating all that pure sugar is good for them. Can they make the annual migration to South America? Do they get fat? Do they have health problems? Are there obese hummingbirds?
They are like people. They eat what is easy; not, what they have to work for. People are obese. Will we see fat hummingbirds.
Something to think about.
Does fast food affect hummingbirds adversely?
I won’t stop feeding them. Like the fast food industry, I profit from the hummingbirds outside my window. I like to watch them; and, of course I count them. I am contributing to what I believe are hummingbird health problems; just like the fast food industry, with its highly processed, sugar-filled food have contributed to our health and obesity problems.
Next time you feed a hummingbird, take a look in the mirror. Where is your feeder with its high sugar concentration? Are you preparing to fly to Tierra del Fuego for the winter?
Take a look at the Wikipedia article on hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are also carnivores eating insects for the protein in addition to various forms of sugar.
THINK OLD!
We don’t have a feeder, but for the last couple of summers, we’ve grown tithonia (Mexican Sunflowers) below our kitchen window, a flower that all kinds of creatures enjoy. The hummingbirds that come by to visit our neighbor’s sugar water feeder make a loop around our houses–they go from the feeder to the flowers, several times a day (or so it seems–maybe they’re all different individuals…) so we get to see them as we have our coffee or get ready for dinner. Tithonia’s very easy to grow and is (often) self-seeding. I have to think that the blossoms are better-quality nutrition for the birds and that our neighbor is serving them ‘dessert.’