Feeding our Heavenly Feathered friends

The nights are getting cooler and soon our Hummingbirds will begin the migration to warmer territory. My grandfather taught me that a few weeks before Labor Day or as the weather start cooling off. That I should change my regular recipe for humming-bird feed to a more potent mix to help them have the energy to migrate. The birds just love it too!

Original recipe is 3 parts water to 1 part sugar. So in regular terms if you use 3 cups of water you should add 1 cup of sugar. You can microwave it or heat it on the stove just as long as all of the sugar dissolves and is clear you have you own homemade humming-bird food. No it does not have to be red in color so food coloring is not needed.

Migrating recipe is 3 parts to 1-1/2 parts. Adding an extra half a cup of sugar helps them to fuel up.

While we are on that note; I found a wonderful way to repurpose old glass bottles and make them into hummingbird feeders.

Things you will need:     

Different types of pliers                glass bottles                       Humming bird stoppers

Wire cutters                                 Corks (optional)                   Copper wire 10 gauge or larger

Thin copper wire                         Beads of choice (Preferably red or iridescent)

Lisa and I did this project together for fun. We had to order on-line our humming-bird stoppers.

Tip: Come to find out there are different size stoppers and the ones we purchased were too large to fit into our bottle. So we had to cut the glass stopper out of the original and amend our plan by using a cork and drilling a ¼” hole with a drill bit (use either vise grips or a vise to hold the cork) through the cork and carefully inserted the glass stopper. Please be safe and use gloves while inserting the glass stopper just in case it breaks in your hand.

Another tip…order extra! LOL

Neither of us was able to find copper wire in a thick diameter such as 10 or 12 gage. Her husband Paul had some old wire lying around so we stripped the copper out of it and used it for our project. If you don’t have any and cannot find it in a craft store you can always purchase a yard of it at your local hardware.

With our stripped copper wire we began at the neck of the bottle and just began wrapping the wire around the bottle till it was about 1 to 1-1/2” from the bottom of the bottle. Then we secured them by taking our needle nose and making a loop as shown below.

Then we just got our creative caps on and attached our thinner wire to the main wire and began beading and putting loops in wire as we decorated them up for our feathered friends.

20150806_195044

Next we fashioned a half rounded hanger to both sides of the bottle using our left over wire.

How blessed are we to have such adorable and delicate creatures living amongst us. When you think about all God’s creatures it is truly amazing and even cooler yet that we can take part in taking care of them.

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