How to Make Healthy Hummingbird Nectar
Hummingbird nectar contains a few simple ingredients. Here’s how to make sure your homemade nectar is not only appealing but also healthy for your hummingbird friends.
Hummingbirds are one of my favorite backyard visitors. When the weather is at its most pleasant, we will sometimes have half a dozen hummingbirds circling around our yard at once competing for a turn at one of our 4 feeders, like little jet planes.
They are so cute and truly amazing in their ability to hover in the air and dart back and forth at dizzying speeds.
When we first moved out here, I purchased one feeder and some pre-made nectar from the local hardware store. This worked out well until I realized I’d be cleaning the feeders and replenishing the nectar pretty regularly. Once I learned how easy it is to make it at home, I no longer wanted to continue to buy the nectar from the store.
You’ve probably noticed that hummingbird feeders are usually very vibrantly colored with red being the most common color. These colors are meant to mimic the flowers that would naturally attract the birds in the wild. Hummingbird nectar is also almost always red and usually colored with artifical dye.
Knowing that these artificial dyes are not healthy for humans, I became concerned about how harmful they could be to these tiny birds, so I stopped using the artificial food color in my homemade nectar. Much to my dismay, the hummingbirds weren’t as excited about the clear nectar and I noticed that they were coming around less frequently.
I decided to seek out natural food coloring and was so very happy to find Watkins food coloring!
It contains no artificial dyes and is made with 100% natural vegetable juices and spices. This was exactly what I was looking for.
Here are the steps to making healthy hummingbird nectar:
- Prepare Your Ingredients (there are only 3)
- 1 part white granulated sugar
- 4 parts warm water (the water doesn’t need to be boiling but having it warm dissolves the sugar faster)
- Watkins Food Coloring (red seems to work best)
2. Dissolve the sugar into the warm water
3. Add food coloring and stir
**Since the food coloring is natural, I did notice that it fades a bit over time. Not a big deal but you may want to use more of the food coloring that you normally would to help keep it vibrant longer.
4. Fill your feeder and enjoy knowing you’ve created a sweet and healthy treat for your hummingbirds!
You can find Watkin’s Food Coloring though the link below. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. If you buy something through the links on this website, I may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. I only recommend products I use, love, and want to share with my audience.
Watkins Assorted Food Coloring
