Well I have 15 feeders scattered over my yard front and back and I dont have a large yard. I have 10 feeders in front and 5 in back. 8 of the feeders are those small walmart feeders and I have a lot of action front and back. They really gather at the feeders in back for its fairly isolated and higher up , maybe they feel more secure there. Its a chore each night to clean and refill, but I do it each night when they leave. I have 3 very large feeders hanging on the back porch and between the 3 there is 100oz of nectar to be drunk and if I fill those full, the the nectar will not last 3 days so it may give you some idea of the activity here. And it will only get worse during migration till they are gone by the end of august.

I have 12 feeders total, and that keeps me pretty busy everyday to say the least...some of mine hang from the eave of my breezeway facing the backyard, and the others hang from several sheperd's hooks. Also, I have 4 on the sheperd's hook in front of my kitchen window! I keep one or two feeders inside, and fill those when replacing them, so as not to disrupt the feeding...Like Hummersteve, cleaning at night is a good idea too!

It's really hot and humid where I live, and the past week or so, the heat indexes have reached 105, so I am cleaning and refilling more often!

My hummers usually stick around until mid October, with a decline beginning in Sept. It sure is a let down, when they all disappear for the season!

Donna

You guys must own a sugar cane patch. I have three that I interchange so I can clean them. The weather is cooling off at night and this male is chasing and doing the swing dance high up in the trees, trying to entice the female. Isn't it a little late in the season for this behavior?

I have 4, which satisfies about 4-6 Hummers. I am hoping that next year i will have more Hummers to feed.

We have seen 8 hummers around our three feeders at one time.

We need to put a couple in the back yard because of the males chaseing each other and everything that gets near them.

Dogfighting in all three axis of flight.

Was going to ask the question, but the discussion already exists. We had 2 and got 3 more yesterday. Put them up in the evening and it looks like I'll have to fill them before it's been 24 hours. We've been seeing a lot of hummers flitting around, and now have feeders on 4 sides of the house. If I stand in the kitchen I can see 3 of them. My fav is the one right outside the window that can be seen from computer or couch. Wish I could tell the birds we'll fill them as often as needed so they don't become so possessive/defensive over them.

I have a feeder in the garden and a feeder on my porch. The hummingbirds just use them more than the flowers! They rarely use the flowers.

I only have one feeder. Most of my birds that visit are first-year birds during fall migration (starts in early July and continues until mid-September where I live in WA) that are feeder naïve...so most use is of the flowers which I can't complain about.

BN

Hm....I don't have any. I am trying to do this via plantings only. We have somewhere in the range of 100 butterfly bushes as well as plenty of other sources like honeysuckle, bee balm and rose of sharon (there are a bunch more, but those seem to be the favorites, although it depends on what's blooming-they LOVED the lavender this year, as well as the hosta). Next year I hope to add the final two gardens so that the beds are spread out in different areas, where they can't see each other from one to the other. We hear plenty of "disagreements" about who's plants are whos, lol.

I agree with that totally. There were definitely a lot of hummingbirds here before we put up feeders, every summer. It was because we were seeing so many, but never up close, that we got the feeders. No doubt they would be fine without them, but in trade for coming close enough for us to see them, I'm happy to maintain/fill the feeders. There are where I want to see hummingbirds, and for the first time this year, they are coming "inside" the porch to visit the tiny flowers on potted plants. They've always visited Coleus blooms out in the yard, but never on the front porch while I was sitting there. Wish I knew what they were saying when they stop in mid-air a few feet away, looking directly at me, chittering up a storm.

I've also added a lot of Plectranthus 'Mona Lavender' to porch pots this summer, can't say enough about how much they like these flowers!

My neighbor a few doors down has a large patch of Zinnias and at any particular moment, there's several flitting around that, sometimes a lot more.

If any Lantanas are hardy where you are (or you are into buying them as annuals,) that's what has always attracted them around our yard, even years ago before I started getting rid of grass and adding any other plants.