Not so exciting horticulturally but my Blue Pearl impatiens always attract hummingbirds. As do my large hanging baskets of lavender lantanas.

Also not horticulturally exciting, but I have happy hummers swarming around some NOID garden phlox (reblooming now) and various monarda.

They also like hostas and they even have been seen at the pokeberries.

Claire

One hovered over the path, with me feet away, until it attacked the red modarda (of course)

Thought I would share just how much of a hummer magnet the harlequin Glory Bower truly is, I took these photos last night.
Young hummer flies into the garden and heads directly for the Glory Bower

Great photos! My hummers are mainly on butterfly bush, at least the ones I;ve noticed. I don't know why they aren't congregating on the red wiegela, the flowers seem so perfect for them. Maybe I'll put up a sign.

Those are lovely photos! Beautiful hummer and shrub!

In my yard, the #1 hummingbird magnet is Monarda didyma, just plain old red Bee Balm. One day a couple weeks ago, I was weeding a little by the Bee Balm, and a hummer flew up and flew from flower to flower for about 10 minutes. I stood very still and watched and at one point he was only about 2 feet away from me. I've never been so close to a hummer before!

I also saw one on the Buddleia Black Knight the other evening.

My 'Black and Blue' Salvia (a tender perennial) is the biggest hummer magnet in my yard, though they also like the coral bells, the unknown red Salvia, and Diascia (sp?). If I'm out on the patio in the morning or evening, I can pretty much count on seeing a hummer several times over 15 minutes or so.

I saw that a question had been posted earlier on where one can purchase the Harlequin Glorybower in Massachusetts and the only reply was a nursery in New Bedford. Does anyone know of a nursery closer to Boston? Thank you!

Love the photos of the hummer! runktrun what type of camera do you have if I may ask? Did you use one of the fast shutter speeds.

So back to gardening, not a hummer but did get a butterfly on one of my pentas this past weekend.

{{gwi:1088822}}

Today I was in the house and looked out a south window to see a hummer visiting my dark maroon hollyhock and turned to see another hummer outside the west window visiting the 'Black and Blue' Salvia. The two were both females and stayed for a few minutes before taking off. Maybe this year's younguns? In the past when two hummers have both been in my yard they have argued and one has chased the other off.

Sue,
I would like to be able to share great words of photography wisdom with you but I am truly a novice. Below are a few in-sites to confirm that but I will share them with you none the less.
1. My camera is a Nikon Cool Pix 8.0 which is a rebuilt replacement they sent me after my Nikon Cool Pix 5.0 died after one year of minimal use. One important thing I learned (after my purchase of course) is that when buying a digital camera you want to go with a company that does the best job of designing/building the computer/digital functions of a camera as all the camera companies can buy good quality lenses. To date Nikon's reputation for building a good computer/camera is still rather poor. This was really made evident to me when I took a photography class last year with Rick Darke. He had 12-15 of us (all with our own random cameras and from professional to novice) stand lined up and take a photo of the same object under the same light conditions. We then viewed and compared the different photo's.....there was a huge difference in quality and I was sad to see Nikon on the bottom. Rick Darke had shot with and recommended one or two different Canon cameras and it was clear why when we saw the quality of the photos.
2. It took me a while to let go of the automatic setting crutch but truthfully when taking pictures outside you really have little hope of getting a decent shot if your camera is set to auto.
3. I turn off my flash under most outdoor lighting conditions but with my old lady shaky hands I then need the steadiness of a tripod.
4. When using my camera in macromode I have to constantly remind myself that I can not use my zoom...it is sooo tempting.
5. Another tidbit I learned at the Darke workshop was don't be fooled by those who insist you can only photograph the garden at dawn/dusk, if for example you use dappled light to enhance your image chances are mid-day might be a good time to be outdoors with your camera. Well hope some of my novice ramblings might help. kt

Yesterday a few thunderstorms rumbled through, the last one in late afternoon - a time when the hummers usually feed.

When the rain stopped I went out to make a deposit in the compost pile and a hummer zipped over to the phloxes, making an incredible twittering sound as it flew around. It was definitely coming from the bird. I never heard a sound from hummingbirds before (besides the hum of the wings).

I checked my bird book and it says the call is "mouse-like, twittering squeaks".

The feeling I got was that the bird was late for dinner, and, like the March Hare, was saying "I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date. No time to say hello, goodbye, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late."

Claire

LOL Claire...as my mother would have said...you are a hot ticket! :-) I am always giving voice to animals, plants and inanimate objects. My children are either rolling their eyes at me or saying.."Oh, Mom!" Although it is a family joke by now, I do seriously feel that animals at least must have feelings and thoughts that we can assume we might understand on occasion and I think you really hit the nail with that one.

:-)

Well, bees hum, and my various size Clethra are loaded with those huge black bees - can't get anywhere near the shrubs to pull out any weeds at the bases. But I love the smell in August when everything else in my yard has faded. Even my Black Eye Susans did poorly this year - some sort of fungus stuff on leaves + deer and rabbits.

sedum and runktrun, great pics!

I have been seeing sometimes 3 or 4 hummers on our bee balm, butterfly bushes, and trumpet vines. Today there were a couple of males fighting over our feeders we also have out. About 3 days ago, when I was watering the bee balm one hovered about 2' away and kept flying back and forth in the water spray. They seem very interested each time I water. I really haven't seen this behaviour before, has anyone else experienced this?
Happy Gardening,
Tom

I have been seeing sometimes 3 or 4 hummers on our bee balm, butterfly bushes, and trumpet vines. Today there were a couple of males fighting over our feeders we also have out. About 3 days ago, when I was watering the bee balm one hovered about 2' away and kept flying back and forth in the water spray. They seem very interested each time I water. I really haven't seen this behaviour before, has anyone else experienced this?
Happy Gardening,
Tom

Hi Tom ...

You are a lucky duck! [g]
I saw a Backyard Habitat on Hummingbirds and they set up more than one feeder station for different males and a mister by threading a hose with a nozzle on the end up through a trellis on the mist setting. They evidently love mist.

:-)

Runktrun - good camera points! Exactly some of the things I have learned. One of the biggest things to getting a better picture definitely is taking it out of auto mode and turning off the flash. 99% time I take without flash.

So is it bad when I see people taking photos of gardens (especially at the flower shows) and their flash goes off to tell them to turn off their flash for a better picture? So far I haven't but have been very tempted as when they get home all their photos will be washed out.

So far I haven't had the best luck taking photos in mid day. THis is one thing I am working on. The photo of the butterfly above took 4 shots to get. So for me also taking many shots is also important to get the right one. After all no film is involved so it is easy to do.

Anyone else have any photo taking ideas?

Sue

Sometimes, I actually LIKE to use the flash in the garden; it allows the inevitably messy background to disappear and just shows the foreground area you want to show. Maybe if I was a tidier gardener/homeowner, I wouldn't need this trick!

The light from the flash extends only a few feet, but you often see people shooting something in the distance and you know they have no idea that much of the photo will be in the dark. So, I agree that camera flash is often used with poor results... now if I could just figure out how to turn it off on my little canon (but without having to read the manual).

They also love my Salvia Black & Blue. So far they have ignored the crocosmia which I thought they'd like.

Oddly enough, this year hummingbirds were attracted by my clematis Gravetye Beauty. Very odd as no nectar there for them.

They also like to pose on an obelisk by our dining room window. Usually in pairs, but not this time:
{{gwi:172762}}

Hey DTD, I have an old Canon A60. My Canon has a button on the back of the camera with a lightening bolt symbol on it that you can toggle the flash modes. When you toggle it off, a lightening bolt with a line through it appears on the LCD display. May be your Canon has a similar button? Seems like a lot of the Canons are similar in features.

Sue

Runkt and Sedum - when you take the camera out of Auto mode, what mode do you put it in? I use a little Canon A520 that I borrowed from a friend. It has a variety of modes on the dial.

To turn off the flash, I press the Button marked with the flash symbol and toggle through the choices.

As for the hummers, the other night I watched a hummer browse around the garden. She went to the Bee Balm first, then the tall fire engine Red Zinnias, where she spent quite awhile. Then she flew over to the Cleome and spent awhile there too.

Tom:

Last summer I also had a hummer enjoying the spray from a hose. It mostly perched on a shrub at the edge of the flow and flapped its wings in the water.

Unfortunately, the next time I was out watering the hummer flew over and went head first into the spray. It must have been a nasty experience because it never came near me again.

Claire

Prairiemoon2,
Quack, quack, quack. :-)
We have a few feeders out but there is always 1 more popular that they will fight over, or maybe it is a territorial matter. The females will chase each other off also.

Claire,
They don't really go into the water but seem to just go through the edges where it is misty.

This morning I stuck my head out our sliding door, by one of the feeders, and there was a hummer there immediately. She was really close and I could see her look at me and stick her long, thin tongue out a few times before she went to the feeder.
I am kind of worried because my wife has seen my buddy, CB (Crazy Boy our year old cat, and he is crazy), hiding by the feeders. I have raised them up but he is very good at mousing and, unfortunately, birding. I have chased him away from them, but I can't be there all the time. I just hope he can't catch them.

Happy Gardening,
Tom

Early in the summer, a humming bird enjoyed my white Weston Azalea. Now I have the gold finches eating the seeds on my cone flowers and liatris.

This isn't about h-birds, and it's more about buzzers than hummers, but it seems like a reasonable follow up anyway.

There's a narrow path along one of my borders, between a mixed bed and a small pool - about 25' long and only 3' wide (the path; the mixed bed is about 10' deep) and for over a month now the racket from the mixed bed has been astounding. This border is backed by old spruce trees and has a long row of evergreen euonymous (not one of the invasives, this is 'Manhattan' or a similar large-leaved variety) between the trees and a row of tree peonies, mountain laurel and azaleas, underplanted with gingers, geraniums, and various other perennials.

Closer inspection revealed that the racket was coming from the euonymous, which has been blooming for weeks. After an even closer look, I realized that the buzzers were not bees at all, but flies. I can't detect any odor from these flowers, but there must be one, and it must not be anything that would appeal to people.

Are there other plants that attract flies by the millions? These bugs (or are they insects?) don't seem to congregate anywhere else in the yard, and don't seem to be doing any harm. And, they don't scare anyone the way the bees that are swarming the clethra do.

Pretty standard -- they love-LOVED the monarda plain (ugly) red. What we do for our hummers. They also clustered to annual cardinal climber in a pot next to the border nearest the "woods" where they hang out. As you might gather, I'm not crazy about red flowers,but I adore anything pink. They just don't love the pink monarda as much. I also saw one slurping at a dark pink hollyhock in a bed by the porch where we were sitting - she (or a young he) was totally oblivious to our proximity! I'm in NW CT z5, and I'd love to add salvia black and blue next year. What do you mean "tender perennial?" Do you need to plant these as annuals? Do they overwinter? Or need special winter care? Info would be appreciated.
lucia

Lots of salvias are tender perennials; they'd live for years if it didn't freeze here. They behave a lot like annuals here, but they can be overwintered if you have the right spot. A few GW-NE regulars are good at this - I'm not one of them since I don't have anywhere suitable (like an unheated but cool garage). If you use the search feature and look for overwinter tender perennials or something like that, you'll find lots of information. Actually if you google those terms you'll probably find a GW thread about it.