Welcome to Florida Gardening. Hope you enjoy it here as much as I have. Your new bed looks great, and I hope you can keep those pesky critters out of your feeders. As for hummers in central Florida...they arrive here in February and stay until late August or early September when they head farther south for winter. So you can see them all spring and summer, IF you have some in your neighborhood. Planting the right kinds of things to attract them is the first move, and then putting out a feeder is the next step. The feeder needs to have clean sugar water in it at all times. It will ferment in a 24 to 48 hours in our heat, so should be changed out regularly. Don't buy commercial prepared mixes. Expensive, and they usually contain red dye which many experts feel is harmful to the hummers. You can make your own solution much more economically. Just stir 1 cup of sugar into 3 cups of water and boil 5 minutes, making sure all sugar is dissolved. Let it cool, and voila! Hummer food, cheap. You can keep the prepared mixture in your refrigerator for about a week before you need to make more. I usually do up a big batch, fill my feeder, refrigerate the rest, then change the feeder solution every other day with stuff fresh from the fridge. Good luck with attracting both hummingbirds and butterflies. BOTH make Florida gardens extra special! Marcia

Wrens are pretty bold in the bird world. They frequently build nests really close to human activity, so they seem to know what they're getting in for when the babies come. Maybe they instinctively know their little ones will be safer from predators when they live so close to humans. I had a Carolina Wren INSIST on building her nest in my newly potted hanging baskets this year and even though I took out the nesting material every single day before it really got built, they kept at it. They KNEW I was there, that I knew they were there, and that I kept tearing the nest up on a regular basis. They still wouldn't stop. That says a lot. I took down that basket and put up an empty, with a bedding of loose dead geranium roots, then put their nesting material on top of that, hoping they'd accept it. They did. They finished it out the way they wanted and now their hanging basket is the closest to the steps and to the front door. They seem perfectly happy with it. After watching them from my yard as I worked, after a couple of weeks, it seemed they had abandoned it. I never saw them again. One evening, just at dusk, I tilted the basket to peek inside and scared the mother off the nest. Again... not a peep for days. I had to practically camp out at my living room window to catch one of them. I finally am seeing them again, regularly, as the little ones are keeping them extremely busy. They're flying in with lunch and out with fecal sacs all day long, but you never see them if you're out there. I wouldn't worry about your activity near their nest, like cleaning away spider webs. You wouldn't believe all the rowdy things I've done on that front porch since they moved in. They probably will have one or two more clutches, though, before winter, so you may want to set up an alternative nesting site and see if they'll accept it, if you want to use your front door again.

I totally understand how you feel. Up until last Friday, I could not have hurt a HOSP. However today I would rather wring their neck as look at them. Three weeks ago we had a hatch of 5 baby bluebirds. We watched them everyday growing like litttle weeds into fully feathered beauties. My husband get telling me the HOSPs would end up killing our babies. He wanted to get a trap, but I stubborningly refused.. A decision I would live to regret. That day was a week ago today when we saw a male HOSP on their house. We found bluebird feathers on the ground. When we opened the box the babies were baldheaded and bleeding. their eyes and beaks had been pecked as well as there wings . My husband handed me the first baby who died in my hand. As I stood there watching my husband pulled 2 more out that were dead. As we walked away the HOSP headed for the house again to finish them off. I took the nest out, asked my husband to get me a spare house bringing it in our house to keep that monster away. I held those little guys and cried my heart out. They died sometime after 1 am when I fell asleep. We ordered a Sparrow trap that night. In 2 days we have caught over a dozen sparrows. I have been responsible for doing away with over half of them and I am not done yet. I guess it takes seeing what I saw to get to where I am.

Geez...thanks so much! I've been feeding them here for over 20 years, but only seriously for about 10...the first 10 there wasn't a lot of info, and I winged it. Now I'm retired and have a lot more time to watch them! As you feed them year after year, you will notice that you will get more and more! I read somewhere that the young always return to within a few miles of where they hatch to breed the next year, so maybe that's why. I have gotten so I can recognize a few of them..one has a very distinct bend in her beak, 1 is fat (really fat) and just a little different marking than the others..I look for them every year. As for plants..just google hummingbird plants and you will get tons of plants. For a beginner, I would suggest Monarda(bee balm)..it is a perennial almost everywhere and gets bigger patches every year. The leaves are also what Earl Grey tea comes from, so great for us, too! I usually buy hanging baskets of fuchsia and petunia every year, too. As for vines, they like honeysuckle and morning glory a lot. Supposed to love trumpet vines, but my 15+ year old vines only get a couple blooms on them..I think I'm way too far north..maybe they like southern states better? I have a very large vegetable garden, and the females especially come bug hunting when their young have hatched, so that's a bonus for me! Good luck! And thanks for the praise! I get a lot of enjoyment from them!