I don't have that one but have a perennial sunflower I've always thot was a heliopsis which is quite similar to the helianthus. Also called False Sunflower. Mine is multi-petalled. It was a plant I got years ago from a fellow garden club member and has been very reliable in this climate. Grows like a weed and self seeds but is not invasive. I made the mistake of planting them at the back of the border next to the horse pasture and the horses easily reached over the fence for the tasty snack! LOL After trimming the plants they came back very well and an electric line prevented a recurrence. This pic and the following close-up show the plant. Last fall they didn't get trimmed back so I should have lots of volunteers - will have lots of plants to give away this year. Here is a link that might be useful: my perennial sunflowers

Hi Lydia, I would certainly contact the company and see whether they will send you a new base free of charge. I have read many sad stories and seen horrific pictures of dead hummers stuck at those very feeders. The safer we can make it for our little guys & gals, the better. As for the orioles, I have had them try to sip out of the hummer feeders but the holes are just too small. I hung an oriole feeder and now I have at least 4 or 5 of them coming every day. It's sooooooooo cool!!!!

Our place is an animal refuge (not officially, lol) and we have everything you can imagine and some things I never thought I'd ever see. In parts of Texas near us, and presumably on our side of the river as well, a bad outbreak of canine distemper hit the raccoons really hard last year, and I am going to assume it hit the coyote population as well because we have cottontail rabbits everywhere in greater numbers than I've ever seen. Bunnies have to eat, and we have them all over the place eating everything in sight every evening and early every morning and, presumably, during the night as well. We cannot drive up our driveway at any time of the night without having so slow down to let the bunnies hop away from the driveway. Our gardens are fenced, but the compost piles are not, and some years it is a wonder we have any compost at all because the deer, rabbits, possums, skunks, squirrels and coons all visit the compost piles every day and every night looking for anything interesting I've tossed there that they can eat. When I am canning and putting lots of waste material on the compost pile, the deer stand by the pile and wait....and I have to yell at them and pace back and forth to chase them off so they'll go far enough away that I can walk out to the compost pile without having deer so close that they could attack me. (A deer attacked an elderly couple here in our area a few years ago and a deputy had to go shoot the deer so medics could get to the couple and help them.) We never stop feeding the birds either, and we feed the deer more than we intend to. The birds, though, earn their keep by eating insects in the garden, and the deer kind of earn their keep by being beautiful and entertaining. One doe is bringing her tiny spotted fawn to the back yard every day and they scarf up any birdseed the wild birds don't eat. One thing I've never figured out about the deer is this: they largely ignore the native sunflowers and don't eat them, but when I plant improved varieties with larger flowers they'll eat the flowers while they are in full bloom, they'll eat the leaves, and they'll eat the younger, more tender parts of the stalks. I don't know why they like the improved sunflowers so much more than the native ones. In every garden decision I make, I have to think about the wildlife because anything that is not well-protected is going to be food for some sort of wildlife. The deer taught me quickly in our early years here just what I could not grow here because it became deer chow. Ditto for the rabbits. We live with that waste not, want not philosophy as well, and with prolific wildlife here, nothing much goes to waste because there is something that will eat just about any plant part I discard on the compost pile.

I believe in the same vicinity; not very close to where last year's nest was though. They might be busy building a nest somewhere else and doesn't have time to come by the feeder.