Thanks, guys. Those glass flowers are amazing! I wish the pictures could be enlarged to see the detail. I have this vague memory that I might have seen the real ones many, many years ago when I visited Boston. They truly are exquisite works of craftmanship, and glass is such a classy material compared with Sculpey clay. It has a translucency that's hard to get with polymer clay. If I make the Sculpey clay really thin, though, the light passes through and makes the petals glow in the sunshine. I'm always striving to get this effect, but it's hard to do. When clay is pressed this thin, it tends to slump either in the forming or in the baking stage. It is definitely a labor of love, but then so is gardening for hummingbirds and feeding them. It is such a thrill to make a feeder and watch them head right for it, take a sip, and zip off, disappearing to parts unknown. Some of my flowers are quite a bit larger than life, and I sometimes chuckle to myself and wonder what those little hummingbirds are thinking when they see a Salvia coccinea that is 3x bigger than it ought to be. "Ay caramba! That's the biggest salvia I ever saw!" I've had my share of failures, but have gotten better and better at making them hummer friendly. Although I try to make them works of art, they remain, first and foremost, functioning hummingbird feeders. Here's a couple more: A NOTE TO CS7580 (Otherwise known as Connie, I think)--If you're seeing this, I just wanted you to know that I tried to send you an email by going through your member page, but I think it didn't go through. I know you were interested in trying to make your own Sculpey clay feeders, and I remembered some instructional things I hadn't mentioned in my original post that might help you with your efforts. If you're interested, maybe you can send me an email by using my member page. Hopefully, it will work for you. Once I have your email, I can get those extra instructions to you. They are very important, and I think you'll have trouble being successful without them.

As long as your feeder has red parts they will come. Actually, the color doesn't really matter. Hummers are attracted by the nectar content, not the color, so even a green, blue or brown (or even a clear glass) feeder will work equally as well. Like many myths, the attraction of the color red is a causal assumption - hummingbirds are only attracted to red because many red colored flowers have a heavy nectar content. They are also attracted to any other colored flower that has a similar nectar content - pink, white, blue, yellow.

I live in Texas, and we do have a huge ant problem. Moats have not worked for me because I can't keep them full. Between wind shake and evaporation, they are usually empty even with close attention. I simply put a tiny bit of wheel bearing grease at the very top of the hanger, and they will not cross it. I have fire ants, carpenter ants, and other smaller types that I can't identify. They all stay off. My grease is not down where a hummer is likely to get into it, and I have never seen any evidence of it getting on any hummers. Texas gets pretty hot, but I have never seen the grease melted or running. On one feeder several years ago, I continued to have problems even with the spot of grease, so I soaked a piece of coarse cotton string in grease and wrapped it a few turns around the very top of the hanger. They never crossed it. I suggest one other thing. Put up more hangers than you have feeders and move each feeder that gets invaded. After a day or so, they will appear to have abandoned that spot, but they keep checking it occasionally for several days. Just leave that spot idle for as long as needed. Regardless what solution you use, somebody will call you an idiot. Be sensible, but know that most things we do can POSSIBLY harm something SOMETIME. I have seen just about every kind of aerial combat these birds engage in, and I have seen some predicaments they get themselves into while fighting, but we can't make the world entirely safe for them. I have seen them run into door screen, windows, feeders, and each other. Let's just be sensible and feed the birds.

Does anyone have experience with the Parasol Ferris Wheel feeder for hummingbirds? It doesn't seem like the hummers like using it. Anyone have any ideas why? I have seen hummers use it though, but ever since used it to replace a hummzinger, I haven't seen any hummers drinking from it. It seems like the hummzinger is what brought them in. I also noticed that if placed side by side they prefer the hummzinger. I have Ferris Wheel feeder filled about an inch with nectar in each of its bottles, I don't know if this makes a difference. I'm not sure if they can reach the nectar to the bottom of the glass or not.