“Tie a curly red ribbon on your pole to attract their attention. It works! They often think it’s a flower and try to feed from it at first,” the user u/Fast_Show2880 explained. They also advised the birder to refill the nectar regularly and move the feeder to a shaded spot once the hummingbirds start coming. “They should stop by frequently around 6 to 7:30 pm before going to roost for the night,” they wrote. As magical as it may seem, the birder followed the trick and was astonished to receive a hummingbird guest the very next afternoon. This isn’t a magic trick. It’s the science of colors and how hummingbirds see them.
As colorful as they are to human eyes, hummingbirds have an affinity for paying attention to the color red wherever they see it. A dense concentration of cone cells in a hummingbird’s retina makes their eyesight extremely sensitive to reds, oranges, and yellows, the National Audubon Society explains. These cones mute out colors like blue and green and direct their attention towards the reddish color range.
Another reason for hummingbirds’ infatuation with red is their ravenous hunger for carb-rich nectar and proteins. It is usually the brightly colored red and orange flowers that contain the most copious quantities of nectar. In most of these flowers, pollinators like bumblebees and honeybees stop by to sip nectar and disperse pollen. So, when a hummingbird sees color red, it gets the signal that there’s a nectar-rich source at this location, which is why the red ribbon trick seems to work.
According to BWD Magazine, the ribbon trick is a brainchild of Bob Sargent. Sargent was the co-founder of the Hummer/Bird Study Group, a non-profit organization based in his hometown of Clay, Alabama, dedicated to the study and preservation of hummingbirds and other neotropical migrants, per Our Fine Feathered Friends.
BWG Magazine suggests using foot-long pieces of red or orange ribbons, something you’ll easily find in hardware stores. To catch the eyes of passing hummingbirds, tie these ribbons anywhere near the feeder, such as bushes, trees, deck railings, flowers, or tree branches. When a hummingbird spots this ribbon, they will stop by the feeder to drink nectar and perhaps even spend some time resting on the perch or socializing with their birdie buddies.
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