Hummingbirds Are Not Noticing Your Feeder? This ‘Ribbon Trick’ Brings Them to Your Yard Instantly

A birdkeeper (u/Calathea-ornata) based in Central Texas had a crystal blue bird feeder dangling from a tree in her front yard. Surrounded by lush bushels of bluebonnets and salvia flowers, the feeder was usually crowded by hummingbirds who came to sip sugar water. But in the spring of 2023, she noticed that the hummingbirds had suddenly disappeared. The feeder hung there, lifeless.

After seeing the picture of her feeder, Reddit users started concocting bizarre scenarios, but one jumped in to share an unusual “ribbon hack” to help her attract more hummingbirds to her feeder. u/Fast_Show2880, another birder from the same city, suggested that she “tie a curly red ribbon to her feeder.” Turns out, experts also recommended this “ribbon” trick as a clever marketing strategy to woo hummingbirds into coming to your feeder and sip nectar.

The bizarre ‘ribbon trick’

“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.

Hummingbirds see red

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.

How to implement the ‘ribbon trick’?

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.   

Like the Reddit birder, dozens of people have applied this trick and successfully attracted flocks of hummingbirds into their feeders. One of these is Patricia McCulley. Around the monsoon of 2016, McCulley set up a feeder outside her office window in a side yard. But when three days passed without any hummingbird guests, her head was jolted into a tailspin of doubts. Was the shiny purple-blue hanging she attached there for decoration scaring the birds away, she wondered. Upon recommendations from fellow birders, she tied some red ribbons on the shepherd’s hook of her feeder.

Another birdkeeper named Patty Brown revealed that this ribbon trick is sometimes referred to as “roll flagging” by hardware stores. “I was having trouble attracting attention to my feeders, I put up the ribbons, and I wasn’t even done tying it before I heard one hovering behind me checking it out,” they described.

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