Watching Nectar Feeders Can Be Quite Interesting

Watching nectar feeders from a distance can be quite interesting. There are different kinds of nectar feeders of which you could study and write about, such as humming birds, honey bees, butterflies, woodpeckers, sparrows, etc. Some birds do pollinate fruits not pollen found in flowers. For a moment, watching my flower plants blooming during their pick season, I noticed pairs of hummingbirds flying around the flowers nibbling pollen from the center of the flower petals and sipping nectar. Bees pollinating, collecting nectar while heading back and forth from their hidings, where they have built their hives. If there are let to settle in similar spots, they grow in numbers adding to their families while producing honey inside their honeycombs stored in their hives. In order to collect honeycombs, all of the bees needs to be sent away by burning and producing smoke or using bee detectors to electronically divert their direction before honey can be collected and extracted for distribution.

With birds, they feed on flowers’ nectar, fruits, wood backs etc. reproducing multiple times during their mating seasons. The sparrows are always in pairs perching and chirping on wood backs filled with sweet gums, spotted on trees such as maple trees. You could even create a nectar bath by adding sugar in water and placing it in your garden close to blooming flowers.

The red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) is a mid-sized woodpecker found in temperate North America. Its breeding habitat is open country across southern Canada and the east–central United States. It is rated as least concern on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List of Endangered species, having been down-listed from near threatened in 2018.

The woodpeckers are my favorite. They’re always in pairs, pecking and chirping on wood backs filled with sweet gums, spotted on trees such as maple trees. Woodpeckers have strong bills that they use for drilling and drumming on trees, and long, sticky tongues for extracting food (insects and larvae). Woodpecker bills are typically longer, sharper, and stronger than the bills of piculets and wrynecks, but their morphology is very similar.

The most exciting, fun and interesting part is watching their movements, while collecting nectar either from maple trees or blooming flower gardens. With hummingbirds, their wings are continuously flapping, steadily moving like fans, propagating air around them to keep them from landing while they pollinate the pollen grains within petals of blooming flowers. Some, are conscious of their weight and depending on the size of the flower, they may land or not.

Woodpeckers land on woods, pecks, chirps and feed on syrups flowing out of maple trees. Their baby birds cheep, beep, squeak, chip, peep while waiting for food and like always are feed by their parents. They are pretty, gracious, beautiful to admire. They always flock in pairs. If you are a bird watcher, have ornament trees or live in areas with trees in your backyard, you could easily observe different kinds of these lovely birds and their activities. Having electronic birds sounds maker, you may use it to calling different types of birds around.

In a full bright sunny day, with blooming flowers, butterflies are bound to come around feeding on nectar produced from pollen grains. The butterflies come in all colors and some have dotted circles or spots on their (petals) wings. I have been fortunate to continuously observe lots of monarchs, grass hoppers, white, blue, brown, green and mixed beautiful colored at once in specific intervals on our gardens. They hover and play with the rabbits, robins and blue Jays as much.