The best hummingbird swings

How we judged these

A swing is a simple object, so the criteria are about what the maker will tell you and how it behaves next to a feeder.

1. Does the maker publish a specification? Dimensions, material, finish, weight. In a category this generic, a published spec sheet is most of the signal.
2. What is the perch surface? Bare metal in full sun gets hot and offers less grip than a coated or wooden dowel.
3. Will it survive outdoors? It lives in the weather permanently. Copper and stainless age gracefully; unspecified coated steel is a question mark.
4. Is the hanging hardware included? A surprising number of these need a hook you do not have.

Why a swing works at all

This is the part worth getting right, because the category is sold on charm and the actual mechanism is better than the charm.

Hummingbirds are not built to hover all day. Cornell’s Bird Academy notes that they spend about 75 percent of their day perching to conserve energy, and that their leg anatomy is specialized for perching. These are birds built to sit. Hovering is the most expensive thing they do, and they do it in bursts between rests — the argument worked through in feeders with perches.

The second half is territory. Songbird Essentials puts it plainly on its own product page: hummingbirds are territorial and will use a swing as a perch to watch over their food source. That matches what Cornell describes about guarding behavior — a dominant bird picks a vantage point near the feeder and launches from there at intruders.

So a swing is not a gimmick. It is a vantage point placed where a bird already wants one. If you have a bird that guards your feeder, there is a reasonable chance it will adopt a swing hung a few feet away, because that is the job it was already doing from a fence wire.

The honest part: this is mostly for you

Here is what the marketing will not lead with, and what Perky-Pet quietly admits in its own product copy. Alongside “hummingbirds will perch here before and after using feeders,” Perky-Pet lists the benefit as: it “perfectly frames birds for photography.”

That is the truthful summary of the whole category. A swing does not feed a bird, shelter it, or improve its nectar. It gives a bird one more place to sit in a yard that already has branches, wires and fence tops, and it gives you a predictable spot to look at and point a camera at. That is a perfectly good reason to spend fifteen dollars. It is not the same as a reason the birds need it.

We are saying this plainly because the rest of this site spends its time arguing that the purchases which matter are the ones affecting nectar hygiene — capacity sized to a three-to-five-day discard cycle, a feeder that comes apart in two pieces, a moat with water in it. A swing affects none of that. Buy it after those, not instead of them.

Where to hang it, and the mistake to avoid

Near the feeder, not on it. A few feet away, at or slightly above feeder height, with a clear sightline to the ports. That is where a guarding bird wants to sit: the whole point of the lookout is that it can see the feeder, not that it is standing on it.

The mistake is hanging it directly against the feeder in the hope of combining the two. That gets you a perch that drips get on, and sticky metal beside a nectar source is how you recruit ants and bees — the drips on the outside of a feeder are what insects actually feed on, which is the core finding in keeping bees off a feeder. Keep the swing far enough away that it stays dry.

Shade helps, as it does for everything in a hummingbird yard. And if your feeder is on a balcony or a deck rail with nothing to hang a second item from, the swing is competing for the same single hook — see deck hooks for the clamp-on options, or accept that a swing may not fit your site.

What a swing will not do

Three things, because the listings imply all three.

It will not attract hummingbirds that are not already coming. If nothing is visiting your feeder, the problem is nectar, placement, timing or season, and a perch changes none of them. Work through why hummingbirds are not coming to your feeder first and spend the money afterwards.

It will not stop fighting at the feeder. This is the one people most hope for. Giving a dominant bird a comfortable lookout does not make it less territorial; if anything you have improved its office. The only reliable fix for guarding is a second feeder placed out of sight of the first, which is the whole argument of how many feeders you need.

It will not replace a perch on the feeder. A bird still has to get to the nectar, and whether it can sit while drinking is a property of the feeder, not of a swing three feet away. If drinking-while-perched is what you want, that is a feeder decision.

The picks

Perky-Pet Beaded Copper Swing (model 90) — the one to buy

Perky-Pet publishes 5 x 7.25 inches, a frame of real copper accented with rose-tinted beads, a plastic-coated perch for grip, and a weight of 0.130 lb. The retail listing states the dimensions slightly differently at 7.62 x 5.12 x 0.62 inches; either way it is a small object, and the useful point is that someone published numbers at all.

The plastic-coated perch is the detail that earns it the top slot. Bare metal in direct sun gets hot and gives less grip; a coated dowel does neither. Real copper also means the finish ages rather than flakes.

Honest downsides: the matching hook is sold separately, so budget for it or reuse a hook you have; the beads are pure decoration; and Perky-Pet’s own framing about photography tells you who the product is really for.

Songbird Essentials Copper Hummingbird Swing — best US-made

Published as 0.25 inches deep by 5.5 wide by 7 high, country of origin USA, with a red glass bead dangler to draw attention to it. Songbird Essentials is also the maker that explains why on its own page — territorial birds using the swing to watch over their food source — rather than implying a swing summons birds by itself. We rate that.

A stated country of origin is close to unique in this category, and the slim quarter-inch profile means it takes up almost nothing beside a feeder.

Against it: Songbird Essentials does not publish the perch material or any rust-proofing figure on its own product page — retail listings add those claims, and we are not going to pass them off as the maker’s. It also costs a little more than the Perky-Pet for less published detail, and the decorative glass bead is breakable.

Pop’s Birding Hummingbird Swing — if you want a hook included

A small-maker swing stating 100% US manufacture with the hanging hook in the box, listed as suiting hummingbirds and other small wild birds. The included hook is a genuine practical advantage over the Perky-Pet, which expects you to buy one.

It ranks third because the published specifications are thin: we could not verify dimensions, material or weight from anything the maker publishes, and it is the most expensive of the three. If documentation matters to you — and on this site it usually decides things — the other two tell you more about what you are getting.

The free version of the same idea

Worth stating before you spend anything. The mechanism behind a swing is “a thin horizontal thing to sit on, a few feet from the feeder, with a clear view of it.” A bare twig lashed to a stake, a length of garden wire between two canes, or the existing branch you were going to prune all satisfy that completely.

Hummingbirds are not evaluating the finish. If the goal is more perched birds in view, leaving one bare branch unpruned near the feeder is the highest-return move in this entire page, and it is free. The goal of a bought swing is that it looks deliberate and sits exactly where you want the photograph.

Both are legitimate. Just know which one you are buying.