Where to hang a hummingbird feeder

Height: the honest answer

Four to six feet. Hummingbirds are not fussy about elevation — they feed at flowers from ground level to the tree canopy — so height is mostly about you and about cats. Below four feet a feeder is reachable by a cat that has learned to wait. Above six feet you are fetching a stepladder twice a week, and a feeder that requires a stepladder is a feeder that gets cleaned less often. That second effect is the one that actually harms birds, so it decides the range.

The exception is a window feeder, which sits wherever your window is and is fine there. See the window feeder roundup.

Shade beats everything

Nectar in full afternoon sun gets hot, and hot sugar water ferments fast. Cornell’s guidance is to change nectar every three to five days and daily in very hot weather; direct sun effectively promotes your feeder to the daily schedule.

The ideal spot gets morning sun and afternoon shade. Morning light helps the birds find a red feeder; afternoon shade protects what is in it. Dappled shade under a tree is close to perfect, as long as it is not directly beneath a branch ants will use as a bridge.

Sun also does slow damage to the feeder itself — UV is what hazes polycarbonate permanently. Another reason shade is doing two jobs. See glass vs plastic.

Cover, and the ten-foot rule

Hummingbirds like a perch they can survey from and retreat to. A feeder within roughly ten feet of a shrub, a small tree or even a trellis will be adopted faster than one in the middle of an open lawn. Too close and a cat has an ambush point; ten feet or so is the usual compromise.

If you can, hang it where a bird sitting on that perch can see the feeder. Territorial hummingbirds pick a lookout and defend from it, and giving them one makes the feeder feel claimable.

Windows, and the counter-intuitive distance

Window strikes are a genuine risk and the safe distances are not the ones people guess. Very close is safe and middle distance is dangerous. A bird leaving a feeder mounted on the pane has no room to reach speed. A bird startled off a feeder five or ten feet from the glass can accelerate straight into a reflection of the sky.

So mount it on the window, or put it well away. Avoid the middle.

Two feeders, out of sight of each other

This is the single most effective placement decision available and it costs the price of a second cheap feeder. Hummingbirds are territorial: one dominant bird will sit on a lookout and drive everything else away from a single feeder, and it can do it all season.

It cannot defend what it cannot see. Put the second feeder around a corner of the house, on the other side of a hedge, or at the far end of the yard, and the monopoly breaks. You will see more birds at two 8 oz feeders than at one 32 oz one — which is also the reason buying a bigger feeder is usually the wrong upgrade.

Where not to hang it

• Directly over a patio, path or deck rail. Feeders drip, birds are messy, and glass over paving is a hazard.
• Directly beneath a branch or against a wall. Both are ant highways that bypass your moat entirely. A moat only works on a free-hanging feeder — that is worth knowing before you buy one. See the ants page.
• Anywhere very windy. Wind swings a feeder, which sloshes nectar out and deters birds from landing.
• Anywhere you need a ladder. Repeating this because it is the one people ignore, and it is the one that quietly ends the cleaning routine. Here is what that routine is.

Moving a feeder the birds already use

Move it in stages if you can — a few feet at a time over a week — rather than relocating it across the yard overnight. Hummingbirds remember feeder locations remarkably well and re-find a shifted feeder quickly, but an abrupt move can cost you a few days of traffic.

One deliberate exception: if bees have moved in, a sudden three-or-four-foot move is a recommended fix. Insects lose track of a relocated feeder while birds do not.