Goldfinch, Hummingbirds, and Blue Birds

all pics copyrighted and taken by Southern Photography by Staci ward (me)

These are some of the most sought after birds. From top to bottom:

The Eastern Blue Bird ( not to be confused with a Blue Jay)

Ruby Throat Humming bird (this one in particular is my older female)

The American Goldfinch ( better known as very cute, sweet, flying piglets)

Here are some tips to attracting these birds to your feeders and backyard.

We'll start with the Eastern Blue Bird. The Eastern Blue Bird is mainly an insect eater and are hardly ever seen at seed feeders. Not that there aren't some that will eat the seed you put out, but for the most part they prefer their insects. The Eastern Blue Bird is also kind of a shy bird in respect to other birds. I like to refer to them as the sweet wall flowers of the bird world.

 In order to attract the Blue Bird into your yard you'll need a few things.

1) A Blue Bird Nesting box. A Blue Bird box should be 10 inches tall and about 5 inches wide, with a 1 1/2 inch hole. If the box is not deep enough you risk having the babies fall out and the hole is important because if the hole is too small the Blue Birds won't be able to get into the box.and a clean out so you can clean the nests out after each brood has fledged. They can have up to 3 and sometimes 4 brood a year.

2) Live Meal worms. Meal worms a  type of bug larva. they're small hard worms with little feet. think bald, not so cute caterpillar. We don't recommend the "dead" or "Not Live meal worms"  for two reasons 1) they won't feed them to the babies and 2) they have no nutritional value for the birds. Put Simply they're pork rinds for birds. So, The best way to get the Blue Birds into your yard is Live meal worms. If the Blue birds see that your yard has a good food supply of meal worms they're more likely to stay and nest.

3) Open spaces. remember earlier when I said they were sort of shy? well they like the more open areas of your yard because other birds tend to stay closer to the tree lines and the Blue Birds would prefer to be away from the other birds.

4) A water source. this is easily achieved with a bird bath. you don't have to go digging a pond.

5) Make sure that the Blue Bird box is a good ways away from any seed feeders you may have. And your meal worm feeder should be a good distance away from their box as well.

6) If you plan on putting up more than one Blue bird box make sure that the boxes are at least a good 50 ft away from one another. Blue Birds don't like completion.


Hummingbirds: Hummingbirds usually show up in Louisiana around March about the same time the goldfinch start to leave. Hummingbirds like a sugar water solution of 4 cups of water to 1 cup of sugar. most of the time we see hummingbird feeders filled with a red colored sugar water solution. We don't recommend the Coloring or buying the premade colored solution as the dye is known to be bad for the birds. Just like dyed food isn't good for us. there are also the myths that hummingbirds won't drink the sugar water unless it's red or won't go to any feeder if it's any color but red. Hummingbirds see the color red better from long distances over other colors, that is why everything hummingbird is red. Hummingbirds migrate in spring and in winter. keep this in mind when feeding the hummingbirds and don't take your feeders down in the winter as you may have older or weaker hummingbirds that can't migrate or hummingbirds that are migrating into the area in winter.

Goldfinch: Goldfinch are in Louisiana from about thanksgiving to about March. They show up at feeders in flocks eating Nyjer (thistle), Sunflower hearts, and millet. the goldfinch are seasonal down here and show up looking dull with a pale dirty yellow to slightly greenish or gray color in November. By the time they leave us in March they are a  bright yellowish gold. special finch feeders are helpful to have in the yard. these feeders can be anything from Nyjer or Thistle socks to specially made tube feeders.

So go out and start enjoying the birds in your backyard. you never know what might show up :)