The hummingbird menu includes such garden problem insects as ants, aphids, fruit flies, gnats, weevils, beetles, mites and mosquitoes. Bottle brush plants could bring Hummingbirds to you!
Ornithologists tell us that hummingbirds can easily eat 3/4 their weight in pests in a day, feasting on carbohydrates (nectar from blossoms and sugar water from feeders) and protein (insects and spiders). The hummingbird menu includes such insects as ants, aphids, fruit flies, gnats, weevils, beetles, mites and mosquitoes. Hummingbirds not only eat spiders they will even use spiderwebs as a material in their nest building.
Hummingbirds generally fly up to someone's face because they are curious or investigating a situation. They are extremely inquisitive about their surroundings and enforce caution and safety in their territory. They also recognize, associate, and expect food from a homeowner when trained to be fed at a feeder. Because they work hard for their supper! Due to climate change raising the number of these pests smart gardeners know nurturing a helpful bird population is one of the best things you can do for your community and especially your garden!
There's a good reason crimson bottlebrush appears frequently in southern landscapes; Its strikingly beautiful and it's incredibly heat-tolerant. This shrub will bring pollinators such as native bees and birds into your backyard. Hummingbirds, especially, love the red flowers! Even in heat waves this plant can thrive which is great news for hummingbirds, who enjoy its nectar and are attracted to its red flowers. Drought tolerant, bottlebrush is a tough and adaptable plant for sunny, low maintenance areas. Surrounding this shrub with the Trumpet flower also known as hummingbird vine, it's no surprise this a recipe for ecological harmony the birds simply love this flower. A sunny spot will encourage the most flowers from this easy-to-grow vine that is native in many areas the U.S.A. If you are intent on building a thriving hummingbird garden colorful choices such as Fuchsia, Zinnias, Yarrow, Red Hot Pokers, Butterfly Bush, Sunflowers, and Bee Balm plants will make your property irresistible to hummingbirds!
Plus all of these plants can tolerate full sun! “Hummingbirds like and need nectar but 80 percent of their diet is insects and spiders,” It's all about balance so if you don't want to be run over by pests its a good call to plant things that help control pests as well as safeguard your property values and gardens from things that would harm it! Utilizing indigenous plants to support helpful birds and other wildlife should be every home gardeners passion. Although not yet the norm in today’s society, the outdoor living space at your house could be brimming with native flora: pretty ground covers, flowering perennials and annuals, slender grasses, shrubs of all shapes and sizes, and mature native trees, or saplings.
By gardening this way you can encourage biodiversity. This is important because locally native plants co-evolved with specific insects and the majority of these insects are herbivore specialists that can only eat certain plants. These plants, called host plants, are essential to an ecosystems health it is when we poison it or abuse it that problems arise. Science has also shown us that plant-eating insects have the incredible role of transferring energy from plants to other animals that cannot eat plants. “In fact,” renowned entomologist Dr. Doug Tallamy writes, “a large percentage of the world’s fauna depends entirely on insects to access the energy stored in plants.” Native plants = insects = biodiversity. Poisoning plants = poisoned insects, poisoned insects = poisoned animals, poisoned animals = Biological uniformity.
Biological uniformity. ecosystem uniformity. genetic uniformity. monogenetic. The loss of Biodiversity threatens the planet. The planet's biodiversity is under threat and the main culprit is the one who, paradoxically, depend on it most: human beings. Slowing down biodiversity loss, understood as the reduction or disappearance of the variety of living beings that inhabit the planet, is one of humanity's great challenges. When corporations try to control seeds by owning them and forcing farmers to grow only their seeds it destroys biodiversity. When people don't support small farmers and markets and only buy from grocery chains it hurts biodiversity!
Funny how all these things can be related to little things like a hummingbird and a bottlebrush plant that actually helps us support biodiversity and does more to protect the planet than all the billion dollar corporations do combined! Which is ironic because the things that hurt biodiversity are all connected as well.
The first culprit is POLLUTION! When we talk about pollution, we may think of car exhaust fumes billowing into the atmosphere because that is the worse, but biodiversity is not only affected by this type, it is also affected by noise pollution and light pollution although on a much smaller scale. This is because or reliance on fossil fuels is connected to...Climate change impacts biodiversity at various levels: species distribution means animals move to places where they can survive because humans changed the temperature or soil or water or even the foods they ate, population dynamics, community structure and the functioning of the ecosystem are all involved. Especially changes in the weather and extremes of weather.
Invasive alien species are the second biggest cause of loss of biodiversity in the world, according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). They act as predators, compete for food, hybridize with native species, introduce parasites and diseases, etc. But this is caused by humans too. It happens when we engage in overexploitation of natural resources, that is, when people get greedy and use up everything in the land without replacing it so their consumption grows at a speed greater than that of their natural regeneration, has an obvious impact on the planet's plants and animals.
The soil is the skin of the earth, a mantle full of scars, thousand-year-old wrinkles and more recent injuries caused both by man and nature itself. Some of these ulcers are incurable — such as the extinction of species once you kill off a species you cant get it back, all of which threaten the well-being of half the world's human population. The most recent United nations reports highlight that pollution is the biggest environmental cause of disease and death in the world today, mainly soil pollution, along with exposure to chemicals and poor waste management. Many nations are afraid to inform their citizens how much trouble they are in but the people can sense it and they have stopped having babies for fear of what is going to come in the future if governments don't stop hurting the planet or letting greedy people poison the earth.
In ancient and modern times, a Hummingbird has come to symbolize beauty, delight, good fortune, healing of the planet, and the miracle of life itself. That is why you'll often find Hummingbird-inspired art, decoration, jewelry, tattoo designs, and other objects. If you believe in the healing of the planet on earth day yo might give a friend a hummingbird piece of Jewelry or a card that shows you donated to a cause in their name like Black Coral Inc a non profit to use art to fund climate education and save the planet.
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