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Those of you who are feeding their birds cane sugar/ sucrose may want to purchase a little extra. Sugar prices will surely be going up based on the USA/ China tariffs. Any sugar components sourced in China and used by USA sugar refiners will increase in price and you can bet that any domestically refined sugar will match the higher the higher tariff prices. I have not seen any reference to hummingbird feeders included in the tariffs. The United States Trade Representative released a list of everything that will be affected in the September 01 and December 15 tariffs These...

Are your hummingbird feeders being drained at night? Great, you are indeed helping endangered species. Most of Arizona's 28 bat species eat insects, but the federally endangered Lesser long-nosed bats (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae), and the Arizona species of concern Mexican long-tongued bats (Choeronycteris mexicana), drink nectar from hummingbird feeders, and also eat pollen and fruits from plants such as the saguaro and agave. The bats migrate north from Mexico and arrive in southern Arizona as the Saguaro cactus and agave begin to bloom, traveling throughout southern Arizona and then they return south in the fall. In the fall I usually remove...

By Stacy Zogheib from eHow Refining raw cane sugar into white table sugar is a complicated process that involves hundreds of organic, inorganic and electrolytic materials. The sugar cane is cut, washed in hot water and pressed; the juice is then mixed with lime. The canes may also be burned, mixed with soda ash and exposed to a myriad of chemicals in order to clarify the sugar. Many of these chemicals can cause irritation to different parts of your body and, in high enough doses, some of them can even be poisonous or toxic. Sulfur Dioxide Cane sugar is naturally brown because...

Life Histories of North American Cuckoos, Goatsuckers, Hummingbirds One of our favorites of early published research is the 20 volume series by Arthur Cleveland Bent, The Life Histories of North American Birds.  Bent, whose series was first published in 1940 under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, was one of the country’s outstanding ornithologists and this encyclopedic collection of life histories quickly became one of the classic sources of comprehensive information about the birds of North America. Dover Publications describes this series as “a group of first-hand, concrete observations of specific flocks throughout the continent, describing in readable language and copious detail...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2015/sep/30/hummingbirds-nest-near-hawks-for-protection   https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/8/e1500310