Last week I saw a sticker on the rear window of an SUV. The crude drawing looked at first like an old lantern with a thin rectangle below it, and slightly wider than the ‘lantern’ part. To the left, there looked like a little line near the rectangle. The circular sticker was red around its circumference, with a red diagonal slash through the middle of the black-on-white image.
Since a lantern didn’t make sense, I surmised that the image was of a wider-than-we-usually-see hummingbird feeder; the rectangular base being where birds feed, and the little line by the rectangle representing a hummingbird. I have not found an image online.
I’m guessing the sticker meant ‘Don’t feed the hummingbirds’. If I’m right, is this a thing? If I’m not right, any idea what it meant?
Apparently, if you don’t clean your HB feeders regularly (like every other day), they get mold on the areas you don’t see and the hummers drink the mold and they die. I’ve heard the rumblings that a ban HB feeders movement is brewing.
I posted a pic of my cat online last week. Someone sent me a scathing screed about how I was cruel for torturing my cats by making them wear a bell.
Sometimes kooks take things too far. As far as I can tell the issues with HB feeders boil down to red dye and not cleaning the feeder. Both are easily remedied.
This is of course barring areas where a disease is spreading.
Oh yes, there are kooks that don’t like bird feeders at all. The City of Mesa tried to outlaw them everywhere, but the birders educated them and the ban never got enacted.
As long as you make the right water, and clean them, they aren’t any problem at all. We have hummers all year, and they even have babies here. And boy will they get mad at you if you let the feeders get low!
Apparently it is (or was?) a thing that birds, not just hummingbirds, are dropping dead of diseases, and it is suspected that the diseases get transmitted where birds gather at feeders. There was some change of opinion as to whether this included hummingbirds. Example cite I found, from about a year ago:
I consider myself a careful human when it comes to feeding the birds. (I would never feed wildlife on purpose like deer or foxes or coyotes. I consider that irresponsible).
But I’ve stopped setting out seed or suet, I have cats that go outside! So just the hummers for me even so it’s a commitment to feed them safely using clean feeders with correct ratios of nectar. I never want to come home to a dead hummingbird on the feeder again.
Yeah, my asshole over the back fence neighbor called F&G twice over my backyard feeder. Part of CA F&G code does make it illegal to feed wild animals, but clearly that is made to stop deer baiting etc. I told the officer that every third house had a bird feeder, and if anyone tried to read that law as banning them, there’d be a revolt.
Same here- not to mention the heavy duty cleaning. Besides I have planted flowers they like.
It is better to not let your cats go outside.
We do have a Coopers hawk that comes by when the ravens are not around, and takes the “bird feeder” thing literally… and that’s okay too.
We had a pair of kestrels in our tree that we saw eating birds on more than one occasion. As long as they weren’t eating the lovebirds or hummers, we said “raptors gotta eat, too.” Same with the hoots owls we had for a while. We tried to convince them “pigeons are good food” but they were having none of that.
I had the ant problem too, then started hanging the feeders using about 10lb test nylon fishing line. Get a couple of metal rings, tie the line off on them, and then hang the feeder using the rings.
Laws and regulations tend to use the word “animal” to mean mammals other than humans, and don’t include fish or birds. Typically, if a law or reg is intended to include birds, it will explicitly include the word “bird”, and similarly with fish.
So if the regulation forbids feeding wild animals, it probably doesn’t apply to birds.
As a birdwatcher and bird breeder with experience in the pet trade, I can tell you that bird laws are distinct and a little counterintuitive.
It is illegal to capture or kill native migratory birds. But not foreign species–e.g. chickens, parrots, English sparrows, and starlings. The logic here is that since birds fly, they don’t live in just one state. Thus they are subject to federal jurisdiction. And the species that actually migrate may call different continents their home. We may think of an oriole or a scarlet tanager as OUR brightly, even tropical-colored, summer birds, but people in central and South America may think of them as THEIR winter birds.
Hummingbirds are migratory species (plural), so they’re not subject to state or local laws. But agencies or other organizations may release suggestions regarding the safety and health of migratory birds that you take up the responsibility to interfere with, i.e. feed.
All that said, without a picture of this decal, I would have to assume it has nothing to do with not feeding hummingbirds. It utterly fails to communicate anything of the sort. It would at least include a graphic of the profile of a hummer.
