How to Encourage Hummingbirds to Nest in Your Yard

I love seeing wildlife in my yard. Our garden offers a home to a lot of birds year-round, but I especially love the hummingbirds that nest with us. Their tiny nests are difficult to spot, but it is so exciting if you can help to offer these little birds a home. Here's how we help encourage hummingbirds to return to our yard.

Safe Spaces

Hummingbirds are small birds and correspondingly delicate. Because they are so small, their nests and eggs are smaller than most birds'. This means that hummingbirds like protected places to nest. If you can offer them a safe place, then they are more likely to build a home on your property. We have hanging fern baskets on our front porch. They are under the eaves of the house, and near the dryer vent. This means that they are protected from the weather and a little warmer than the surrounding area. Not long after we added the baskets, we found a nest in one of them. Before long, we discovered that the second basket housed a tiny nest as well. Hummingbirds also like hedges and trellises.

Soft Materials

As their eggs are so delicate, hummingbirds work on making their nests extra soft. In nature, this means that they like to incorporate materials like moss into their nests. If you don't happen to have moss in your yard, you can also supply other soft materials. Hummingbirds will use cotton pieces, bits of yarn, dryer lint, and similar materials in their nests. They picked lint straight from the exterior dryer vent on our house, but you can also put small pieces in areas where you see birds, like in bushes. Access to building materials will help encourage hummingbirds to build their nests.

Nourishment

This one may seem obvious, but all birds are more likely to stay in your area if you feed them. Adding a hummingbird feeder to your yard is probably the best way to encourage hummingbirds to actually nest in your yard. If they have access to a constant, safe food source, they will want to live near it. Clean water is also important to birds. In addition to bird feeders and water sources, some plants also help to invite hummingbirds.

Wild Spaces

Hummingbirds are wild animals, and so feel most comfortable in the wild. Leaving even a small portion of your yard unattended will help to encourage hummingbirds, and other wildlife, to visit your yard. This can also be important for local plant species. We have a section of our backyard called "the meadow" by our children. It is outside of the fence, and we only mow it a few times a year. We regularly see a variety of birds, deer, turtles, ground hogs, and other animals in that area of the yard, and wildflowers and grasses grow there.