Brossura

ISBN 10: 0671892452 ISBN 13: 9780671892456

Casa editrice: Touchstone, 1994

Turn your garden into a glorious haven for hummingbirds. Here are the basics on planning, planting, and maintaining a beautiful outdoor space that will lure these tiny creatures and give you hours of gardening pleasure. This charmingly illustrated volume provides a variety of garden plans, including essential information on hardiness zones, soil conditions, and sun and shade preferences, and is packed with facts on the lives and habits of hummingbirds. When your winged guests linger in your garden, you'll delight in consulting the hummingbird identifier in Creating a Hummingbird Garden. Here is everything you need to know to attract hummingbirds, from their favorite flowers to instructions for making hummingbird feeders.

About the Author:

Marcus Schneck, founder and director of the Backyard Wildlife Association, is a natural history writer and photographer, and the author of several books on hummingbirds and butterflies, including Creating a Butterfly garden. He lives in Pennsylvania.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

HUMMERS LOVE BACKYARDS

There's no doubt about it. Most species of hummingbirds love what many of us have done with backyards. Even without any special planning or forethought, many of the brightly flowering plants that we love to have in abundance serve the tiny, feathered "helicopters" equally well.

Whether those flowers -- particularly red and orange ones -- appear on our highly manicured ornamental plants, in our flower gardens, or as part of specially designed backyard habitats for hummingbirds and/or other wild creatures, they have become meccas for the nectar-sipping birds. Such places quickly become part of a hummingbird's daily rounds, possibly warranting more than a single visit each day.

Our gardens, intentionally or otherwise, have become part of the forefront in hummingbird conservation. And these tiny birds, like so many wildlife species, need all the help they can find.

We're far removed from those days in the mid-1800s when hundreds of thousands of hummingbirds were killed and exported to Europe for use in specimen collections, ornamentation on ladies' hats and similar applications. But we've come up with even more dangerous threats in the pesticides, herbicides and all the other "cides" that we apply to our properties in the name of green lawns.

If you're thinking about attracting hummingbirds to your backyard, your first step -- the kindest, most caring thing you can do -- is to cease using all chemicals. Be assured, nearly all those pesticides and herbicides are quite deadly to your little visitors.

Copyright © 1993 Quarto Publishing Inc.