THE FEEDER
YOU'LL CLEAN

THE CASE

CLEANING IS THE WHOLE JOB

Nectar spoils. Audubon's feeding FAQ ties the cleaning schedule to the weather: every day or every other day when it is hot, every three days when it is temperate, twice a week when it is cool, and sooner when the birds are drinking hard. Cloudiness, mold or insects inside mean change it now. A feeder that is a chore to take apart is a feeder that gets cleaned late.

The testers split the market by shape. Bird Watching HQ, writing from years of hands-on use, calls dish-style feeders "incredibly easy" to clean because the reservoir has no hard-to-reach corners, and finds bottle feeders "much harder to clean" and more likely to leak. Birds & Blooms agrees that saucers win on convenience. Bottles answer with capacity, a classic look and, on the Perky-Pet and More Birds glass models, built-in bee guards and ant moats. Window mounts trade capacity for the close view and hang on suction cups. Bob Vila's Perky-Pet 217 held through six weeks that included heavy rain, but owners on Perky-Pet's page report that the suction cup on newer units does not fit the mounting hole.

Material is the second argument. Bob Vila's testers found that plastic resists cracking but fades in the sun over time, while glass wears better and breaks if dropped. Birds & Blooms adds that glass survives the dishwasher better than mixed-material bottles, though the attached plastic ports still need hand-washing, and flags BPA concerns for plastic reservoirs left in direct sun. Hang plastic in shade.

LOCAL NOTES · EL SEGUNDO AND THE SOUTH BAY

WHO DRINKS HERE, ALL YEAR

Two species carry South Bay feeders through the whole calendar. Anna's Hummingbird is a permanent Pacific Coast resident, per Audubon's field guide, and the Palos Verdes–South Bay Sierra Club calls it abundant year-round in Los Angeles County, especially in the coastal lowlands, foothills and urban areas. The Sierra Club also notes the male is the only North American hummingbird with a red crown. Allen's Hummingbird here is mostly the non-migratory subspecies sedentarius, which colonized the Palos Verdes Peninsula and stayed.

Its spread is one of the better bird stories in Southern California. Working from eBird checklists, a 2017 study in The Condor found the resident population's mainland range grew from about 70 square kilometers in 1970 to about 13,000 by 2016, with the species on more than a fifth of Southern California checklists and an estimated 46,000 to 350,000 birds in the region. Migratory Rufous and Allen's pass through in spring. The rest of the year, the yard runs on Anna's and resident Allen's.

So leave the feeder up in winter. Project FeederWatch notes that Anna's are resident from Baja California to southern coastal British Columbia and common at feeders in winter, and Audubon's feeding FAQ says a feeder can stay up year-round where hummingbirds remain; leaving it up does not keep migrants from heading south. Audubon's advice for freezing weather rarely applies on this coast. The cleaning schedule is the whole job.

A feeder supplements a garden; it should not replace one. The CNPS South Coast Chapter points to a coastal core of Mediterranean-climate natives that need little to no irrigation once rooted, and Calscape's plant finder filters them by zip code, with a hummingbird and pollinator layer.

• California fuchsiaEpilobium canumLate-summer and fall nectar when little else blooms.
• Hummingbird sageSalvia spathaceaTakes dappled shade; no summer water once established.
• Purple sageSalvia leucophyllaLittle to no irrigation once rooted.
• Showy penstemonPenstemon spectabilisTubular, hummingbird-pollinated flowers.
• Climbing penstemonKeckiella cordifoliaTubular, hummingbird-pollinated flowers.
• MonkeyflowerMimulus aurantiacusLittle to no irrigation once rooted.