Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Cindy Procter

Cindy Procter won't even hazard a guess as to how many hummingbirds visit her North Okanagan yard on a daily basis.

Judging from her home videos it's not hard to see why, as dozens of hummingbirds zip about and drink from her feeders.

"They come back year after year to the same spot... (and) for 20 years they've been coming here to my yard," Procter said. "They are creatures of habit."

The Lumby resident has built a rapport with the hummingbirds and at dusk during their feeding frenzy can put her hand out of her window and watch as one of the tiny birds happily stands on her finger and drinks from one of her hummingbird feeders.

"When I put my hand out there, they're just too busy eating to even worry about it," she said. "They're pretty trusting little things once they've been here a while."

While many people try to attract hummingbirds to their yards with limited success, Procter says her yard has morphed into a very popular hummingbird hangout. When she moved to the property 20 years ago, a few birds began visiting her feeders and over time more and more appeared.

Procter says she has four feeders and fills them with sugar water using one cup of sugar to three cups of water. During springtime, when flowers aren't blooming and there are less natural places for the birds to feed, she'll fill a small feeder three times a day. A larger feeder will be filled once a day.

However, regardless of how busy feeders are, Procter stresses it's imperative they are emptied, cleaned and refilled every day or two. When the weather gets warmer, feeders needed to be emptied and refilled every day, as bacteria can grow quickly in the feeders and can harm or kill the birds. She'd also recommend a feeder with a glass bottle over a plastic one.

Procter doesn't have any tips about what to plant to attract the birds and readily admits she's not much of a gardener. Her annuals and tulips and lilacs seem to do the trick and sometimes all you hear in her yard is the sound of hummingbirds.

So what does she like about them so much?

"They're little and cute and amazing because they are so fast," she says. "They're interesting, they're just amazing to watch."

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