Hummingbirds come on out!

It's long before harvest, which is when you have to worry about birds eating all your ripening grapes, but I've read in several places (including this Clos LaChance press release) that attracting hummingbirds to a garden will keep other birds away, given their territorial nature. True?

So, knowing that once you start you can't abandon the poor hummers, we decided to go for it and attract some the vineyard by putting out hummingbird feeders - and, in the longer-term, hope some of our hummingbird-attracting California native plants take off.

It took a few weeks, but today it looks like they're downing 8 oz/week from the feeder. I'm guessing when push comes to shove, the tasty scent of mature grapes will overpower the hummingbirds' territory, but it's a fun experiment.

Today I also sprayed the vines - 1.5% Stylet Oil solution pretty thoroughly given that there's a good amount of space opened up in the canopy AND temps have been in the ideal PM range (80s).