Perky-Pet 8117-2 EMW8207110 Cobalt Blue Feeder

Beautiful! Seriously nice looking, the picture does not do it justice.

I grabbed one of these for a gift on a flash sale ($15 rather than the normal $20) and I liked it so much I decided to order another one at the full price to gift to somebody else.

The main bottle is glass as stated, and is styled so nicely. The color looks fantastic just looking at it, and also with light behind it (I held it up to a light to simulate sun behind it). I was a little leery of it being glass, but as long as it is taken care of it should last a good while.

My critiques are that the bottom portion where the birds feed from is plastic. It looks nice and you don’t really notice it, but it seems that it would last longer if it was made better. I am nit picking here, and don’t really mind at all, but just so you are aware.

Another nit pick would be that it doesn’t come with a chain to hang it. Not really a big deal but it just seems with something so beautiful it should have some sort of matching hook and chain for hanging.

But again, those are minor complaints. I have bought two and am very happy with them.

The cobalt model holds 16 oz food.

The perfect ratio of hummingbird food is 1 part white sugar to 4 water. Don’t change the 1:4 ratio: too little sugar and they can starve, too much and they can get kidney disease. It is, apparently, perfectly healthy to give them sugar water… they have insane energy needs, and get supplemental nutrition elsewhere.

To fill the 2-cup blue model to the brim you would use 1.75 cups water, and a half cup sugar MINUS a tablespoon of sugar taken out.

First few times you’re doing this,
take a pyrex 2 cup measure, fill water to 1 ¾ cup line, dump it in an empty tea kettle to boil.
Then take a half cup measure and fill to level with sugar, and take a tablespoon of sugar back out.
Dump the sugar in the pyrex, and when water boils pour it over sugar, stir for a minute and it will all dissolve.
Allow mixture to cool before pouring in bottle. (the bottle’s blue coloring is a plastic coating inside bottle, they’re almost all like that, don’t melt it).

At this point, I have a flock of hummingbirds, and have to fill a bottle every other day, so i’ve sped this up:
measure 1 cup of water in pyrex, put it in kettle to boil.
take a half cup measure and eyeball it being 7/8 full of sugar (with experience of having measured as above a couple times), dump it in pyrex.
pour hot cup of water in, stir ’till dissolved… make up the rest of the 16 oz volume in pyrex with cold water, and it’s cool enough to pour in bottle (you could wait 20 minutes before adding the cool water).

The base of the feeder holds almost a half cup, so it’s hard to tell when these are empty… the surest sign is when a bird dips it’s bill for 1/10 second and doesn’t try again at same hole… they may try a few of the holes then leave.

To make sure birds always have food, i use two bottles in rotation… when one is almost empty i’ll hang a full one next to it (leave the nearly empty bottle in the spot they like better). When I notice birds stop going to the empty one at all, I move the full one to the preferred spot, rinse and let dry the empty bottle and repeat the cycle.

Do not over-tighten the base. it’s better to have it a little loose on the bottle than to crack the plastic threads.

Keeping the feeder’s full and fresh is essential to getting a steady flow of birds. The first time we put this up, we left it out a long time… too long… Change out the food at least once a week (they say 3 days) while waiting for them to find it and start coming regularly.

I’m in Arizona, and It’s rare to go more than 10 minutes without seeing one feeding… And when there’s one, that usually draws another trying to do a territorial display. Fun. I can get a crowd of up to 6 birds trying to get at the feeder at a time.

FYI, I got my first feeder as a gift, then bought my second feeder here… the first had metal “flowers” the second had plastic. Both worked fine. The one purchased here also had a loose hanging bracket, I used some pliers to bend them just a bit. So construction quality isn’t stellar, but the product is so inexpensive that it isn’t worth “dinging” a star on an item that’s working so well for me and my flock. [apparently the proper collective noun isn’t settled… “a charm of hummingbirds” is the common answer, but bouquet, hover, glittering, shimmer, & tune are also offered; but they’re so territorial it’s hard to think of them collectively!]

These are beautiful and look like little blue lanterns hanging in front of my house during the day. The hummingbirds empty them and I clean and refill them. I have some red ones in the back yard and they began rusting within a month. All four of these are still rust free after about six months. One has a slight crack in the glass, but that might have been due to a sudden temperature change. It still works and doesn’t leak. Definitely need a bottle brush to get them really clean.

Ojalá la base tuviera barandal para que reposen las aves, es el único detalle que le falta

These are nice hummingbird feeders and an upgrade over the plastic red ones. But the blue does not seem to attract the hummers as nicely as the red ones did. The hook on the top to attach it could be a little bigger so you are not struggling to attach them. They are heavy so don’t drop them.

los pajaros no se acercan, las flores no cumplen la funcion