You might want to do a little more research on that, because there’s a lot of evidence in the medical literature.

If you knew that a particular food additive caused serious problems in laboratory animals at doses significantly lower than those found in your own daily intake of that additive, wouldn’t you be concerned for your health? That’s the situation with hummingbirds. They can drink three to five times their weight in nectar and/or feeder solution each day. I’ve run the numbers, and a moderate daily intake (9 g) of a feeder solution dyed bright red with FD&C Red No. 40 (the most commonly used artificial red dye) exposes a hummingbird to a daily dose that is 11 times higher than that found to cause DNA damage in the intestines of lab mice and 15 times higher than the acceptable daily intake for humans set by the World Health Organization.

An early study found that rats fed high doses of Red No. 40 exhibited “significantly reduced reproductive success, parental and offspring weight, brain weight, survival, and female vaginal patency development… substantially decreased running wheel activity, and slightly increased postweaning open-field rearing activity.”

Even relatively small doses of Red No. 40 and other artificial food dyes have been found to exacerbate hyperactivity symptoms in children, especially in combination with the common preservative sodium benzoate. One in-vitro study warned that “daily intake of artificial food colors may impair hepatic functions… when dietary carcinogens are exposed to the liver cells.” Another in-vitro study found Red No. 40 to inhibit respiration in mitochondria isolated from rat liver and kidney cells. (Mitochondria are the “powerhouses of the cell,” and hummingbirds have a much higher density of them in their cells than we do in ours.)

It’s no wonder that Red No. 40 is banned as a food additive in Denmark, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. You can read more about the risks of artificial dyes, including citations of additional medical research, here.

At best, coloring your feeder solution is unnatural and unnecessary. Natural flower nectar is colorless, and any hummingbird feeder worth owning will have plenty of bright color on the outside to attract the birds’ attention. At worst, artificial dyes may be causing unnecessary suffering and premature death in hummingbirds. If you want to color your feeder solution, use fruit juice concentrate (but not beet juice).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhePJKx8biY

A friend lives near Lake Oroville, she gets this kind of feeding activity for most of the summer.

I only get a few around my house in Chico.

There’s your problem. Evolution is not a matter of opinion.

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