Attracting hummingbirds to your yard is fairly simple — it just takes time for them to find you.
Hummingbirds have excellent memories. Once they discover your feeders, they'll remember your yard and return year after year — and they'll remember individual flowers too, revisiting ones that were good sources of nectar while skipping ones that weren't. I've had the same birds returning to our backyard every spring for years. By late summer in a good year, I've had well over 40 feeding from six feeders spread around our garden at once.
Start with Feeders
The fastest way to attract hummingbirds is to put up feeders — more than one if you can. Hummingbirds are territorial, and a single dominant bird will spend more time chasing others away than feeding. Spreading multiple feeders around the yard, ideally out of line-of-sight from each other, lets more birds feed at once and reduces the fighting.
Place feeders near trees or shrubs so the birds have a perch close by. Hummingbirds like to sit and survey their territory between feedings, and they'll use your yard more if there are good vantage points nearby. Partial shade is better than full sun — direct sunlight speeds up nectar fermentation, which means more frequent changes and a higher risk of contamination.
Don't overfill when you're first starting out. A partially-filled feeder that gets emptied and cleaned on schedule is better than a full feeder sitting in the heat. Once birds find you and start visiting regularly, you can fill them more.
See How to Make Your Own Hummingbird Nectar for the recipe, and Neglected Feeders Kill Hummingbirds for why regular cleaning matters.
Plants Help Too
Flowering plants give hummingbirds another reason to visit your yard and keep them coming back between feedings. They're generally drawn to tubular flowers in red, orange, and pink — shapes and colors that evolved specifically to attract them as pollinators.
Rather than recommend a specific list of plants (which would only apply to some of you, depending on where you live), the Audubon Society has a Native Plants Database where you can search by zip code and filter for plants that attract hummingbirds in your specific region. That's a far better starting point than a generic list.
One thing worth noting: feeders work year-round in a way that plants can't. Most flowering plants bloom for only part of the year, while feeders give hummingbirds a reliable food source even when nothing in the garden is blooming. Hummingbirds have come to rely on feeders heavily — so much so that researchers have documented Anna's hummingbirds expanding their range northward into areas they never historically occupied, sustained almost entirely by backyard feeders. The relationship between hummingbirds and feeders is evolving in real time.
Be Patient
The first season can feel slow. Put the feeders out, keep the nectar fresh, and give it time. Once hummingbirds discover your yard, they'll be back — and they'll bring others.
Here are a couple of videos from our own backyard garden showing what's possible once the birds get comfortable: