Perky-Pet Rose Gold Top-Fill Hummingbird Feeder 9104-2

I bought it early as a gift and didn’t open it ahead of time. My bad there. It arrived broken though and is unusable. Return window has unfortunately passed.

Very nice feeder. Attractive and so much easier to fill & clean than my old feeder!

While it is easy to clean and no leakage, I get no hummingbirds. The feeder has brown flowers and the base is brown. I called perky pet to see if I could buy more colorful flowers to see if that helped. They stated that they do not sell replacement flowers. I had a copper perkypet feeder that birds were coming to, but it really got discusting, hard to clean and was rusting. When I got this one I hung them next to one another. Hummingbirds used the copper one, but not this one. Finally I had to throw out the perky pet copper one. I purchased a wild birds unlimited feeder and placed it next to this rose glass/brown feeder. Hummingbirds started coming to my new feeder the next day. Still no birds at this feeder. I have been replacing the liquid continually and use the same mixture in both feeders.

Perky-Pet has been upping their game lately and there’s a lot to like about this group of feeders that use a foam float to regulate refilling of the bottom bowl. Aside from the foam liquid regulator (see below), this feeder is well made and I think that it’s a good design using good materials and quite reasonable manufacturing. So what’s the problem? The foam float makes this feeder very dangerous to use for hummingbirds. When you are in the health or food industries, or have studied microbiology, you will immediately recognise the unfortunate error that Perky-Pet has made in using an open-cell foam as the float device. The foam is intended to float on top of your sucrose solution and this regulates the refilling action from the reservoir above. The theory is good, but the practice has one critical fault. The open-cell foam has millions of tiny holes and cavities, which are an ideal place for bacterial and fungal cells to lodge and grow in. Except through the winter, this will happen inside this feeder in about two days after you first put it out. To clean this foam float properly would be more than the feeder is worth, it would take a lot of time and in any case you couldn’t clean it with ANY chemicals as you could never rinse the chemicals out effectively – the foam’s holes would never fully release the chemicals, so you would be giving them to your hummingbirds day by day after – toxicity and probable death, I’m afraid. You could, I guess, boil the float in water, but that would likely destroy it fairly soon. So you have a float that you should only use once and then once it has its inevitable compliment of environmental contaminants in the millions of tiny holes, you are done. Throw the foam float away, because you will never safely clean it. If you use bleach or other disinfectants, you will poison your birds as you could never fully rinse those chemicals out. And if you don’t clean it (as I suspect many folks won’t) – you will be serving your hummingbirds a sucrose soup full of bacteria and mold cells, which grow exponentially. No good. So sadly – a very big, scientific thumbs-down here. Too bad, because the rest of the feeder is nicely done, but the foam float was badly conceived, and definitely sinks the whole design.

First, this is a nice feeder. Initial was going to give this 1 star but it worked out in the end. At first, it didn’t work, no hummingbirds would use it. Yes the advertisement shows lot of hummingbirds using it but this is easy to manipulate in a controlled environment. After a few days of no birds, I took it apart and painted the top of the base red letting it dry/cure for a couple days. Within the first hour the hummingbirds were using it. Anyone using the tan base feeder and noticing it is not being used much or at all, paint the base a nice red.

I love this hummingbird feeder. The lid pops off easily and reseals well. When pouring from the top I wondered if it would start leaking from the spouts, but I am happy to say there is NO mess. I was able to fill it to the TOP rather than have it all settle and only seem half full and have to refill more often. I had to tip it a little to make sure the spouts were open to the liquid and they are. I have challenges with my hands and this is very nice, with little force or effort in the utilization of my hands. Less waste, less mess, great look.

Pesa poco, se puede colgar bien sin riesgo a que se caiga