Now is the time to reach hummingbird fans

While we were touring CAST this year, we ran into a minor celebrity at Ball Horticultural. It was a hummingbird who was savvy enough to know that the new Darwin Perennials Agastache Summerlong collection was the tastiest treat in the area that day. As we were being told just how craveable the plants were to the speedy fliers, the hummingbird showed up as if given a cue and thrilled us with his acrobatics and color. It was my first hummingbird of the year, and it felt like greeting an old friend.

As he flew away, a Ball representative turned to us and joked, “We’ve been trying to get him to sign a contract for future appearances, but we just can’t make it happen.”

Admittedly, it would be a good trick if you could get hummingbirds to reliably flit around hummingbird-attracting plants and in turn attract hummingbird fans to your garden center. But given that hummingbirds are notoriously flighty (pun aggressively intended), garden center marketing pros need to find other ways to tell shoppers their plants make the birds regular garden visitors.

One way to do that is to be a reliable source of information, not just about the plants that hummingbirds love, but about hummingbirds themselves. Hummingbird-related email campaigns, or website landing pages with hummingbird related plants and information are a great way to start.

One excellent resource for both garden centers and consumers is offered courtesy of hummingbirdcentral.com. The website — which labels itself “a central gathering place for hummingbird enthusiasts" — leans on its user base to offer a live map of current hummingbird migration. The map shows just where in North America the many migrating hummingbird species are being spotted. The map changes as the birds travel to their northern breeding grounds after wintering in South America.

As the birds move, garden centers can use the map to alert their customers that hummingbirds have been spotted in the area. Those sightings can also trigger sales on hummingbird-attracting plants or feeders.

According to the map, ruby-throated hummingbirds have been spotted as far north as Maryland. But the migratory edge is currently along the southern edge of Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia. On the west coast, Rufous hummingbirds are already making their way past Northern California, while Calliope hummingbirds have been spotted around Santa Monica. That means that the bird we saw at Ball Horticultural was likely a Calliope.

As an added bonus, the map can be embedded on your own website, which adds an additional service to online customers.

According to Hummingbird Central, the ruby-throated migration will continue until the first few weeks of May, when they will reach their northern migratory border in Canada. The hummingbirds can travel up to 23 miles a day and tend to fly low to keep sight of the nectar rich plants they love. They will move south starting in August and September.