HI Tweets,

Peggi Rodgers writes:

>and Michael wrote:
>>Well, actually, the range of the water-sucrose ratio in nature ranges from
>>3-to-1 to 5-to-1 depending on the flower species and a couple of other
>>things; 4-to-1 is simply the mid-range.
>
>This is new information to me - all my sources say 4 to 1 with no variation.
>I was told that kidney damage could occur from boiling the syrup, thereby
>causing the sugar portion of the ratio to increase due to the evaporation of
>some water. Is it possible that the difference is due to our sugar being
>processed rather than the natural nectar the birds would get via flowers?

First, natural nectar is normally sucrose and water ranging from a 3-to-1 to
5-to-1 ratio depending on flower (plants produce sweeter nectar during hot
sunny weather); using white sugar *only*, what people mix up for them is
sucrose and water. Boiling the sugar with the water is *good* because doing
so kills many mold spores on the dry sugar granules, significantly delaying
the onset of toxic aspergillum mold growth. The result is a solution
chemically indistinguishable from naturally-produced nectar (chlorine boils
off).

It's actually a bit of a myth that higher densities cause significant liver
damage: normally the bird simply excretes what it can't use, but at the
highest concentrations such as 1:1 or 1.5:1, the bird can seriously or
catastrophically dehydrate by requiring more water to process the sugar
solution than is in the solution itself--kidney and liver function become
seriously impaired. Conversely, as long as there's sufficient water
available in the solution, they can use the higher concentrations.

Rule of thumb is to cook up solutions between 3:1 to 5:1 depending on what
you think the little zingers should get, but I'd suggest toward the
higher-end solution if the weather's cool. In winter, jumping the ratio to
2:1 in the cold weather will not kill or hurt them.

Michael Price The Sleep of Reason Gives Birth to Monsters
Vancouver BC Canada -Goya
mprice at mindlink.net