Obviously hummingbirds can't live on sweetener. That was not my
question. The question is, can they tell the difference BEFORE they
starve?

Scott Ray suggested an experiment. I think one could be designed. It
would work best with captive hummers, so individual birds could be
tested. One would start with two identical feeders, both with real
sugar. After the bird is trained to use both feeders, one feeder would
be changed to sweetener. If the bird immediately stops feeding at the
artificial feeder and goes only to the sugar feeder, it must be able to
tell the difference. If it does not, the experiment could be terminated
right away, before it starves. I'm not going to do it, but it might
work.

Rachel Lawson
Seattle
RachelLawson at softhome.net

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they may not be able to tell the difference by taste, but they will die
pretty quickly if fed on sweetener... their little bodies need every
calorie they can wrench from their food, and sweetener just won't cut
it...

if you want to starve them, feed them artificial sweets...

00 caren
http://www.parkgallery.org
usually found at juanita bay park, kirkland, WA
carenp somewhere near the vicinity of yahoo and dot com