The media could not be loaded. I was initially worried about ordering this given all the reviews that say it leaks or it just doesn’t attract the birds, but it was the best option available for a top-fill glass hummingbird feeder so I decided to take the risk and so far I’m so glad I did! I’m outside watching hummingbirds drink from it right now. I hung it where my old plastic feeder used to be and they were on it within a day. No leaks either. I really disliked that it didn’t have a perch, as I find the hummingbirds will stay longer and have a rest between drinks with the perch so you can get a better look at them and their beautiful iridescent wings. Luckily, this company also sells flowers with perches attached for less than five dollars, so I ordered those when I ordered the feeder and they arrived in the same shipment and switched out seamlessly. Just search for ‘Perky-pet replacement flower’ in Amazon and it should come up. They have 5 or so colors. I got the pink hollyhock option. It’s really close to red and goes well with the purple glass. One of the videos I saw was from QVC and they had red glass, but I couldn’t find it on Amazon or the Perky-Pet website, sadly. But the purple glass is super pretty, especially when the sunlight is on it and sparkles through it, giving it a slight reddish hue. It’s really beautiful. It also seems very sturdy as long as you don’t drop it… It looks and feels like it is actually purple glass, not clear glass that has been painted purple. One feature that is very important to me with hummingbird feeders is that the base comes completely apart so that you can clean it and not worry about black mold growing. Although the product description said that it came apart at the base, when it first arrived, it appeared not to be true. Neither my boyfriend nor I could get it apart, despite both being really handy people. I ended up searching for videos on YouTube and found one that showed how to do it. You hold onto the sides of the top base plate with your fingers and push your thumbs through the middle hole to push the bottom base plate out backward. The top and bottom base plates were pretty stuck together from being manufactured that way so you have to push hard and at first it seems like they won’t come apart but they do. Then, it seems like you broke it and it’s not going to go back together, but you actually just screw the bottle into the both the top and the bottom of the base and the bottle holds them together tightly. The bottle itself is real glass and nicely made. The top lid is acrylic plastic, which I didn’t mind because that’s the piece I would be more likely to drop. The papers that came with the feeder say the lid is not meant to seal tightly and it doesn’t, but it still seals well enough and doesn’t seem like it would let any rain in. The top of the base where the flowers are is metal, the flowers are a rubbery material, and the bottom of the base is plastic. It has this weird sponge ring in the base, so I’m going to keep my eye on it because it seems like a breeding ground for black mold. We’ll see… Since the base does come apart, I’m not too worried about it, as it should be pretty easy to clean. I cleaned it thoroughly before setting it out the first time and it was easy, except I was a little nervous about dropping the glass bottle and having it break. But it didn’t :) All in all a great purchase! I almost gave it 4 stars because it didn’t come with the perches and taking apart the base is super unintuitive, but decided to go with 5 because it works well, the birds love it, and it truly does look beautiful, especially when it sparkles in the sun.
