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“They weigh about as much as a penny and fly 500 miles without stopping. My garden was their last meal before the sea.” — Why a 72-Year-Old Alabama Potter Is Selling Her Last Hummingbird Feeders at a Special Price Before Her Hands Give Out for Good.

By Porch & Feather · Reported from Fairhope, Alabama · 6 min read

Dessie Broussard on her back porch in Fairhope. Every October she counts the hummingbirds that stop in her garden.

On October 9, 2019, Dessie Broussard sat on her back porch in Fairhope, Alabama, and made a mark in her notebook every time a hummingbird came to drink. By sunset she had 212 marks. Two days later, almost all of them were gone, somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico.

Dessie has kept a notebook like that every October for 34 years. She knows what most people never see: in the fall, these tiny birds are not just visiting a garden. They are getting ready for the hardest trip of their lives.

And more and more gardens have nothing left to give them.

Why October Decides Whether They Make It Across

A ruby-throated hummingbird fuels up between the salvia. Before the trip south, it needs to eat every few minutes.

A ruby-throated hummingbird weighs about as much as a penny. In the fall, it flies from the Gulf Coast to Mexico in one go. That is about 500 miles of open water. No island. No flower. No rest.

To make it, the bird has to almost double its weight in just a few weeks. Its heart beats up to 1,200 times a minute. It needs to eat every 10 to 15 minutes, all day long.

But by October, most summer flowers are done. And many people take their feeders down after Labor Day, because they think the birds are already gone.

“They come through here hungry,” Dessie says. “If a garden has nothing, they just keep going. And they can’t keep going for long.”

The Woman Whose Garden Became Their Last Stop

Dessie’s studio is her late father’s old net shed, a few steps from the bay.

Dessie has been a potter since 1974. Her studio is the old net shed where her father once mended shrimp nets. It is small and warm, and from the door you can see Mobile Bay.

In the summer of 1991 she bought a red plastic feeder at the hardware store and hung it from the porch roof. Three weeks of Gulf sun later, the red had faded to a pale pink. The plastic cracked. The nectar went cloudy in two days, and ants found the leak.

The hummingbirds stopped coming.

So Dessie did what she knew. She shaped a small, round pot, painted it, and gave it a red flower for an opening. Then she did not hang it from the roof. She put it on a stake, right between her salvia, at the same height as the flowers.

“On the second morning, the first one drank from it,” she says. “I’ve been making them ever since.”

Six Small Details the Birds Taught Her

At 24 inches, the feeder stands right among the flowers, where hummingbirds already look for food.

• “The Flower-Height Stake”The 24-inch stake puts the feeder right among your flowers. Hummingbirds search flowers all day. Here, they find it on their first pass.
• “The Red Bloom Opening”Hummingbirds fly to red. The red flower on top is the signal, so the nectar itself needs no red dye. Just sugar and water.
• “The Small, Round Belly”The pot holds a few days of nectar, not a whole week. “Big jugs go bad before they’re empty,” Dessie says. Small means fresh.
• “The Sun-Proof Glaze”A glazed, hand-painted finish that keeps its color in the sun. No pale pink after three weeks.
• “The Blue Leaf Vine”A chain of blue leaves runs around every pot. It is Dessie’s signature, the same pattern since 1991.
• “The Leaf Stem”A bronze-colored metal stem with a single leaf. It stands firm in a flower bed or a porch planter, and looks like it grew there.

What a Bird Expert Noticed in Dessie’s Garden

Thirty-Four Notebooks on a Shelf

One notebook for every October since 1991. The busiest day: 212 visits.

In Dessie’s kitchen there is a shelf with 34 spiral notebooks. One for every October. Each one is full of small pencil marks, one for every hummingbird visit.

The first notebook has three marks on its busiest page. The latest ones have hundreds.

“People ask me why I count them,” she says. “I tell them: because somebody should know they were here.”

The Petals Her Thumbs Can No Longer Shape

Every flower opening has eight petals, each one shaped by hand.

Every morning for more than 30 years, Dessie has walked out to the shed before breakfast. The radio on low. The smell of wet clay. The fan turning slowly overhead. That quiet hour was hers.

Now that hour is ending.

The arthritis is in both of her thumbs. Every flower opening has eight petals, and each petal is pinched into shape by hand. Her hands can no longer do it.

“I can still paint the leaves,” she says. “But I can’t pinch the petals anymore. And a flower that isn’t right, they won’t drink from.”

There is no one to take over. What is left are the last feeders on the shelves of the net shed: 241 of them.

Why She’s Asking So Little for the Last Ones

At the spring art market in Fairhope, Dessie’s feeders sold for around $110. People lined up for them.

For these last 241, she is asking about half. Her grandson Marcus, a high school band teacher in Mobile, set up the online shop for her. He told her she could ask more. She said no.

“I don’t need the money,” she says. “I need them out in gardens. Every garden with one of these is one more place they can stop. That’s all I want.”

The birds will come through again this fall. And in March they will come back, tired and hungry, from the other side of the Gulf. Dessie wants as many gardens as possible to be ready for them.

Whoever gets one of her last feeders keeps a little piece of her work alive.

What Garden Lovers Say About Dessie’s Feeders

Photos readers sent in from their own gardens.

Before You Order: What Readers Ask Dessie Most

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