Magical Birds in Your Garden

OK, I know it’s really early to start talking about gardening — where I live, we don’t plant until Mother’s Day because frost — but still, it’s been sunny and not totally frigid, and the birds were doing bird things this morning outside my window. Birds do good things for your garden, like snacking on pests and insects, so why not invite them into your yard?

During the spring, birds are busily building their nests. Many species have returned from wintering somewhere else, and eggs are getting ready to hatch. If you’d like to attract wild birds to your yard, provide them with places to nest that are safe and sheltered. There are several ways to welcome birds to your property, including building houses, hanging feeders, and providing a source of water.

Make a bird house to provide a safe shelter for the birds in your neighborhood. You can buy one pre-finished out of wood and then paint it, or you can make your own. Simple birdhouses can be made out of milk cartons or jugs, bent license plates, or even twigs and sticks glued together. When you hang your birdhouse, make sure it’s in a place that’s safe from neighborhood cats and other predators.

Provide a safe supply of drinking water for your feathered neighbors. A birdbath can be made out of just about anything. Although you can buy commercially produced birdbaths, it’s not hard to make one of your own. You can make one from concrete, rocks, a clay saucer or metal – even an old cake pan or garbage can lid will do. Birds prefer their water supply to be in a partly shaded area. Make sure the vegetation beneath it is fairly low, but place it near a tree or shrub so they can hop from the birdbath to the plant if they sense danger approaching.

Use a shallow pan or tray to attract smaller birds, and a larger one for bigger species.

Place a bird feeder in your yard to attract birds. Although you can use anything you like as a feeder, you should make sure it’s in a place that squirrels and other predators can’t get to. The simplest type of birdfeeder is a simple platform, or you can use a hopper feeder, which has a central container to hold the bird food and dispense it into a feeding tray. You can also use a tube-style feeder, which is designed for smaller birds. The feed sits in a tube, and there are small holes along the tube for birds to eat through. Birds are fairly finicky, so the type of food you use will determine which birds you attract.

Plant a garden to attract even more birds to your yard. There are a number of different plants that attract birds, because they provide shelter, food, and hiding places. Consider some of these for your garden:

• For protection and nesting: dogwood trees, firs, spruce, pines, mulberry trees, juniper
• For seed and fruit: bee balm, sunflowers, snapdragons, coneflower, goldenrod
• For hiding to observe the yard: shrubs and vines like hollyhock, crabapples, chokecherry, Virginia creeper, sumac, yew