Building A Bird Habitat

A bird-friendly landscape meets all of a bird’s needs: food, shelter, water, and nesting habitat. From a bird’s perspective, a highly textured landscape signals the presence of a diversity of plants and better opportunity for food. In today’s world, however, most lawns have been primped and trimmed to cookie-cutter perfection, accounting for more than a shocking ninety million pounds of pesticides used yearly to maintain these green carpets.

Sadly, our need for the perfect yard is not only poisoning the environment, but partly responsible for increasing habitat loss for our feathered friends. Creating a space with native plants, grasses, shrubs, trees, and a water feature provides much-needed food, shelter and nesting places for local birds. It also creates a space for us to relax, observe, and connect with the bird’s powerful energy. Here are a few things to consider when creating a bird habitat:

1. Build A Multilayered Canopy

Choose trees and shrubs and vines of varying heights. Taller trees provide crucial resting or nesting areas, while shrubs and vines provide a nice shelter from predators. Another thing to consider is fruit-bearing shrubs and vines. They make a great food source for birds such as thrushes, robins, and waxwings.

2. Grasses and Flowering Perennials

These flowering plants that come back year after year not only provide cover for our feathered friends, but their seeds are also a much-needed food source. Don’t forget to plant annual favorites such as sunflowers and bachelor’s button.

3. Water Sources

A bird bath, small pond, fountain, or even a large saucer provides a place for drinking and bathing; the more, the better- and if they’re perpetually flowing sources, all the best.

4. Bird Feeders and Nesting Boxes

To maintain a varied diet and to attract specific bird species to your yard, try putting out bird feeders with nuts, seeds, and fruits specific to your local birds’ needs. Do some research and hang nesting boxes that will help foster interest from your local bird species. Let the kids get involved by decorating small birdhouses with witchy symbols before hanging to lend a magical feel to your environment.

Keep in mind, however, that many birds don’t actually visit feeders, but instead prefer natural foods such as insects and berries. Native plants provide the right food and nutrition just when the birds need them. During fall migration and during the winter, for instance, native shrubs offer the berries that birds need for survival. Native shrubs and other woody plants are hosts for innumerable Lepidoptera- caterpillars that are a vital food for nesting birds in spring and summer.

Hedgerows and thickets create islands of habitat and offer hiding places and safe shelter for foraging and nesting birds. Even if you don’t have a traditional grassy yard, though, many small trees, shrubs, and flowering plants can be potted and placed on patios or balconies. The main point is to hang bird feeders near windows and provide nesting boxes wherever you can.

Especially during the winter months, life can be tough for our feathered friends. Food is scarce or hidden under snow, and water can be hard to find. To help keep your backyard birds warm and energetic, provide high-fat, high-calorie options including suet, black sunflower seeds, peanut butter, millet, mealworms, thistle, fruit, peanuts, and a good-quality mixed seed. If you live in a colder climate, keep an open source for water nearby.

Likewise, Leave your native plants standing through the winter. The seedheads provide food to fall migrants as well as the winter birds. Stalks and grasses offer screening and a safe place to forage. In spring, birds use the plant material to build nests. Avoid raking the ground clean come spring if you can, as well. These leaves and spent plant material are home to many insects that are an absolutely critical food source for birds who have new young to feed.