Blog #13D Attracting Wildlife: Birds
Blog Description: How to attract birds, including hummingbirds, to your garden, and why you would want to.
The subtle art of birdwatching can feed your soul. It brings us into the present moment and encourages us to focus on our breath as we quietly observe the natural world around us.
Just as I discussed in the previous posts in our Attracting Wildlife miniseries, we can foster a mutually beneficial relationship with birds in our gardens, much like the symbiosis we can benefit from with bees, moths, and butterflies.
Not only do they provide beauty and aesthetics to your garden, they are well adept at keeping pest populations, such as aphids and mosquitos, to a minimum. They flutter about, cross pollinating your plants, which allows for more blooms and more beauty.
Birds native to your area are always looking for havens amongst the suburban sprawl, with the right care and attention you can make you garden a sought after nesting area.
Chances are your neighborhood is on a migratory path for birds heading way down South for the winter or back up North in the spring. Migrating birds are thirsty, hungry, and tired. Welcome them to your sanctuary.
If you are not already situated along a Riparian belt, or a water and nature way designed to connect wildlife on a path through developments, you can work with your neighbors to create a neighborhood “flyway”. This is a corridor which wildlife frequent for food, water, shelter, and safety. It’s the least we can do for our fine-feathered friends!
So, how do you get started?
Read on my friends, and remember that each post in my Attracting Wildlife miniseries builds on itself. For more tips, start with Attracting Wildlife: a How-to Guide.
How to Attract Birds to Your Garden
- Create a water feature which can double as a place to quench their thirst as well as take a bath.
- Hang bird feeders, they provide much appreciated supplemental nutrition. There are many types of feeders to choose from, spending on th birds you would like to attract.
- Provide perches for rest and observation.
- Provide shelter for safety and security. Consider nesting boxes. Allow snags and brush piles to exist.
- Shrink your non-functional lawn areas in favor of a more natural environment.
- Plant native plants and plant for continuous bloom. I have already mentioned this in the previous posts but it is so important! Continuous blooms provide nectar and food throughout the year.
- Don’t dead-head flowers that produce seeds birds like. Leave those spent blooms alone to develop seeds, in other words, grow your own birdseed!
Plants to Attract Birds
- Beautyberry
- Blueberry
- Chickasaw Plum
- Coral Honeysuckle
- Elderberry
- Firebush
- Golden Dewdrop
- Hollies
- Mulberry
- Passion Flower
- Pawpaw
- Sabal Palm
- Scarlet Salvia
- Seagrape
- Simpson’s Stopper
- Walter’s Viburnum and Other Viburnum Species
- Wax Myrtle
- Wild Coffee
Plants to Attract Hummingbirds
- Trumpet Vine (Campsis radicans)
- Bee Balm (Monarda)
- Salvia (Salvia spp.)
- Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
- Coral Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)
- Columbine (Aquilegia)
- Fuchsia (Fuchsia)
- Penstemon (Penstemon)
- Cardinal Climber (Ipomoea x multifida)
- Agastache (Agastache spp.)
Attract Birds for a Healthier Planet
Our Avian friends do far more than provide us with a hobby, they actually play a large role in the health of our worldwide ecosystems. That’s a big deal for such small creatures!
The more I discover, the more I am in sheer awe of these only surviving descendants of theropods, the same group of dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus Rex belonged to.
Birds provide ecosystem services, or benefits to humans by caring for the natural world.
Perhaps the most widely known ecosystem service birds provide is pollination. Through pollination, fruiting trees and plants are able to bloom and produce food for many species, including humans.
Bird poop is fantastic fertilizer, so as they go along, pollinating, they are also fertilizing those very same plants as they poop! Talk about a diverse skill set!
Their poop is also a valuable vehicle for spreading seeds and spores. Without birds we wouldn’t have nearly as much biodiversity.
They create habitats and, in turn, preserve wetlands. They also keep bug and insect populations in balance, and some species seek out animal remains for food which cleans up potentially damaging bacteria from building up in our waterways.
So, hurray for birds! What birds frequent your yard most often? Do you notice different species come and go with the change of seasons? What birds would you like to attract more of? Leave your questions and ponderings, I love hearing your thoughts!
Until next time,
Happy Gardening!
Mary