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Birds: Beautiful Garden Allies

Anyone who spends time out in their garden becomes familiar with the all the wild things that are also attracted to the garden. While some of these critters may not be very welcome, we certainly want to have birds in our gardens.

There's nothing quite like walking through the garden early in the morning and listening to all the birds calling -- especially during the spring and early summer when they're busy attracting mates, establishing territories and raising families.

Birds are attracted to gardens because they usually have what birds need: food, water and shelter. Trees and shrubs provide birds with shelter and places to raise their young. They can also provide food, from berries to seeds. And all those garden beds you tend to so carefully attract bugs, which in turn attracts birds who eat the bugs. Starting to make the connection on how birds are our gardening allies?

You've probably heard about how Purple Martins eat hundreds of mosquitoes each day. Well, most garden-visiting birds also eat bugs or feed them to their young during the summer. Have you ever watched a bird feed its young? The parent flies up to the nest, and instantly there are up to 5 open-mouthed, peeping, very hungry youngsters to feed. Usually there's only enough food for one or two youngsters, so the parent has to quickly dash off and get more food. And the menu usually consists of bugs gathered from your garden.

Some birds will raise more than one clutch of babies each summer. I've watched bluebirds and wrens successfully raise four consecutive batches of kids in one summer! That means lots of hungry mouths to fill with bugs from my garden.

So what do you do to attract birds to your garden? As mentioned above, birds need three things: food, water and shelter.

Food. An easy way to lure in birds initially is with bird feeders. Black oil sunflower seeds and thistles are what I feed to birds in my yard. This attracts finches, cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees, bluejays, rose breasted grosbeaks, common redpolls, song sparrows, chippings sparrows and even an indigo bunting. You can also lure them in with fruit-bearing shrubs and trees, including: roses (of course), viburnum, dogwood, honeysuckle, crabapple. Once you've attracted birds to your yard with seeds, they'll start hunting in your gardens for bugs, especially when they have youngsters to feed.

Birds will eat lots of bugs -- both good and bad bugs -- that have been attracted to the annuals, perennials and shrubs in our gardens. Birds will "patrol" your garden for everything from earthworms to the nasty leaf-eating insects. Any insect that moves and is edible is fair game for birds.

Water. Birds need water, both for drinking and bathing to keep their feathers in good condition. A simple birdbath will go far in providing that all essential key to life -- water. But, remember to clean it out daily. If you wouldn't drink the water in the birdbath, then maybe your birds shouldn't either.

Shelter. The trees and shrubs in your garden provide safe areas for birds to: survey your yard for food and predators; roost in at night; and seek shelter from bad weather. Conifers really give some of the best shelter and lots of nesting spots for birds. But, a mixture of trees and shrubs is best for attracting birds. Placing bird houses or nesting platforms in your yard can also help attract birds by providing safe places for them to raise their young (there's a wren house attached to the post in the photo to the right). Be sure to watch out for house sparrows that can invade many nest boxes and often times kill other birds, such as chickadees and bluebirds. Remove their nests (they are usually very messy) to discourage them from sticking around your yard.

More Information

There are lots of good sources for learning about birds, including many Web sites. Here are some of our favorites:

• Gardening for Birds
• Plants for Birds
• Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology
• Bird Source -- Backyard Bird Watch