Many different birds pass through our area each year, sharing their colorful plumage and distinctive songs with bird watchers. To attract birds to your garden, you need to create a habitat that contains the resources that they need: food, water and shelter.
Birdbaths will attract birds throughout they year, both to drink and to bathe in. Watching the activity at the birdbath can be very entertaining.
Plants are important to birds because they offer food, shelter and nesting sites. Choose a variety of plants as birds favor areas where different kinds of vegetation come together. Trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses and vines offer a variety of advantages to birds.
Seeds come from annuals, perennials and evergreen trees. You will have to let your flowers dry and go to seed to make food for the birds. Gloriosa daisy, purple coneflower, statice, asters, sunflowers and ornamental grasses are excellent seed sources. They attract finches, chickadees, sparrows, nuthatches, towhees and titmice. Cone-bearing evergreens attract chickadees, grosbeaks, nuthatches, finches and crossbills.
There are many shrubs that have colorful winter berries. Nandina, viburnums, hollies, pyracantha, Japanese barberry, privets, hawthorn and crabapples, to name a few. Summer berries, like blackberries, raspberries and grapes usually bear enough for both you and the birds. Currants and gooseberries, both edible and ornamental varieties, are loved by many birds.
Whether you are creating a new landscape or making changes to an old one, try to attract the birds to areas where they are visible from your window. Put taller trees and shrubs in the background and shorter shrubs and flowers closer in. Birds prefer shaggy shrubbery, so let the plants grow naturally.
Few birds are comfortable feeding or drinking in the open for very long. Most birds prefer to have cover nearby to hide quickly from dangers. Place bird feeders and birdbaths so that the birds can reach shrubbery in a moment but not so close that a cat can pounce on them from a hiding place.
In addition to food and water, birds need a safe place to raise their young. Nesting boxes, or bird houses, will encourage the birds that visit you to stay around. The size and type of the nest box and its entrance will determine which birds use it, because different birds are attracted to boxes of different sizes. Specialty boxes are available at stores that handle bird supplies.
Fall is a good time to create a bird habitat, or to make plans for planting one next year.