Creating Habitat for Backyard Birds

CONTENTS

Introduction

Getting Involved

Making Your Yard a Habitat

The Biodiverse Native Garden

Feeding the Birds

Installing a Water Source

Providing Shelter

Planning Your Backyard Bird Habitat

The Right Landscape with the Right Plants

For Further Reading

Getting Involved

It’s easy to feel so overwhelmed by the large-scale threats to wild-bird populations — global warming, pollution, pesticides, wholesale destruction of tropical rain forests — that you just want to throw up your hands and yell, “It’s hopeless!” But it doesn’t have to be. Not if everyone with a yard decides to transform that yard into a welcoming mini sanctuary rather than the bird equivalent of the barren wasteland that many backyards currently are.

You can also take the ideas presented here and apply them on a larger scale by involving your neighborhood as a whole. One bird-friendly yard can be the jumping-off point for a whole string of bird-friendly yards, with you and your neighbors creating your very own greenbelt for both migratory and nonmigratory birds. Get local youth groups to start a rally-the-community project, educating everyone on the importance of using native, biodiverse plant species, which are critical habitat for countless creatures, instead of imported species — many of which have contributed to the demise of native habitat. Point out the benefits of improving bird habitat — for example, placing wren boxes near berry patches will reduce predation by berry-eating birds, as wrens are very territorial and will harass other birds that come near their nesting sites. And having insect-eating songbirds in and around your yard will be just as beneficial for your garden as pesticides, and a whole lot less toxic.

Whether the songbirds, raptors, or waterfowl will flourish or diminish in the coming decades is in large measure up to us all. And there’s no time like the present to start helping them.

Making Your Yard a Habitat

What is habitat exactly? The term refers to a combination of food, water, shelter, and space arranged to meet the needs of wildlife. Even a small yard can be landscaped to attract birds, butterflies, beneficial insects, and small animals if you provide the trees, shrubs, and other plants that supply wildlife with shelter and food.

The plants you supply for food and shelter will help determine the wildlife that’s attracted to your backyard. And of course any bird feeders, nesting boxes, and water that you provide will make your habitat even more immediately desirable to any bird that happens to be flying over.

The primary rule in what I will call habitat gardening is this: Practice conservation in your own backyard. The three most important actions you can take to arrive at this goal are:

1. Plant as many native plants as possible — which by virtue of their indigenous nature are best suited to your region — and do not plant any invasive exotic (nonnative) plants.

2. Control pests by natural means — that is, let nature take its course by encouraging beneficial insects (which are often killed off when pesticides are used), bats, and, of course, insect-eating birds to take up residence in your neighborhood.

3. Reduce the size of your lawn, which will cut down on mowing (thereby reducing air and noise pollution) and fertilizing. Although prized in landscaping, these large expanses of clipped green grass are otherwise unproductive spaces that could be filled with plants beneficial to wildlife.

The Biodiverse Native Garden

The conventional concept of a garden is a small pocket of visual perfection (for heaven’s sake, don’t forget to deadhead those unattractive spent blooms lest they go to seed!) surrounded by expansive seas of perfectly manicured lawns — said ideal achieved only through hard work, chemical fertilizers, and rigorous watering. Well, this completely unnatural habitat is killing our natural environment. A garden should be a part of nature, not apart from nature.

Gardens should combine communities of plants that thrive as companions to each other and that, in turn, enable numbers of animals to survive. It’s important that the plants you select for your bird habitat not only provide natural (and year-round) foods such as fruits, seeds, nuts, and nectar, but also be indigenous, because our native plants and our wildlife are partners in evolution and maintain a synergistic relationship. In fact, restoration of native-plant communities to your yard should be the main emphasis of your habitat project. There’s nothing better for attracting local birds. And rest assured that these native species are no less beautiful than imported “exotics” — plus they’re a whole lot hardier.

Preserving Our Natural Heritage