SUGGESTIBLE BIRD FOOD Suet draws woodpeckers, nuthatches, titmice, and other birds that cling to vertical surfaces. Finches love thistle seed, but in order to dispense the seed, you need a special tube with tiny holes. Birds such as titmice, cardinals, chickadees, and wrens are attracted to black oil sunflower seeds. Proso millet is favored by several birds. The majority of experts on bird feeding advise against using the low-cost bird food mixes that include hemp, sorghum, and wheat seed. The birds will merely pick through the seeds they don’t want in search of the food they want because these seeds are not their favorites.
IDENTIFYING BIRDS The Sibley Guide to Birds
Pick plants that produce nuts, berries, fruits, or nectar to draw birds all year round. Many bushes and trees bear fruit or berries well into the fall and even into the winter. Purple finches and many other birds love the small apples of the “Zumi” crabapple, while several native Georgian birds enjoy the purple berries of the beautyberry in the winter. Many plants, including dogwood, American holly, viburnum, privet (though invasive), and hawthorne, feed birds from fall into winter.
INSECT PESTS Observing avian life outside of one’s home is a delight for birdwatchers. Improperly stored birdseed, however, can bring flying creatures indoors. Indian meal moth is a common insect pest of birdseed. If you store bird seed indoors, you may soon find larvae in your oatmeal and tiny, slow-flying moths in your kitchen. I advise keeping bird seed in an outdoor shed or garage in a metal container. I’ve been using a medium-sized galvanized trash can for four years, and it easily accommodates a 25-pound bag of sunflower seeds.
The Baltimore Bird Club has an excellent Web site containing nest box plans plus reams of good information on attracting birds.
Create Your Planting Plan: Using graph paper, make a thorough map of your yard. Ò Determine which areas you want to add plants to and which plants to add. Prior to planting, contemplate whether the vegetation you have selected is actually beneficial for avian life. Is there plenty of dense cover for protection, year-round fruit, flowers, and seeds for sustenance, and a variety of tangles and branches for nesting? Creating a varied planting palette with useful vegetation is the first and most crucial step in drawing a range of birds to your yard. A list of Southeast native plants, shrubs, and trees that are beneficial to wildlife can be found below. Â It’s common to plant so many trees that your yard will eventually be mostly shaded. Make sure to leave flowerbeds and shrubs in their natural, sunny spots. Determine the budget you have and the project’s duration. Dont try to do too much at once. Perhaps you should try a five-year development plan.
Birches, dogwoods, redbud, hawthorn, magnolia, and mulberries are a few examples of small trees. Â Many birds that nest 10 to 15 feet above the ground depend on the fruit and seed found in your yard’s understory. In the summer, these trees’ nestlings will be fed their fruit. Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, northern mockingbirds, brown thrashers, blue jays, gray catbirds, wood thrushes, Swainsons thrushes, veeries, hermit thrushes, scarlet and summer tanagers, red-eyed vireos, American robins, cedar waxwings, and northern cardinals will all find the leftover fruit to be appealing in the winter.
A lot of people consider observing birds to be one of their favorite pastimes. People who come to appreciate the beauty of the bird life surrounding their homes may want to make improvements to their yards in order to attract more birds to the area. Feeders, nest boxes, and birdbaths draw birds, so including these artisanal items will undoubtedly increase the number of birds that visit the property. Likewise, birds are attracted to the vegetation on the property. Because they offer good nesting sites, winter shelter, places to hide from predators, and year-round natural food supplies, plants are important to birds. Adding diversity to your backyard habitat by planting a range of trees, shrubs, and flowers is another method to attract more species of birds.
Oaks, American beech, hickories, black gum, tupelo, tulip poplars, maples, and pines are a few examples of canopy trees. The canopy trees, the crown jewels of a yard or forest, tower over all the lower vegetation. Dead or alive, hardwoods and pines make an ideal nesting place for a variety of bird species, such as woodpeckers, chickadees, tufted titmice, and nuthatches. Â They also supply nuts and seeds to hungry birds, including indigo buntings, northern cardinals, blue jays, nuthatches, finches, grosbeaks, and others, during the chilly winter months. These towering trees ‘leaf out’ in the spring, giving caterpillars soft leaves to eat. Neotropical birds, including tanagers, vireos, yellow-billed cuckoos, and almost twenty species of wood warblers, consume caterpillars in turn.
Examples of small shrubs are viburnum, elderberry, pyracantha, and wax myrtle. Â Mix up your small shrubs so they bear fruit throughout the year. These fruits are consumed by a variety of birds to increase their fat reserves before migrating, including red-eyed vireos, gray-cheeked thrushes, wood thrushes, rose-breasted grosbeaks, and Swainsons thrushes. These plants help winter residents like cedar waxwings and yellow-rumped warblers survive the long, hard winter.
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