Mike Stiles
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Attracting Birds to Your Yard
by Mike Stiles
Last month we talked about green birding and staying close to your neighborhood on your bike or on foot. Let’s explore the birding opportunities right in your own back yard.
If you don’t already keep a yard list, I guarantee that you will be astounded at the variety of birds that visit your yard. Soon after I started birding, my uncle became interested in the sport. He was a farmer and worked outside almost every day of the year, and knew a few of the common birds around. Within a few years he had a bird list of over 200 species on his property. I grant you his “yard” was much bigger than most, with a creek running through it, but my point is that most birds go unnoticed in your yard.
There are three main things to consider to attract more birds and wildlife to your yard . . . water, food, and cover.
Water is probably the most important factor here. The ponds and bird baths in my yard are used every day. You don’t need a large body of water; a small birdbath to bathe in and drink is all birds need. Sometimes the sound of a constant drip of water into the bath will attract more birds.
You can provide food in the form of seed feeders and hummingbird feeders. There are many types of feeders to buy or build - from simple plywood platforms to fancy hand-blown sugar water dispensers, or you can simply throw the seed on the ground. Birds have no problem eating off the ground. In fact the ground feeders - sparrows, towhees, etc. - probably prefer it.
It helps to buy good seed, one without milo. Those large, orange seeds that look like a BB comprise a majority of the bag in a cheap bird seed and will largely go uneaten. Black-oil sunflower seeds are readily eaten by most birds. Nyjer, or thistle seed, is expensive but the goldfinches love the stuff. Suet cakes are a big hit in my yard this time of year, and attract birds that I don’t normally see at my feeders . . . wrens, warblers, even woodpeckers.
If you feed the hummingbirds in your yard, place two or three feeders widely spaced so that one aggressive male won’t commandeer all the food. Do not put red food coloring in the sugar water. The birds will be attracted to the color of the feeder.
Cover is very important to attract birds. The birds will “stage up” in the trees and shrubs around the feeder to make sure it’s safe, and will retreat to the vegetation at the hint of trouble. Trees and shrubs also provide areas for nesting, and you can even provide nest boxes. It’s great to know that another generation is being raised in your yard. You can save seed money too with enough flowering plants in your yard. I have nearly an equal number of birds in the native trees and shrubs in my front yard, without supplemental feeding, as I do in the back.
And speaking of cover, allow me to jump on my soapbox and talk about your lawn. They don’t really make sense, and here’s why: You scrape off the native vegetation that has taken millennia to adapt to your region and offers food and shelter for native wildlife, and then plant an introduced grass into the area. The grass could not possibly survive on its own, so you have to water it, fertilize it, and spray it with insecticides and selective herbicides. After you do all that it grows way too fast, so you have buy a lawnmower and gasoline, or pay someone to cut it every week. Then, if you don’t compost, you pay to haul off the clippings. It all seems silly to me.
Instead, quit watering your lawn, and cover it deeply with mulch. Put in plants that are native to your region and watch what happens. The native flowers will attract insects that will attract birds, and when the flowers have done their thing, the seeds will attract different birds. The insects you attract will predate on other insects, and you can take your pesticides to the hazardous waste disposal. You’ll save money too. The established native plants in my yard have thrived for years on rainfall and fog drip, without a drop of water from the garden hose.
There are ethical questions to consider, though, when you start to feed birds. Multiple species gathering on small wooden platforms does not normally happen in the wild. Keep the feeders and baths clean to prevent infecting the whole flock of birds in your yard. When birds gather around a seed platform, usually out in the open so that we can watch the birds, it can serve as a cat feeder too. Free range cats kill many millions of birds in this country every year. Your feeders will also provide forage for some of the bird-eating raptors like Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned Hawks, but I don’t seem to mind that as much as fattening the neighbor’s cat.
In March, the birds are getting ready to leave for their breeding grounds. Numbers of ducks and geese on Morro Bay will start to dwindle toward the end of the month and more so into April. March is a little early for spring migration, but watch for early arrivals of migrants and breeding birds.
Burrowing Owl on banner by Kevin Cole. |
