A bird’s-eye VIEW
Winter is a harsh time for birds, but ideal to attract them to your garden by putting out food and having plenty of fresh water
INTER is a notoriously difficult season for birds.
With survival foremost on their minds, birds can easily be attracted to your carefully landscaped garden.
Many summer visitors leave us during autumn each year, but a surprising number of bird species remain at home. The shimmering colours and cheerful calls of the sunbirds and sugarbirds can add additional interest to a drab winter.
The cold months of winter create an opportunity to attract these wonderful little creatures to your garden, and the first step is to understand their needs and behaviour patterns during these colder months. The bird friendly garden starts with a good foundation. As an artist might approach a painting or a builder the first steps of a project, the basics need to be in place. Once this foundation has been created successfully, one can easily make the finer adjustments needed to complete the picture.
Not unlike other living creatures, birds have three important needs, all of which are difficult to come by during the harsh winter months: food, water and shelter. When landscaping your garden, these essentials need to be prioritised.
Give a little thought to the food requirements of the birds that frequent your area. The selection of shrubs and trees that are able to provide a natural food source should be the first priority. This natural menu can be supplemented by creating feeding stations using the many wonderful products available from any Gca-accredited garden centre or nursery. You’ll be able to find a list of these on our website.
Not only will a careful selection of suitable trees and shrubs offer your feathered visitors fruit, berries and flowers, they will also add much needed colour to your winter garden. Careful selection is the key, consult with your
local
Wnursery and select from indigenous, evergreen and colourful shrubs and trees. Remember to consider the frost factor in the colder regions. Many trees flower during winter. Our 2012 tree of the year, the Waterberry (Syzygium cordatum);
Black Mangrove (Burguiera gymnorrhiza) and the Red Beech (Protorhus longifolia) are suitable for planting in most regions. The latter grows quite tall (20-25m) and has a lovely pinkish flower from July to October.
Shrubs and flowers attract birds in different ways, for example the Honeybell bush attracts insects and butterflies, essential food for the meat-eating birds. Shrubs can be planted individually or grouped to form a hedge. Wild Rosemary (Eriocephalus africanus); Tick Berry (Chrysanthemoides monilifera) and the Cape Honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis) are all suitable options.
The more we can add to our offering, not unlike a shopping mall or a good restaurant, the more successful we’ll be. Once the foundation has been set up successfully, complete the picture by including the warm colours from some winter flowers – aloes, strelizia, daisies, the Red Hot Poker (Kniphofia praecox) and the many familial varieties of this favourite will add lovely warm orange colours to your garden.
Your selection of trees plays an integral part in attracting garden birds: they have dual roles as food providers and as safety zones. If one studies birds in their natural habitat, you will notice that after eating for a while they regularly head back to a safe area. From here they will survey the scene and when comfortable, hop down to eat or drink.
Catering to different feeding habits and the suitability of nearby cover will enhance the bird friendliness of your garden. Locate feeders at different levels where they can be viewed easily and where possible, cater for the different bird species by offering a menu of seeds and colourful fruit.
Select gravity feeders that are able to keep seed dry and feeders that are able to withstand the wintry gusts as they pass through.