Growing a buffet for birds
W
ITH the price of bird seed shooting up it pays to stretch what you put out on your table with bird-friendly gardening and growing the right sort of plants to turn your plot into a natural, self-sufficient feeding station.
When it comes to bird gardening techniques it’s wise not to be too fastidious. If you have plants with bird feeder seedheads, such as teasels, sunflowers, ornamental grasses, artichokes and decorative members of the thistle family (even wild thistles if you have a rough area) don’t rush to tidy them up when they start “going over” at the end of summer. Give birds a chance to clean the seeds up first.
Also leave bruised windfall apples and pears on the lawn so blackbirds and thrushes can have a feast. It’s fun to watch. (They aren’t interested in apple cores or peelings off your plate, only whole fruit, which they like to peck holes in for themselves).
If you have a compost heap or piles of grass clippings tucked out of sight they will attract small flies that will keep wrens and robins happy in the winter and you may see other small insect-eating birds: the odd chiffchaff or blackcap that decides to stay in Britain instead of heading back to Africa.
If you are shortly to plant new trees or shrubs, think about their potential for providing free bird food. Any trees and shrubs with berries prove popular.
When you don’t have lots of space, pyracantha looks wonderful trained flat against a wall.
Clip the new growth back just beyond the green berries every summer so the ripening berries show off well against the evergreen foliage. It makes them easy for birds to get at later. Low, groundcovering cotoneasters can be grown flat under other shrubs and the herringbone cotoneaster (Cotoneaster horizontalis) looks fab trained against a low wall which it will shimmy up.
If you want a good bird tree rowans are always popular with fruit-eating species.
The berries are usually gone by early autumn but for later autumn and winter crab apples are invaluable.
Varieties such as red jade hold fruit until March. They also make brilliant small garden trees, compact, with spring blossom and colourful fruit and if you also grow “real” apples, crabs make good pollinators for them due to their long flowering season.
If you have a wild area or lots of room put in Viburnum opulus, honeysuckles and rose species grown for their hips (they’re also good for providing greenfly, in season, for blue tits).
If you have mature trees, walls or outbuildings for it to grow on, ordinary wild ivy is one of the best bird plants once it reaches the mature phase, when the leaves become rounder and the plant starts flowering and fruiting.
The greenish flowers open in early autumn, attracting insects which feed birds such as wrens. The green, pea-like berries don’t ripen until after Christmas and blackbirds can often be found tugging away at them after that.
Ivy also provides nesting places for small birds such as wrens, robins or spotted flycatchers.
Put in a small, shallow pond or bird bath and put up nestboxes this winter so birds have time to establish ownership before spring.
By boosting your garden’s natural potential to supplement “bought” bird seed you can keep birds dropping in without having to break the bank.
STRAWBERRIES ARE CREAM OF THE CROP