Birds as picky as people about houses.
Birdfeeders accent a garden’s overall look and attract beautiful visitors
Most gardeners aspire to have beautiful, healthy plants in their yards. But for some, the flora isn’t complete without a little fauna.
Bird houses and feeders are a great way to attract winged visitors to your yard and add a unique decorative touch.
Whole stores are devoted to their many varieties, offering a huge array of homes, vessels and food to bring birds into your garden.
For Leona De Boer, adding bird feeders to her south Edmonton yard was a great way to naturalize the area so birds could move seamlessly between it and the adjacent Whitemud Creek ravine.
“We don’t have children; I feed my birds,” she says with a laugh.
Her yard contains about a dozen feeders — some with seed and some with suet. “When we have migrations, I’ll have huge flocks that will come into the yard.”
She regularly sees all kinds of native birds there too, as well as animals like weasels, porcupines and deer.
De Boer chooses her feeders and bird houses both for their styling and their ability to attract birds. “I tend to go for the biggest one that I can get on the tree just because I have so many birds,” she says. She puts between 120 and 140 pounds of seed in her feeders each month.
But De Boer also likes the way they look in her yard. “One of the major factors was how do I set up the feeders so we can enjoy them and also so they look esthetically pleasing with the plants.”
She learned early on not to put feeders close to houses, because birds are territorial. “You have to try and think of it from a bird’s perspective,” she says. While she prefers to see most of her birds nesting in the ravine next to her yard, she keeps the bird houses up because she likes the way they look.
She also suggesting keeping feeders high enough so cats and other animals can’t get at the birds, and buying good quality seed — it’s better for birds and it won’t germinate in your garden when the birds inevitably drop it.
A water feature is a great way to attract birds as well, she says.
Jaynne Carre, owner of Wild Bird General Store in Edmonton, says that’s how many gardeners first get hooked on bringing birds to their gardens.
“When people put in a pond or a fountain, that’s an attractant to the birds. Then they see the birds coming to the water feature and they decide they’d like to keep them or help them out.”
Some birds aren’t interested in feeders because they eat insects or fruit or grain, but all birds are interested in water, she adds.
For bird-seekers just starting out, chickadees and nuthatches are easy to attract. They’re in Edmonton all year round, and will happily come to feeders stocked with black sunflowers seeds, nuts and suet.
At Wild Birds Unlimited, a local franchise bird supply store, Jack Park suggests beginners try a product called Bark Butter developed by the company’s founder, made from suet and peanut butter, which attracts lots of birds. It can be spread on the bark of a tree, but Park suggests spreading it on a board fitted with nails or screws, then hanging the board in a tree, close to the trunk where woodpeckers and other birds will find it.
“If you’re in an established area where there’s lots of trees, it’s pretty easy to attract birds,” he adds. “It’s a very popular hobby these days to have birds — it’s entertaining.”
With both feeders and houses, patience is key, says Park. Sometimes birds may ignore your efforts the first year, then move in or grab snacks the second year. It depends on the habitat of the individual yard,
“If you’re in an established area where there’s lots of trees, it’s pretty easy to attract birds.”
Jack Park
and whether others in your area are feeding birds too, which helps.
Not all birds need birdhouses either, says Carre. Both chickadees and nuthatches are cavity nesters, so they will settle into a bird house if you’ve got one. Just be sure to pick one with the right-sized hole that will allow the little birds in and keep the big ones out, she adds.
Her store carries a huge range of houses, many of them made by local carpenters, to accommodate a range of birds, from tiny wrens to bigger bluebirds.
For feeders, she suggests a simple fly-through style for beginners, which will attract a range of birds, has a removable tray so it’s easy to clean and is open to allow easy access for photographing birds.
Feeders get much more specific and involved from there. There are tiny wand feeders for hummingbirds, small tube feeders for finches, feeders that will hold orange halves for fruit-eaters like orioles and novelty feeders that just look pretty.
Make sure feeders and houses have drainage holes though, to prevent nesting material and food from getting wet and mouldy, says Carre.
For birds that build their own nests, like robins, gardeners can help them along with specially built shelves that fit under eaves to give them a safe spot to nest.
While perches look pretty on bird houses, the birds who use them are actually safer from predators in houses without perches, she says.
Other garden features will attract certain birds, like honeysuckle for hummingbirds, along with many other flowers.
Though they’re not common to see in the city, acreage and rural dwellers do get hummingbirds, particularly as they migrate south and look for stops to gas up along the way, says Carre.
Some bird “landlords” and feeders worry about their regular avian visitors going hungry while they’re on holidays. But Carre says they’ll be fine.
“Your yard is one of many stops that they would have in a day, so don’t worry if you’re away on vacation; they’ll figure it out.”
Just give them a couple of days to discover you’re home when you start stocking your feeder again.
Like people, birds can be choosy and unpredictable about their homes. Ultimately, says Carre, “it’s up to the bird. They decide.”
To read Marta Gold and Amanda Ash’s blog , The New Black, go to edmontonjournal.com/ blogs
To help create wildlife habitat in your own yard, Carre recommends reading NatureScape Alberta, a guide written by Myrna Pearman and Ted Pike.