It’s simple to provide space for birds in your backyard. You will be developing natural communities that match your local ecology if you have a well-rounded landscape plan. To do so, you must provide the four fundamental needs of birds: food, water, cover, and a spot to nest. Learn how to offer year-round food for birds in your backyard, so you can appreciate them all year.
1. Food for the Birds
Bird feeders are a fantastic method to lure birds to your yard, but only specific species will eat the food you put in them.
Different birds eat different kinds of food, which could be either plant-based or animal-based. The blooming plants, grasses, shrubs, vines, and trees that flourish in your yard provide you with plant components.
Determine which bird species you wish to attract, including Female Steller Jay, Blue Jay Bird, Anna’s Hummingbird, Summer Tanager, Elf Owl, Carolina Chickadee, Atlantic Puffin, Bald Eagle, etc., and what they like to eat. Plant sunflowers to supplement the sunflower seed at your feeders to draw additional chickadees and titmice, for example. Plant berry-producing trees like a native cedar or cherry if you want waxwings to come to your yard. Fruit trees are excellent bird attractants because their flowers attract insects and nectar.
2. Water: Drips, Mist, Sprays, or Pools
While some birds does not drink water because they may acquire it from the food they consume, and certain birds take bathe in dust rather than water. However water is necessary for many birds for both drinking and other purposes. If you don’t have a supply of water in your backyard, you’re truly losing out. It’s not as difficult as you would imagine, providing water in your backyard.
3. Provide Shelter for Them
To defend themselves from extreme weather, birds require to get covered at all times of the year. Evergreens, such as hollies, firs, pines, and hemlock, give great year-round protection from the weather. Birds will flock to the shade given by tall deciduous shade trees such as tulip poplars, maples, oaks, aspens, cottonwoods, and sycamores on a hot summer day.
4. A Place to Nest
Birds require nesting supplies and a location to build a nest, lay eggs, and rear their young from late winter through spring and summer. The exact needs for nesting vary by species. The breeding season for much of North America begins in late January with the laying of eggs by great-horned and other owls. It concludes in August with the American goldfinch’s thistle-down-lined nest.
Nest Boxes for Birds
Birds that nest in cavities are the only ones who will use a bird’s nest box. A cavity nester is a bird that has evolved to build its nest inside a confined space. Chickadees, titmice, wrens, bluebirds, woodpeckers, nuthatches, certain flycatchers, and even certain species of owls, falcons, and ducks are cavity nesters often seen in backyard nest boxes.
Natural Nesting Habitat
The cover is available in a variety of shapes and sizes for nesting birds. Tallgrass, brushy fields, dense hedges or bushes, hollow trees, or any tree for that matter, can all be culprits. Old tin cans, mailboxes, door wreaths, and hanging flower baskets are popular places for birds to build their nests.
