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With the leaves finally dropping in our gardens, the birds seem more noticeable. I feel sorry for them in the winter and want to make sure that they have plenty to eat. I know my garden provides lots of food in the fall, but I fill feeders mid-winter through spring.
A feeder for black oil sunflower seeds and one for suet will attract a wide variety of birds. Millet and mixed seeds are cheap, but seem less appealing to the birds that I want to encourage. When seed winds up on the ground, it feeds rodents or sprouts and wastes my money. Thistle (niger) seed is expensive, but is a favorite of goldfinches (our state birds) and pine siskins.
Starlings and house sparrows are displacing many of our native birds, so I use feeders that make the food unavailable to them. Tube feeders with short perches (about ½ inch) are my favorite. I have several feeders that require the birds to hang upside down to get to the food and one that will close off the seed supply when a heavy bird (or squirrel) lands on the perch.
I fight an ongoing battle with our non-native gray squirrels. I have pie tins or plastic hoods over most of my feeders and one is inside a welded wire cage. You have to be pretty smart to outsmart those squirrels!
Are you interested in making your yard a good bird habitat? Experts will tell you that the best thing you can do is plant. A yard with lots of lawn and a few tidy shrubs is a wasteland for birds. Except for an occasional robin, it will rarely host our feathered friends.
Birds want a more natural planting with ground covers, annuals and perennials, short shrubs, tall shrubs and trees. Any unplanted area should be mulched with leaves or compost to encourage worms and bugs for ground-feeders. This layering provides food, shelter and nesting sites.
Our birds evolved with our flora, so include a healthy proportion of native plants. Some that both the birds and I enjoy are red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum), June berry or service berry (Amelanchier alnifolia), red-osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera), evergreen and deciduous huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum and V. parvifolium), red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) and low Oregon grape (Mahonia nervosa).
Many introduced ornamentals provide food for birds including barberries, cotoneasters, crabapples, dogwoods, honeysuckles, mountain ashes, pyracanthas, sunflowers and viburnums. It’s important to plant a variety, so that the plants will flower and bear fruit or seed at different times of the year.
Although cleaning up the garden in the fall can reduce slug and other pest problems, consider leaving dead seedheads. The garden may not look quite as spiffed up, but it will look great to the birds. My cosmos, daisies and zinnias are brown and ugly, but they still hold seed that the birds will find before long.
Dead trees are messy too, but they are especially valuable to wildlife; try to keep them unless they pose a safety hazard. When the power company wanted to take out some firs on our property, we asked them to be cut the trees to about 15 feet. The snags would not endanger power lines, but would provide a great resource for the birds.
As a tree dies, boring insects move in attracting insect-eating birds. Often woodpeckers drill deeper and the tree becomes a home for cavity-nesting birds.
If you can’t provide a snag, a bird house will do. An entrance hole less than 1½ inches keeps out sparrows and starlings, but is perfect for chickadees, nuthatches and wrens. You may have to build your own nest box, since commercial ones usually have larger openings.
For nest boxes specifics and lots more tips, order the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's Backyard Wildlife Sanctuary Packet.
Hortsense: Managing plant problems with Integrated Pest Management
