Posted on 05/20/2023 6:49:21 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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How to Attract New Birds to Your Backyard
With hundreds of species easy to spot locally, many backyard birders become frustrated when only a few common backyard birds regularly visit their feeders. Fortunately, it is easy to attract new birds to your backyard by offering what they need most: food, water, shelter, and nesting sites. By adding new features to your yard that address these needs, you’ll soon find a wide range of new and unexpected species nearby.
New Foods
Adding new food sources is one of the easiest and most effective ways to attract new birds to your backyard. A basic seed mix is a good start for backyard birding, but more specialized foods will attract a wider range of species.
New seeds: Black oil sunflower seeds are the best for attracting songbirds to your yard, but other types of seed such as safflower, millet, and nyjer will attract different species that aren’t as fond of sunflower seeds. Try adding new seeds to existing mixes or use new seeds alone to see which birds show a preference.
Suet: If you don’t already offer suet in your backyard, you’re missing out on attracting woodpeckers, nuthatches, and other fat-loving birds. Try different blends or make your own bird suet for the birds you wish to attract.
Nuts: Jays, magpies, and titmice love peanuts and peanut butter. Offer whole nuts or shelled nuts as part of your backyard buffet to attract these species, or be sure your seed and suet types also include bits of nuts.
Fruit: Many birds will sample fruit at your feeders, and different types of fruit are favorite choices for feeding orioles. Fruit chunks such as oranges, apples, melons, and grapes are easy to add to platform feeders and will attract many unusual birds.
Kitchen scraps: Bread, leftover pasta, bacon rinds, rice and other types of kitchen scraps will attract a wide range of birds. Offer scraps in small quantities to avoid attracting unwanted guests such as rodents or raccoons. Keep scraps to rare, limited treats, however, as they are not as nutritious as other popular foods.
Nectar: If you’ve never tried feeding hummingbirds, putting up a hummingbird feeder can bring a colorful surprise to your yard. Orioles, woodpeckers and other species will also sample from nectar feeders, depending on the size and design.
Natural foods: Don’t forget to take advantage of nature’s bounty, and add seed-bearing flowers, berry bushes, nectar-rich flowers, and other natural foods to your landscaping. Many birds that may be wary about unknown feeders will happily forage among familiar plants. At the same time, minimize or eliminate insecticide use to be sure insectivorous birds have plenty to eat.
In addition to offering new food sources, you can attract new birds to your backyard if you change how you offer seeds and other food. Add a new type of bird feeder, such as a sock, tube, platform or saucer feeder to give birds more choices for how they eat. Set up new bird feeders in a different area of your yard to reduce competition and aggression with your old feeders, and you may even see more reclusive bird species trying them out.
New Water
Not all birds will visit feeders, but they all need water. While a basic birdbath is an easy way to attract birds with water, upgrading your water features or adding new ones will bring new bird species flocking to your yard.
Moving water: Instead of just a static birdbath, add a dripper, mister or bubbler to create motion. Birds will see and hear the water from great distances, and many curious species will come to investigate. If you have the space and budget, consider a fountain birdbath or even larger water feature such as a waterfall or pond.
Multiple water sources: A single birdbath can be very crowded, particularly if it is the only water source for a large area. Add additional bird baths to attract more birds, or add different water features such as a mister in a shady grove or a ground bubbler near shrubbery to attract a wider range of birds.
Winter water: Birds can get their water from snow and ice in the winter, but a liquid water source will attract dozens of birds in the cold. Add a simple heater attachment to your existing birdbath or upgrade to a heated birdbath to attract winter birds with a warm drink.
New Shelter
Birds like to feel protected and secure, and if they are uncertain about the safety of an area they will not visit it regularly. By adding more shelter to your backyard, you entice even the shiest birds to stop by.
Landscaping: Opt for bird-friendly landscaping that features native plants in tiers or clumps to provide familiar shelter for your regional birds. Add new plants to an unused area of your yard, or increase the density of existing plants for more secure cover. To make the plants do double duty, choose trees and shrubs with seeds and fruits the birds will enjoy as a natural food source.
Brush pile: Build a brush pile in a secluded section of your yard to offer instant shelter to birds. This is a great way to recycle a Christmas tree or prunings from landscaping projects, and small birds such as sparrows and finches will eagerly flock to a brush pile when they feel threatened.
Roost boxes: Adding a roost box to your yard will give backyard birds a safe, warm place to settle on cold winter evenings. Many small birds, including bluebirds, chickadees, and wrens will readily use roost boxes.
New Nesting Sites
It is a real treat for backyard birders to observe mating and nesting habits of their favorite backyard species. Offering suitable nesting areas will increase the chances that new birds will find your yard attractive.
Birdhouses: Add a new birdhouse designed for a specific species to your yard. Check the size of the entrance hole and the other dimensions of the house to be sure it is suitable for the birds you wish to attract.
Birdhouse safety: If you do have birdhouses up but they go unused year after year, they may not be appealing to your backyard birds. Be sure they are safe birdhouses that are resistant to predators and positioned to be secure from the worst weather.
Nesting material: Offer nesting material for your birds to take when constructing their nests. Some birds will prefer weed fluff from dead flowers, while others will take advantage of grass clippings that are left on the lawn. You can purchase balls or squares of cotton fluff and lint that hummingbirds and goldfinches prefer, or you can save hair, pet fur and small pieces of string to offer in a suet cage nester.
Be Observant
Once you have upgraded your backyard offerings to attract new birds, the most important step is to be patient and observant. You may already be attracting more bird species than you realize, but they may not stay nearby for long if your yard does not offer what they need. By offering a good range of food, water, shelter, and nesting sites, you can encourage many different birds to visit your yard more frequently and to stay for longer periods, giving you more opportunities to see the variation in your backyard flock.
How to attract birds: plant berries. Don’t plan on picking any yourself. :)
Hi Everybody!
(((HUGS)))
We have so many of everything. We quit feeding the seed eaters in May which gives the shyer insect eaters more chances to get to the garden and eat bugs, the birdbath, and the grape jelly.
Very smart strategy. I cut back this time of year, too. No extra goodies, just Black Oil Sunflower seed.
Yes! I WANT you to eat bugs! Wish SOMETHING (besides chickens) would eat those darn Japanese Beetles!
I have my usual crowd here right now with the added bonus of the Orioles (Orchard and Boston) and the Red Breasted Grosbeak. Four kinds of Woodpeckers, too.
“How to attract birds: plant berries. Don’t plan on picking any yourself. :)”
True! We have three Saskatoon Service Berries and we never get berries off of them, but they bring in the Cedar Waxwings, which was the point.
Birds seem to leave the grapes and raspberries alone, but the Chipmunks go after the strawberries if I and the Beagle aren’t vigilant. ;)
We have our lovely "May Gray" weather in So Cal right now - keeps things cool and the plants love it. Hopefully it will continue on into "June Gloom" before the heat sets in.
Amaryllis are going crazy this year:
Including this massive white one:
And yes, they don't last that long, so enjoy them the few days they're here.
Cacti are starting to put on a show. This one is very very old:
And my helpers, taking a break.
Kitty dragged in a dead rat yesterday and dropped it in my hallway - as a gift. She knows I hate and despise fruit-stealing tree rats, dead or alive.
How to tell when figs are ripe: as soon as the birds eat all of them, they’re ripe.
We had the first brood of Bluebirds fledge this week, on Wednesday evening. Always exciting! I go ahead and still keep the mealworm feeders filled for the Bluebirds, because they have so many mouths to feed. They will still fill in with the insects, too.
Also wanted to say that if anyone is looking for a good bird ID app, I recommend the Merlin bird ID. About a year they installed a new feature called Sound ID, and it works pretty well. Press the button to record the birds singing, and you may find that there are birds out there singing that you can’t see. It’s especially helpful during migration with all the warblers that pass through.
Our place is LOADED with birds ... love all the singing, it’s like Nature’s Choir.
I noticed little heads peeping up in one of the Bluebird houses yesterday so I expect there’s a nest of young ones ready to fledge.
Bad story: my SIL has some small birds nesting in her porch ferns. She’s checked the nest & knew how many eggs were in there. The eggs have been disappearing. Yesterday, she saw a big ol’ crow stealing eggs from that nest, so they’ve found it & will clean it out. They’ve probably ‘learned’ to check fern plants on porches for nests. We had an issue with crows landing on top of bluebird houses & when the little ones stuck a head up to the entrance hole, thinking the noise meant parents were there with food, the crow would reach around the roof overhang & pluck the baby out of the box - this was observed happening. I now have hardware cloth jutting past the roof, with the end turned up so “plucking” can no longer happen.
On to the garden/flowers:
‘Canary Birds’ are coming up! :-)
Headed around 3rd & for home base on my “re-do” of the dahlia garden. When I buried the roots mid-April, I made a ring of dirt around the spot to contain water & the bushes came up in that ‘ring’. So did weeds …. lots of ‘em. I had mulched around the dirt rings with pine needles & weeds were coming up through the mulch as well. It was a mess. I did spray with vinegar and it got the ‘grassy’ stuff, but there is another little weed I get that is impervious to everything but the really nasty chemical sprays which I do not use in my raised beds.
Looking for some kind of ‘water retention ring’ to replace the dirt rings (which would be destroyed when I weeded), I found the perfect thing (WaterRounds Planting Rings) – yay! Super expensive – boo! So I looked for a DIY solution and found one – take an old plastic pot, like the one our boxwoods came in, measure down from the top rim 4-5 inches (I did 5 & tried it, then trimmed down another inch to 4) and cut … it makes a great ring to put around the bushes. My bushes are still small enough that being careful, I could get the ring down over the various branches without breaking any off.
Next step was to cut landscape fabric the diameter of the top of the ring, made a hole in the middle, then split it once so I could get it around the bush inside the ring. Last step was to fill the ring with wood chips to hold the fabric down … looks pretty good, too.
The rest of the bed was weeded, then worked the dirt back smooth, and covered with cardboard from my Butcher Box subscription – note, this was a gift subscription, I couldn’t afford it myself. Omaha Steaks delivers in Styrofoam, Butcher Box does it with cardboard and they have worked out an insulation method, plus add dry ice if needed. Bottom line … the boxes are a great source of cardboard for a weed barrier. So the Dahlia bed is now “sponsored by Butcher Box” LOL! Pine needles are going back on the cardboard so it looks really nice. There will be very, very few weeds that find a crack to come through in this bed.
Next …. “re-do” the tomato bed. Again, dumbo here just put down pine needle mulch with no cardboard underneath. I used cardboard last year and forgot all about it this year. After losing dad in January and then another beloved cousin in April, I’m in a state of brain fog … it comes and goes, is getting better, but evidently I was in a real ‘cloud’ when I was mulching the beds & totally missed an important step. I am about out of cardboard, not sure if I have enough. If not, I’ll get a cheap roll of landscape fabric to finish it off.
Spotted the first bloom on my Sugar Snap Peas last night … exciting! One Celebrity has 3 tomatoes – the other still has none. Cherry tomato has the “I want to take over your garden” look with major growth the last week …. starting to bloom. The Mucho Nacho jalapeno is producing little peppers like crazy – nothing yet on the other two. I see what looks like little flower buds on my bell and Giant Marconi peppers. The cukes are still small, not climbing yet, but the Dragon Egg is going to take off any day now. The Spaghetti Squash decided it wanted to live after a rocky post-transplant period – it probably grew almost 12” since the last good rain. No horrible pests yet, but I need to start checking for squash bugs so they don’t get a “jump” on me.
Links:
WaterRounds
https://www.waterrounds.com/
I didn’t save the link to to making substitute WaterRounds out of old pots & now I can’t find it again, but you get the idea!
My grandpa used to hang aluminum pie tins from his fig tree to keep the birds away. It sure helped!
Beautiful flowers, Bon! Kitty cat, too!
Hi and hugs back from Virginia.
Hi. Love all the information on birds. One of my favorite birds around here is the Carolina Wren. They have built nests in the past in my hanging planters. Unfortunately, I had to remove the planters because some other birds found out about the wrens and I’d wake up to feathers all over the place! Weather is up and down. Mostly below average for May. Cool weather crops doing extremely well. Haven’t put tomatoes in the ground yet because it is too cool for them. Mini roses blooming well, as are pansies and dianthus.
I’ve used old CDs for that, but bird netting works best while the tree’s still small enough.
I LOVE birds. Last year while living in our trailer temporarily, we watched stellar jays nest/brood in a rhody near a window. I knew they were ready to hatch the day our sheetrock was delivered...and unloaded right over the shrub. In fact, they broke a limb and banged it, with me trying to tell them to avoid the bush. Well, 4 were born the next day...Sheet, Rock, Rhody, and Lucky...Lucky didnt make it, tho. The rest are here, with extended family. We fed them all winter. There were 10 here a while back. Now, we scream at them if they go after the bushtit nest. And call them by name...haha.
The Robins annoy me more. I won the battle this year...no Robin’s nests on our wood features this year! And, we also quit feeding all birds so they will eat bugs.
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