Bring the Birds: Attracting birds to your garden
Birds: they are pretty, they sing sweet songs AND they can assist our gardens grow. Read on to learn more about the benefits of birds in gardens and how to attract more of them to your yard!
Below is an excerpt Vigorous Vegetable Garden by Sally Morgan. It has been adapted for apply on the Internet.
Unless otherwise noted, all photos are copyright © 2021 by Sally Morgan.
Why gardens need birds
Birds are a sure sign of a hearty garden, but in recent years the numbers of many bird species, especially insectivorous ones, have declined dramatically, in part because their food chains have collapsed.
The role of birds
Just as it is essential to have a variety of insects in your garden, it is essential to have a wide variety of birds that occupy different niches and eat different foods. Their key role in a hearty garden is to keep pests at bay.
Insectivores such as blue tits, robins, house sparrows, flycatchers, house wrens and wrens are particularly essential because they eat aphids, worms, caterpillars, spiders and lice.
Food for garden birds
Blue breasts have to work demanding to raise their chicks. The British Trust for Ornithology estimates that each hatchling can eat 100 caterpillars a day.
When feeding chicks, adults need high-quality food, so they often harvest hundreds of caterpillars a day.
Blue tits, in particular, tend to lay their eggs in time for bud emergence on oak trees because they harbor a huge population of winter moth caterpillars.
Research shows that the ideal food for these birds is the caterpillar of the winter moth, but most gardens are unable to provide the chicks with enough food.
In addition to caterpillars, blue tits also feed on whiteflies, but these are not as good as moth caterpillars. Urban tits feed more often on ladybugs and spiders, which is why they achieve less breeding success than rural tits.
Birds need a lot of calcium in the eggs they laytherefore, petite birds such as robins and blue tits, which have confined calcium stores, may also be found on the ground searching for calcium-containing lice, millipedes, and spiders.
Count
In the UK, every winter the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) organizes Huge Garden Birdwatch, asking people to count the birds they see in their garden.
In 2020, half a million people counted almost 8 million birds, and the top ten are (from top): house sparrow, starling, blue tit, crested blackbird, blackbird, goldfinch, great tit, robin, long-tailed tit and magpie.
However, there are some disturbing trends in some of the top 10 birds. Since the count began in 1979, numbers of house sparrows have fallen by more than half, starlings by a disturbing 80%, blackbirds by 46% and robins by 32%.
Reasons include less green space, less available food, pollution and the effects of climate change.
Attracting more birds
Cover
Birds need places where they can shelter from the weather and build nests, so trees and shrubs are ideal.
If you have space, create a bushy area and plant the vines against a wall or fence. Farmland near field edges has more birds, especially if it is woody, so create a diverse border hedge to attract birds.
Stratified habitats
Prepare a mix of lofty, medium and tiny plants to provide shelter and cover.
Nest boxes
Providing nest boxes will bring in insectivores such as robins and blue tits.
Water
This is crucial all year round, especially in winter when water sources can freeze.
Food
In winter, prepare a range of different feeders and foods that will please as many birds as possible. It’s best not to feed birds in the summer because you want them to work for you to control pests.
Make sure your trees and shrubs are species that provide birds with berries and fruits.