Attract migrating birds to your garden

Fall Gardening Tips

Chrysanthemums are the brightest flowers for the fall garden. Plant some now. Choose shade trees for fall color and plant them while the soil is still warm. Fragrant hyacinths make a colorful display in a garden bed or can be grown in pots. They come in red, pink, blue, and white and can be planted now.

Divide overgrown water lilies and irises. Repot using heavy soil with no organic matter or packaged Aquatic Planting Medium. Crimson clover, fava beans, and purple vetch will fortify your garden soil over the winter. Seed these crops as you compost your summer vegetables.

Attracting Migrating Birds to Your Garden

Many different birds pass through our area each year, sharing their colorful plumage and distinctive songs with bird watchers. Birds offer us our best chance to observe wild creatures close at hand. To attract birds to your garden, create a habitat that contains the resources they need: food, water, and shelter.

Creating a Bird-Friendly Habitat

The best way to attract birds is to offer them something they have trouble finding in your neighborhood. If there is no water around, put out a birdbath or build a small pond. Birds are strongly attracted to the sound of running water. A small fountain or tinkling waterfall is sure to bring them to your yard.

If there are no winter berries in your area, plant a pyracantha or holly bush. If you have an open yard, plant shrub borders along one side and trees beside the shrubs. Create an island of trees, shrubs, and flowers, and add a birdbath to provide birds with food, water, and cover.

Plants for Birds

Plants offer birds food, shelter, and nesting sites. Birds favor areas where different kinds of vegetation come together. Trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, and vines offer a variety of advantages to birds.

• Seeds come from annuals, perennials, grasses, and evergreen trees. Let your flowers dry and go to seed to make food for the birds. Gloriosa daisy, purple coneflower, asters, coreopsis, sunflowers, and ornamental grasses are excellent seed sources.
• Cone-bearing evergreens attract finches and crossbills.
• Many shrubs have winter berries, including nandina, holly, viburnums, pyracantha, Japanese barberry, privets, dogwood, hawthorn, and crabapples.
• A few vines, such as English ivy and Virginia creeper, make berries that are attractive to birds. As vines grow large and bushy, they provide cover for birds.

Bird Feeders

There are a wide variety of bird feeders to attract birds:

• Nuthatches, titmice, and chickadees visit seed feeders, suet, seed tables, and ground food.
• Sociable finches love Nyjer thistle, which needs a special feeder.
• Robins and towhees will come to feeding tables and are attracted to peanuts and dried fruit.

Tips for Visibility and Safety

Whether creating a new landscape or making changes in an old one, try to attract birds to areas where they are visible from a window. Most birds prefer shaggy shrubbery, so let the plants grow naturally. Few birds are comfortable feeding or drinking in the open for very long. Most prefer to have cover nearby to hide quickly from dangers.

Place bird feeders and baths so birds can reach shrubbery in a moment but not so close that a cat can pounce on them from a hiding place. Fall is a good time to create a bird habitat or make plans for planting one next year.