13 Tips for a Bird-Friendly Garden

How bird-friendly is your space? Do you have plants they like? Know your land and what's growing there before building a fantastic garden. 

1. Know Your Space

Buying some pretty plants and placing them wherever you have space can be tempting to start a garden. Plan a landscape with long-term appeal, low maintenance, and wildlife value.

2. Plan Ahead

Native plants in your yard are great for wildlife. Native plants thrive in natural settings, and birds use them, so it's a win-win. 

3. Grow Native Plant

Birds are always around. Some are seasonal inhabitants who winter south. Some are passing through on their way somewhere. Many birds live year-round. 

4. Create a Four-Season Garden

Invasive plants in bird-friendly areas annoy home gardeners. Eliminate your area's most common invasive species before they destroy your landscape.

5. Watch Out for Invasive

Getting birds in your yard requires more than turfgrass. A perfectly green lawn is ideal for golf courses but not for birds, pollinators, or other animals.

6. Say Goodbye to Grass

Different birds occupy different places. Some live near water, in woods or grasslands. Common feeder birds like cardinals and finches have adapted to urban and suburban living.

7. Create Structure

Birds use trees and plants for many things. Not all birds nest in shrubs. Birds perch, rest, and sleep in trees. Trees and shrubs feed. 

8. Use Trees and Shrub

Spraying insecticides kills insects and may affect birds and other predatory insects that eat them.

9. Don’t Spray Insecticide

Similar to humans, birds have a wide variety of diets. While some consume insects, others consume fruits, nuts, seeds, nectar, or berries. 

10. Make a Multi-Species Buffet

Does your neighborhood have bluebirds? If so, put a bluebird box in your yard and you may attract a family.

11. Add a Birdhouse

Like other species, birds need water. Birds require clean water to consume and bathe. They rest in shallow puddles after rain, sprinklers, and bird baths.

12. Offer a Water Source

Do you have cats? The ordinary house cat is a major bird predator. Cats should be kept indoors to protect birds.

13. Keep Cats Indoor

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