I hope your landscape is a winter haven for birds right now!
Gardens in places as diverse as the frozen north and the balmy south can come alive with a variety of birds that provide color and movement at a time when everything else is pretty much dormant. In addition to providing you with hours of fascinating entertainment, a "bird friendly" landscape caters to birds' essential needs by providing food, water and shelter.
This is the second of a two-part look at how to make your back yard a place that birds will flock to. If you missed the first part, you can find that column (titled "Make your garden 'bird friendly' this winter") under the Plant Man heading at my web site, www.landsteward.org
The previous column focused on providing food and water for visiting birds. This time, we'll look at ways to provide some winter shelter.
I know that some people take down their bird houses in the summer and don't put them up again until the spring, believing that birds only want to use a bird house when they're nesting. In fact, bird houses can provide much needed shelter in the winter, so there's no real point in removing them.
However, because birds aren't too adept at housekeeping, you'll have to give them a hand!
Take a look inside the bird house. It's probably a bit messy, so remove any debris and clean it out. Avoid using any harsh cleaning fluids that might contain chemicals that are toxic to birds.
If you don't already have one or two bird houses, you can buy them at specialty shops or go online. But a fun winter project is to build your own. There are numerous plans and instructions available online and most are free of charge. I found a particularly useful article at this site: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/nreos/forest/steward/www16.html which is a site put up by the Extension service of North Carolina State University. The article includes easy to follow instructions and diagrams for building a simple bird house, along with a lot of information about care and maintenance.
You should also check out http://birding.about.com/ where you can search for an index of bird house and feeder plans. Again, there are direct links to both resources from this column at my web site.
It's important to remember to drill drainage holes in the floor of your bird house in order to allow any rain water or other moisture to drain away and not rot the wood. The NCSU article also recommends drilling holes in the side walls, too, for ventilation. Avoid painting the box or treating the wood with a preservative as this can cause the box to absorb too much heat or give off toxic vapors.
Another useful tip: attach the roof with a hinge. This will make your periodic "housekeeping" duties a lot easier!
Even in winter, it's a good idea to keep predators away from your bird house, although this is even more important in the spring when there are helpless baby birds inside. The folks at birding.about.com suggest that nailing a birdhouse to a tree or a fence makes it too easy for predators to climb up and threaten the birds inside. A better idea is to attach the bird house to a pole made of metal or PVC.
Even so, it's a good idea to attach some kind of baffle to the pole below the birdhouse to make predator intrusion even harder. The best baffles are those made of metal because plastic baffles can be chewed through by a really determined predator!
If you'd like some spring planting suggestions for shrubs or trees that will attract birds and other wildlife to your landscape, drop me a line via e-mail and I'll try to come up with some ideas for you. Meanwhile, I hope you'll find ways to make your garden even more "bird friendly" this year!
The Plant Man is here to help. Send you questions about trees, shrubs and landscaping to steve@landsteward.org and for resources and additional information, including archived Plant Man columns, visit www.landsteward.org where you can also subscribe to Steve's free e-mailed newsletter.
