Why Do You Garden For Birds?

[birdchaser]

I'm a PhD candidate studying urban bird conservation, and am writing a chapter on birdscaping--going beyond mere bird feeding to actually try and create habitat for birds by gardening.

To my mind, this seems like a more intensive kind of activity than bird feeding or even placing nestboxes. So my question to all you bird gardeners out there..,

Why do you garden for birds?
How did you get started?
What motivates you to spend all the time and energy it takes to create and maintain a bird garden?
Do you target your landscaping for any particular species, or do you just generally try to make something you think birds will like?
If your answer is that you just enjoy doing it, why is that? What exactly do you like about gardening for birds?

I look forward to seeing what everyone has to say about this. If you care to comment, please do so in as much detail as you are comfortable with. Thanks in advance and I look forward to your comments.

[Silvershark]

Why do you garden for birds?

To get more birds in the garden. After hearing about birds losing habitat, I wanted to do my bit to try and help my local birds. Most of all though it's because I like having the birds in the garden seeing them bring their offspring to visit and I want to encourage that.

How did you get started?

I didn't, my parents did it all! I was away at university at the time although I had discussed with my parents about wanting a wildlife garden. As we were knocking down to old shes there was a space opening in the garden and I was told I could have that for my garden (which has now spread to include the whole back and one side of the garden). They went to the local garden centre and asked which plants would be suitable there and were advised accordingly.

What motivates you to spend all the time and energy it takes to create and maintain a bird garden?

It doesn't really...I do a bit of weeding to stop the weeds domoinating but mostly I leave the garden to its own devices. If it gets too dry I'll water the plants and I check to make sure parasites aren't getting a problem, but mostly I let the garden take care of itself. The plants aren't big enough to need much doing to them now, and when they did it was my dad who did all the work. Lately I have been working in the garden on my own and have started enjoying gardening, so anything I do will probably because I enjoy getting out in the garden doing something.

Do you target your landscaping for any particular species, or do you just generally try to make something you think birds will like?

No, just for anything that comes. Originally it was birds but since then I've broadened and want to encourage insects. I try to make it so that the birds like it, but I also try to make something that looks attractive in the garden including planting what will hopefully be a bit of a spring/summer sometime in September with snowdrops and bluebells along with daffodils and tulips mostly for their aesthetic appeal!

If your answer is that you just enjoy doing it, why is that? What exactly do you like about gardening for birds?

It gives me a chance to explore the garden that I have helped to create and am taking more control over and it makes me happy seeing things thriving in the garden. It provides me with the opportunity to see what is going on at the smaller scale with the insects. I guess it is also something to do that is benefiting something I care about and that makes me feel that I am doing something to help the wildlife in my garden and the birds that visit beyond just supplying them with food because I knows they need more than just that.


Hope this helps, if you want to know more feel free to PM me!

[tiomet]

Why do you garden for birds?

Initially I had no intention of building a garden for birds and it was a happy accident that they came to me. I prefer shrubs and berries in my garden and the birds seemed to, also. Once I noticed that the birds chose to be in my garden I simply started to accommodate them and then it escalated into buying feeders and researching about what birds needed in a garden. They force me into it!

Having reached this stage, however, I would say that I garden for birds now because I am more aware of their plight than I was before and I believe they need all the help they can get even on such a small scale as mine.

How did you get started?

Well, as above, really by accident. Once I noticed the birds were tending to come into the garden I started off with an all seasons mix that I found in the Morrisons Supermarket.

I did some research on the web because I did not want to put out anything harmful and even while ignorant I knew that I should not put out great lumps of white bread. Plus I had no idea at that time that some birds eat off the ground and others prefer hanging feeders, I just figured the birds would eat what they could get!

After more research on the web I ordered my first hanging feeders .. peanuts and seed. I made ground tables and bathing areas. Then came the niger feeders and big seed feeders, and feeding guards, and the high feeding tables, and the low feeding tables and the bird baths.

And then the fat balls, which I found mentioned on a birding site and had no idea what that meant. But after shop bought ones I found a recipe and now I make my own.

And with a bit more research I prepare a morning mix (which is served three times a day in fact) of suet soaked bread, sultanas, crushed nuts, seasons mix, grated cheese, organic muesli, and sometimes potatoes, rice or pasta if leftover.

What motivates you to spend all the time and energy it takes to create and maintain a bird garden?

I think this is best answered by a thread I posted in this section called `Why I owe the birds'

But less fluffily put, while it originally began as a happy accident, I find that the therpeutic rewards far outweight the effort I put into it.

I suffer from agoraphobia and several years ago experienced severe traumatic personal experiences. The past five years have been spent rehabilitating and it is only this year that I was able to look outwards. While I had designed and had gardeners implement the design of my garden I was not until this year able to envisage it populated. In retrospect I needed the birds as a life sign and my encouragement of them to visit my garden more regularly and in greater numbers is a signifier of how much my recovery was symbiotic.

In the early months of changing my garden to better suit the birds I found that I was possessive about it, I clung to the practising of it, the discipline and the ritual. It was all about me emerging from trauma and only after some time it started to be more about the birds and their needs.

Now I feel there is a balance. I made some decisions about how much to accommodate the garden birds which I feel were based on their needs. Like installing shelters and nesting boxes. I desperately wanted to do this but I did research and discovered that the only suitable wall for mounting the boxes was one which was open to abuse by the neighbourhood children (the kids are not very well behaved around here). On balance I felt the birds had a much better chance risking it in the farmlands beyond. Though I do have a wool apple and put straw and wool bits in hangers if they need cladding for shelters.

So in conclusion, what motivates me is my own health in balance with a growing external awareness, which has led to a sincere concern about the wellbeing of the birds.

Do you target your landscaping for any particular species, or do you just generally try to make something you think birds will like?

I just try to provide something the birds will like but as I grow slightly more knowledgeable I am trying to make changes.

I do not want tons of pigeons so I am being careful not to put food that will attract them.

I prefer the starlings not to take over all the feeders so I am careful to have a fat-designated area that they will mob, plus I have guards on a couple of seed feeders so the sparrows do not have to fight the bigger birds for access to seed.

When I learned more about which birds prefer which food and where I installed a niger feeder to attract the finches.

When I observed that the magpies and crows were scaring off the smaller birds I opened up an area with food they would prefer and tend to put down a mix of catfood and sultanas for them in a different area.

My carefully coiffered climbing roses and twisting vines, and my arful twisted elm, shale and cobbles are left to sprout whatever seed tends to fall and spring up, now. The fences droop with things not pruned back and my ivy is lumpy with `things' pushed in to grow around in case the birds want to hide out there. I grow more purple flowers having been told that the bees and wasps like them and there is usually one or two bird-munched apples littering
the beds so that the wasps can feed. I have insect pots overturned and a hedgehog house wedged into what was a designer corner!

I am trying to keep a design to the garden and failing miserably and my carefully planned original design has got totally out the window but all this is a learning process and I anticipate when I move and have a larrger garden I have a far better idea of how to design my garden to incorporate the birds needs and still maintain a sense of design.

This would include ancilliary things that seemed to come with the birds, like hedgehogs needs and that of squirrels. Plus I would include a wildflower plot and far more hedge - and look for a property with large established trees. So perhaps it is my next garden that has meaning here rather than this accidental landscape.

I would love to attract robins but not here, not in this neighbourhood and not with the prevailance of cats around here. Unless they flock, like starling or sparrows or are big, like the crows and magpies, I dare not build in attractions for birds like tits and robins though they do stop by from time to time.

In conclusion I de-landscaped for the birds but with growing understanding I shall make sure my next home meets the varying needs of more birds. I shall buy my next home for the bird garden.

If your answer is that you just enjoy doing it, why is that? What exactly do you like about gardening for birds?

What originated as a need has become enjoyable and also generated a sense of care. There has been serious therapeutic value in my starting to feed the garden birds but and because of this I have found that I laugh more and enjoy sitting outside now. I am healthier emotionally, and physically and have simpler goals and disciplines.

[BiodiVersitY]

Why do you garden for birds?
In urban Singapore, birds face a lot of habitat fragmentation. Patches of forests are hardly enoguh territory for birds. Garden species are also facing the same problem. Singapore takes sanitation very seriously. Take the roosting of barn swallows for example. All it takes is just one selfish Singaporean to get the authorities to remove the tree. As such, garden species in Singapore are losing habitat as well. Gardening for birds is my way of accomodating nature. This world does not belong solely to mankind afterall.

How did you get started?
I'm pretty much a newbie and lack a lot of experience. But i got started with simple fruiting shrubs like the Singapore rhododendron, which I must say, have rather attractive seedy fruits. I also started to plant more curry leaf trees after observing Yellow-Vented Bulbuls feasting on its berry.

What motivates you to spend all the time and energy it takes to create and maintain a bird garden?
As mentioned earlier, this world is not solely ours. All its inhabitants deserve as fair a share of "land" as we do. This view of mine, although still a view point of a human, is what i believe that us as a species should at least play a part in. It's the best we can do, not neccesarily enough, but nevertheless an effort.

Do you target your landscaping for any particular species, or do you just generally try to make something you think birds will like?
I base my landscaping on advice and opinions from experienced birders. I observe birds feasting on the berries so I shall plant more of that plant. It's all based on observation and experience

[hayfieldgolfer]

Why do you garden for birds?

They are pleasent to watch and are beneficial to the garden, also our farming methods have taken away their natural habitat

How did you get started?

Watching programs about wild life

What motivates you to spend all the time and energy it takes to create and maintain a bird garden?

A low maintance garden normally is wild life friendly and takes less time to care for.

Do you target your landscaping for any particular species, or do you just generally try to make something you think birds will like?

Will try to plant more shrubs this year that will attract native birds.

If your answer is that you just enjoy doing it, why is that? What exactly do you like about gardening for birds?

[willowa]

I garden for birds because I enjoy watching them and hearing them sing while sitting out in the garden in the summer.
I also watch them from the kitchen window in the winter.

How I got started..
We moved into the area about 14 yrs ago.
The garden was mature when we moved in. So had allot of birds already here. We saw some goldfinches for the first time and thought it would be good to see what else we could attract.

My love of plants motivates me. If there is a gap I fill it with somthing the birds will enjoy. I also plant for insects as they attract birds as well.
I have redisigned parts of the garden. I put in a pond with a gravel edge last spring so even the tits can drink and bath.
It is a low maintenance garden that is full of plants and shrubs. With a gravel area at the bottom of the garden.
My landscaping is for all Wildlife.

I enjoy siting on the patio with a glass of wine eating from the BBQ. Watching the birds and listening to the bee's on the lavender, And the frogs and toads spashing in the pond. It brings about peace and tranquility to an otherwise hectic world. You are in your own little space and the birds choose your garden to be in. Then you realise it is not your garden after all but theirs.