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How To Attract And Care For Wild Birds
In Your Garden
- Feeding birds all year round is
now recommended by the RSPB; but seed is best in the nesting season -
not peanuts.
- Place bird tables and feeders
out of the reach of cats.
- Garden bird feeders are known to
have attracted 81 different species in 2000.
- Sparrowhawks have to eat too -
and they may take small birds from your garden.
- Trellises erected 20cm or so
away from walls can provide safe spaces for nesting birds.
- Many bird species can be
attracted to nest in gardens with artificial boxes.
- Most small birds will die in
their first year: neither sparrowhawks nor magpies have any long-term
effect on the numbers of their prey species.
- Experiment with different sorts
of food to attract birds to your garden.
- Over-stocked bird feeders can
attract rats. Try not to let seed build up on the ground.
- Honeysuckle and ivy provide a
valuable nectar source and cover for nesting birds.
- Berry-bearing plants such as
cotoneaster and rowan feed winter birds and may even attract exotic
species such as waxwing in winter.
- If you have an apple tree, leave
a few rotten apples in the autumn for blackbirds.
- Fit your cat with a bell - it
gives small birds a chance.
- The berries on many ornamental
plants like Amelanchier, and Leycesteria are as attractive to birds as
native species.
- Birds need water as well as food
- keep it unfrozen in winter.
- Grow hops in a hedge and leave
the stems over winter to form a safe haven for sparrows when a
sparrowhawk visits.
- Don’t put up nestboxes in full
summer sun - chicks can overheat and die.
- Smear fat on tree trunks to
attract great spotted woodpeckers.
- Leave windfall fruit lying for
the thrushes.
- Brush your dog outside, so birds
can line their nests with the fur.
- Leave teasels standing
throughout the winter to attract goldfinches.
- When teasels have been stripped
of seed, smear the heads with fat and wedge in sunflower seeds.
- Some garden birds like dunnocks
prefer to feed on the ground, so put seed under as well as on the bird
table.
- Siskins are especially attracted
to peanuts in orange mesh bags.
- Varieties of rowan and
Pyracantha with yellow, pink or white berries are less attractive to
birds than those with red berries.
- In a dry spring, moisten a patch
of soil for house martins to gather mud for their nests.
- Do not feed birds anything salty
- it can dehydrate and even poison them.
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