It’s probably tranquil enough to just sit on a patio chair outside your home and observe your garden. Taking in the colors and textures of a beautiful garden is, indeed, a calming activity. What about adding birds to the tranquil scene? Songbirds, for example, can take the experience to a higher level as their singing chirps give an audio to the garden’s video.
(Courtesy: Andrew Theus at flickr.com)
These type birds don’t show up by accident. You need to plan your garden and then execute that plan to attract them.
Enticing Songbirds
No matter if you live in the middle of downtown Los Angeles, the suburbs of Washington, D.C. or the rural region of the nation’s great plains, you can attract songbirds to your yard. It simply takes three things –- food, water, and cover.
A bird feeder with seed provides the food. Not only will it attract them to your land in spring, it will also entice them in the winter when food is scarce.
A birdbath, pond or even just an upside down trash can lid can supply the water.
Plants provide the cover.
To accommodate birds that nest up high, in middle canopy or closer to the ground, it is suggested that you create a layer of plants.
What Plants Attract Songbirds?
To entice them, you need to offer what they like. The plants that do the best job of luring songbirds include:
- Juniper. It offers excellent, evergreen cover and nesting places and also provides food in the fall and winter.
- Flowering crabapple trees. This is ideal because they aren’t too big and yet they offer cover and food from summer through winter.
- Chokecherry. Supplying habitat for the birds that prefer the medium-level of cover, this shrub provides food that more than 70 species of bird love to eat.
- Elderberry. The food supplied by this shrub or small tree attracts more than 100 species of birds in late summer.
- Flowering vines. Virginia creeper, coral honeysuckle, trumpet vine and other flowering vines provide nesting and cover areas for birds that prefer a habitat closer to the ground.
Use a wide variety of plants that grow to different heights and provide flowers and berries for the songbirds to feed on.
Now sit back and enjoy the tranquil results.
