I have an extreme fondness for the small, bright lives of birds and other such animals, and so keep a bird feeder or two going during the winter. But my instinct that they also directly benefit your garden was recently confirmed when I read ... uh ... somewhere ... that it's good to have chickadees nest near your garden, because they eat tons of that worst of all pests - aphids! A great example of the whole-system approach to gardening that we encourage at FarmCity: the whole backyard ecosystem needs to be considered and nurtured in order to grow good, organic food.
We were lucky to have some chickadees nest in a couple of our birdhouses last year - including in the bird-box shown in the title banner of this website, where they raised two broods in one season! I had hung this box in the cherry tree just at the edge of our veggie garden, and was just delighted, when I went to clean the box* out a few weeks back, to find a gorgeous cushion of moss, three inches deep, in which they'd lain their eggs and raised their young. It was one of the kindest things, I'd ever seen - the obvious care with which they'd chosen only the softest of nesting materials, and had built their nest. Now I find that they probably did me the great favour of keeping the aphids down in the garden, too!
Another of the houses that the chickadees used last summer.
*(Just in case you're interested, apparently it's advisable to clean out your bird boxes in the fall, discard the nesting material and pour boiling water through the box, to keep the lice and other parasites down - otherwise, with each successive year of use, the likelihood of healthy, successful broods recedes, as the young are weakened by the accumulating parasites. Our FarmCity birdhouses are made to be easily opened and cleaned).
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