We've discussed the food gardening benefits of attracting birds, and especially highlighted the role of nesting boxes in keeping up a healthy bird population in your garden. Below are some additional strategies for attracting birds.
1) Winter feeding: Feeding birds in the winter ensures that more birds survive over the cold months than might otherwise - as well as encouraging birds to feed in your yard specifically. Various blends of seed favour some birds over others. We try for a good mixture of seeds in the hope of serving as many birds as possible, but you can tune it as desired. We also hang suet feeders, which provide energy-rich fat in the cold season. Two important details: if you start feeding in winter, it's important to feed consistently, so birds reliant on your supply don't suddenly go hungry. And stop feeding in spring once other food sources - especially insects - become available.
2) Roosting boxes: Birds need places to stay warm and dry during storms - especially in winter. While nesting boxes in the off-season offer shelter, better yet is to hang roosting boxes, which are specifically designed to shelter a number of birds at one time. (FarmCity makes roosting boxes, FYI!).
3) Sunflowers for sparrows ... see below:
Planting for Birds: Feeding birds the all-organic, all-natural (and aesthetically pleasing) way! Include in your garden some bird-friendly grasses, sunflowers, and other plants whose seeds the birds can eat in fall and winter. The birds are thus they are getting a greater variety of seeeds in their diet than is provided in conventional bird feed alone. This makes for more nutritional balance, and it feeds other bird species than those traditionally using feeders.
4) Water source: An easy and obvious support to offer birds, year-round. High-craft bird-baths are great, but a water source can be as simple as a large-ish plant pot dish on the ground. Of course, raising the dish off the ground, on a pedestal or by suspension, helps birds avoid predation - but even if you can't do this, it's beneficial to provide them with water. (Raising the dish can also keep raccoons from washing their worm-snacks in the bird water! I speak from experience.) To keep the water from becoming a mosquito nursery, dump the water and start anew every few days in the summer.
5) Providing other nesting places: Only some of B.C.'s bird species use nesting boxes - so other nesting spots are needed. Having a number of good-sized trees on your property is helpful, of course, evergreens also providing winter shelter. But you can also build open nesting platforms for larger birds like robins, who eat lots of caterpillars. Some birds, like wrens or song sparrows, nest in brush piles - so if you can, leave a pile of bush-clippings for them in a quiet area of the garden.
6) Other ideas: More about gardening for birds: Gardening with Native Plants (BC-specific); the Wild Ones website (centred in Milwaukee but still good for all areas).
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