To Make Your Garden a Home for Birds
Birds eat insects, seeds, and fruits, but they also sow seeds for your garden. From reading about the mysterious life of plants, we know that birds are also 'carriers' of many beneficial organisms for forests, and they are 'environmental spokespersons' in the 'third food chain'...
In saying so, we realize the importance of birds.
Observing several recovering gardens, I believe the most common resident birds in our gardens are sparrows. This is understandable as sparrows eat grass seeds and thrive in our gardens where grass grows naturally. Sparrows nest in small groups in small trees, which are often newly planted in our gardens. Most importantly, sparrows live in small flocks and do not compete aggressively for nesting areas, making them adaptable to the small spaces in our gardens.
Other species like finches, honeyeaters, and woodpeckers also easily appear in gardens. For them, the garden truly becomes a home - their homeland.
Of course, besides these species, depending on the region and time, gardens will have other bird species nesting. These are often species that require larger nesting areas, so their numbers are fewer, such as herons needing territories close to 1 hectare or magpies needing up to 2 hectares. Or they are species living in specific environments, such as plovers near water edges or quails in grasslands. There are also migratory species that appear seasonally, mainly water birds.
Furthermore, many bird species do not nest but come to gardens to feed, sometimes roosting or temporarily residing. There are many such species. Personally, I think to attract birds to gardens, we should consider the following.
1. Preserve a Forbidden Zone in the Garden
In layman's terms, completely abandon a small area in the garden. We want to help birds stay away from all dangers, but to birds, we are also a nuisance to be avoided.
Note that this forbidden zone must be left completely 'life and death as it may be,' without us seeing birds struggling to find food, then bringing bananas, rice to be eaten, or seeing birds fly freely, we also jump in to enjoy a piece of freedom, taking a few unforgettable photos. All birds have a territory, and for them, this is an invasion of the land that cannot be forgiven.
The area of the forbidden zone doesn't need to be large, sometimes just a clump of bamboo is enough, but limit all activities here as much as possible.
If we regret the cheapness of our land, we can change the forbidden zone once every few years (also a crop rotation), or at least we should also stop all activities in the forbidden zone when the bird is born, at least one month. For that reason, sometimes being lazy, doing nothing is a big deal.
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.2. Should have a pond in the garden
A pond is a new landscape in the garden, providing aquatic food for many bird species. For bird species that do not directly search for food under water, they can also use this water source for drinking and bathing.
Moreover, the gap of a pond is an open space - the preferred living space for most birds. And furthermore, the pond bank is usually a place for developing grass, small shrubs - an ideal place for many bird species to nest and find food.
3. Should maintain some old, sick, bushy, dead trees in the garden
Surely anyone who often watches American movies knows that superheroes from Tarzan to Batman, Spiderman, Superman all have the habit of sitting in the tree top, the roof, the tower. That's the habit of "jumping," birds are no exception.
Maintaining these types of trees helps birds have empty space to monitor enemies, to protect territory, to spy on prey. In addition, the sick trees are often home to many insect species, bird food. These trees often have cavities, tree holes - the nests of many other bird species.
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4. Should leave a few bushes, local shrubs growing in the garden
That is often a few worthless miscellaneous trees, and not yet special enough to call them native trees, so at most, it is pioneering trees in the garden. However, don't forget that birds have long adapted to them; this is the familiar living environment of birds, and birds have a way to use them that we cannot know.
These trees can be allowed to grow freely in the forbidden area.
5. Should maintain old, damaged, abandoned bird nests
Retaining them by keeping them in their original position, not bringing them back for display indoors. As mentioned above, birds have homes - their homeland, they regularly return to their old nests for repair, preparing for new generations. In the case of a nest that is too old, broken, they will build a new nest nearby.
So protecting the old bird's nest is how to keep birds in the garden. And it is also an indirect way to introduce other bird species that our garden is safe, worth settling in.
Written by My Garden
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