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http://www.Grit.comOur
homes are sanctuaries. They contain all the things we need to survive:
food, water, shelter, and safety. Birds look to meet these same needs with
their homes. While these basic requirements may seem easy enough to obtain,
think about the last time you saw a bird loafing around. When you see birds,
chances are they’re gathering food, making a nest, feeding a young one, drinking
water, or fleeing from danger. Survival is hard for birds, and we can all do a little
more to help them out. To start, we can design our homes and properties to be bird
sanctuaries. By designing your property to help provide birds’ basic needs, you
can enjoy more birds without leaving your home.A Bug Buffet
Birds eat a lot. Their lightweight yet powerful bodies require immense amounts
of calories to fly, forage, feed offspring, and keep themselves out of harm’s way.
Many bird lovers install feeders in their yards to provide some easily accessible
calories. Feeders are a great way to support birds when they’re properly placed and
cleaned regularly. However, they should be treated as supplements, not replace-
ments, for the vital food resources that native habitat provides.
While feeders are great food resources for seed-eating songbirds, 96 percent of
all nesting songbirds need insects to successfully raise their young. Superfoods,
such as butterfly and moth larvae, can only be found on plants, particularly na-
tive plants. In the United States, native plants are any that were present prior to
European settlement. These are plants that’ve been growing in your local soil for
thousands of years. Insects can detect native plants and lay their eggs on them.
When these eggs hatch, birds go crazy for the tasty caterpillars. Because of this
relationship between birds, native plants, and insects, adding a native plant garden
to your property will do a lot for all birds that decide to visit your home.
In addition to insect meals during nesting season, native plants often provide
vital berries, nuts, and seeds that birds will utilize during migration and throughout
the winter. Several species of native plants with fruit-bearing branches, such as
winterberry in the Midwest and Northeast, are adapted to improve in flavor after
several frosts. Berries still cling to branches after severe snowstorms, providing
valuable nourishment to birds, such as cedar waxwings, American robins, and19
Bohemian Waxwing