Remember birds' needs when planting your garden

Serviceberry: a favorite for birds

You can do a lot for birds in your own backyard, beyond putting out seed and setting up a bird bath. By diversifying the plants in your yard and providing resting and nesting places as well as food for all seasons, you can attract many species of birds.

There is a symbiotic relationship between birds and plants that is revealed in the wild. Plants depend on birds to pollinate their flowers and have large blooms to attract them.

Plants that depend upon birds to disperse their seed have brightly colored fruit, as seed-eating birds have a good eye for color. Most trees and shrubs bear small fruits, no more than three-fifths of an inch in diameter, making it easier for birds to eat.

Some guidelines for establishing a bird garden:

• Re-create layers of plant growth found in woodlands—canopy, understory, shrubs and ground level.
• Select plants so that there is food in all seasons.
• Plant small trees and shrubs in same-species clumps to boost cross-pollination and fruit growth.
• Plant some evergreens which birds use for cover during storms.
• Plant vines for fruit or perching.
• Leave a dead tree for birds to perch on to use as a singing post or for woodpeckers to carve out nesting cavities.
• Supply a source of water for drinking, bathing or cooling off.
• Provide nesting boxes, which are good substitutes for increasingly scarce nature tree cavities.
• Leave lots of leaf litter under trees and shrubs for robins, towhees and juncos to pick through the mulch for worms, insects and spiders.
• Don’t use pesticides. They can harm birds directly or contaminate insects that birds eat. (A lawn company was none too pleased when I told them that pesticides did not fit into our natural-habitat philosophy.)
• Beneficial insects devour or destroy bugs harmed by prized garden plants. Some beneficial insects are predators and eat other insects, mites and other garden pests. Parasitoids are insects that develop as an egg or larva inside a host insect, ultimately killing it.
• Studies have suggested that native “composites,” including members of the aster family, have the best blossoms for attracting beneficial insects. Composites with daisy-like blooms consist of tiny flowers packed together on a central disk surrounded by colorful ray flowers. Examples of these flowers are aster, coneflower, goldenrod, tickseed (coreopsis) and sunflower.

Goldfinches love the seeds of purple coneflowers

Culinary herbs such as members of the carrot or parsley family have flower clusters called “umbrellas” that look like upside-down umbrellas. They attract beneficial insects and predatory bugs. Examples are parsley, cilantro (the name of the leaves; the name of the seed is known as coriander), chervil, dill and lovage.

Many of these plants also are directly beneficial to birds due to the seeds that develop. The seeds of coneflowers, coreopsis and sunflowers are especially prized.