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Birds and Your Garden Enhance the Natural Environment for Its Intrinsic Value, the Wellbeing and Enjoyment of People, and the Economic Prosperity It Brings

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Birds and Your Garden Enhance the Natural Environment for Its Intrinsic Value, the Wellbeing and Enjoyment of People, and the Economic Prosperity It Brings Natural England works for people, places and nature to conserve and enhance biodiversity, landscapes and wildlife in rural, urban, coastal and marine areas. We conserve and Birds and your garden enhance the natural environment for its intrinsic value, the wellbeing and enjoyment of people, and the economic prosperity it brings. www.naturalengland.org.uk © Natural England 2007 ISBN 978-1-84754-011-9 Catalogue code NE19 Written by Steve Berry. Designed by RR Donnelley Front cover image: Robin on blackthorn blossom. Dave and Brian Bevan www.naturalengland.org.uk Birds come to gardens to feed, breed, as tits and woodpeckers also include Birds and your garden nest and rest. If water is provided, they vegetable food in their diet and will also visit to drink, bathe and preen blackcaps are also very partial to You probably enjoy watching the brings birds to gardens or tried to their feathers. For a relatively small winter fruits and berries. birds that visit your garden. You look at your garden through their number of birds, gardens may supply Correspondingly, in the first week or so most of their requirements for most of of their lives, the nestlings of most may already be making efforts to eyes? This leaflet is not a field the year. More commonly, however, seed-eating birds need the protein entice them there. The money guide but will help you see your gardens offer a stopping-off point – provided by insects and other spent on food for garden birds has garden from a bird’s perspective. somewhere to spend part of the day or night, or part of the year. Having a increased by 500 per cent in the We hope it will inspire you to do greater appreciation of what birds last 15 years while recent sales of what you can to make your garden, need from gardens (and when) will enable you to provide for them to a bird nest boxes and bird tables whatever its size, even more greater degree. have soared. But have you ever attractive to birdlife. thought seriously about what Test the suggestions in this leaflet and let us know what success you have! Make a note of all the bird species that come to your garden and a separate list of those that nest. Put as many of the recommendations here as you can into practice and repeat the survey at yearly intervals. Let us know what seems to have worked and what has made no difference. See page 37 for contact details. Like many birds, chaffinches switch from eating mainly seeds to a diet of insects in the spring and summer. Chris Gomersall invertebrates, such as spiders. Food The ideal garden for birds should Although garden birds can be grouped therefore be able to supply both artificially into broad categories such animal and vegetable food matter as insect-eaters and seed-eaters, the throughout the year. This has a number reality is less simple. Insectivores such of practical implications. Blue tits on window feeders can be watched at close quarters. Chris Gomersall 2 3 The use of pesticides should be kept to away dead and dying perennials visitors like redwing and fieldfare, will a minimum or, better still, stopped in the winter – these can shelter make short work of any windfalls, and altogether. Almost all invertebrates many useful hibernating creatures blackcaps like them too. If you are provide food for some bird or other and can be left until the weather lucky enough to have a garden suitable and very few constitute much of a warms up again. for large trees, then many birds may be threat to garden plants. Some of those • Try developing at least part of drawn in by species such as oaks (jays, that can cause damage, such as your lawn as a wildflower nuthatches, woodpeckers and aphids, are actually among the most meadow – these areas will be woodpigeons) Scots pine (coal tits and valuable food sources for young birds. attractive to many small insects. If you stop spraying blackfly, greenfly Most birds eat some vegetable matter and other pest species, you will find and much is known about the that, eventually, natural predators will preferred foods of individual species. keep their numbers in check. Cutting out pesticides saves you time and Goldfinches love the seeds of teasel, money and you have the added bonus lavender and sunflower. Alder and of being able to enjoy the sight of silver birch trees may attract common lacewings and ladybirds, as well as redpolls if they are in the vicinity. house sparrows and blue tits, feasting Starlings are fond of rowan berries and on aphids. cherries, but will also eat the small The following is a list of other tried black berries of Virginia creeper when and tested ways of ensuring a plentiful really hungry. Bullfinches like the buds supply of invertebrate food for your of forsythia and the seeds of forget- birds: me-not. • Maintain one or more compost Mistle thrushes don’t just go for the heaps. berries of mistletoe from which they • Keep dead wood, perhaps in a log take their name: they will try and take pile. possession of any fruiting holly or • Allow leaves to rot down naturally rowan tree and defend it fiercely from rather than bagging and removing competitors. Members of the thrush family enjoy apples, especially in harsh weather. Top: blackbird. them in the autumn. Robins eat the attractive dual-coloured Mike Lane/Natural Image • Plant a wide variety of trees and Above: Fieldfare. Robert Dickson/Natural Image berries of the spindle tree, while ivy shrubs, especially native species berries are a vital food source for goldcrests) and beech (chaffinches). If such as willow, oak and birch blackcaps, blackbirds and wood you live near a beech wood you may Top: Redwings are among the many birds that which support many caterpillars. eat hawthorn berries. Chris Gomersall pigeons, especially late in the year even see bramblings visiting your • Choose annual and perennial Centre: Woodpigeons go to great lengths to get when there may be little else available. garden. at ivy berries! Chris Gomersall plants attractive to nectar-feeding Every gardener should try and make Smaller gardens can still be made Above: Up to two million bramblings may insects. overwinter in Britain. In gardens, they go for room for some apple trees: members appealing to birds by planting shrubs, • Don’t be obsessive about tidying premium seed and peanut granules. of the thrush family, including winter for example exotics like cotoneasters Paul Keene/Avico Ltd 4 5 (but not cotoneaster Conspicuax conspicus ‘Decorus’ – birds ignore the berries for some reason), pyracantha and berberis, or natives like wild privet, guelder rose and dogwood. The berries of some ornamental plants like amelanchier and leycesteria are so attractive to thrushes that they may be stripped as soon as they are ripe. Lawns, whether traditionally close- A flat stone on a lawn makes an ideal anvil for a song thrush. Mike Lane/Natural Image mown and weedfree or those in which clovers, dandelions and other ‘weeds’ Cats are more tolerated, are ideal hunting Many gardens are visited by cats grounds for blackbirds, robins and and it is important to help guard starlings. You might also see song your birds against their thrushes in search of earthworms and unwelcome attention. Position leatherjackets; pied wagtails looking bird feeders and tables away for small flies and, in more rural areas, from the low cover in which cats green woodpeckers seeking ants (their may hide and also provide favourite food). Cats look innocent but kill around 50 million garden birds each year. Those with bells or sonic devices perches nearby – vantage points kill 40% fewer birds than those without. Dave and Brian Bevan from where birds can detect an approaching cat. Anecdotal How many species? would have to be fairly evidence suggests that the more Even very small gardens may be knowledgeable to identify them all. birds that visit a garden, the lower visited by 10 to 20 different species The exciting thing is that almost any the chances of a cat being able to of bird during a year. In an ordinary species may turn up in a garden catch any one individual – suburban garden, 40 or 50 species sometime, somewhere. The red kite probably because there are more would not be uncommon and even has been reintroduced in some parts pairs of eyes looking out for this number can include a few of the country and is now regularly Lawns are perfect hunting areas for blackbirds. potential threats. Sonic cat surprises, especially in hard weather seen in gardens along the M4 Mike Lane/Natural Image deterrents can work well but when birds like kingfishers may turn corridor and the Thames Valley; here Song thrushes are great garden allies should be moved around the up in search of unfrozen water, or some birds have been known to steal as they eat large numbers of snails, garden on a regular basis so that perhaps woodcock or snipe looking clothes from washing lines to first smashing their shells to get at the the cats don’t learn how to avoid for soft ground for foraging. For decorate their nests! In January 2006, animal inside. To help them, make sure the triggers. If you are a cat gardens near a coast or a prime bird one was seen in a garden in inner your garden has a suitable ‘anvil’ in a owner, consider attaching a bell habitat or those on a migration route, London, a sight certain to become place where thrushes have a or sonic bleeper to your cat to sightings of 80 species or more are more common if the expansion of reasonable chance of seeing an warn the local wildlife of its possible, although many of these will the red kite population continues.
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