Everyday Ways You Can Help Birds

[yortsed snacilbuper]

The Nature Conservancy's Migratory Bird Program works to protect critical habitat that birds need for nesting, raising their young, spending their winters and resting during migration. Everyone can help to assist in smart bird conservation. Here are a few things you can do right now and every day to help protect birds.

Around the Home

Put up a bird house (with proper ventilation) in your yard. More than two dozen different bird species including the purple martin, house wren, and eastern bluebird will nest in bird houses. As more and more habitat disappears every year, birds have fewer places to nest each spring.

Put a bird bath in your yard to provide a year-round clean drinking and bathing water source for birds. Use a heater in winter where appropriate.

Erect bird feeders and nectar feeders in proper distances from windows or places where birds can't be ambushed by predators. Use appropriate seed and other foods.

Limit the use of lawn chemicals and pesticides in your garden, which are harmful not only to birds, but to a variety of wildlife and to household pets.

If you have a problem with birds striking your windows, use paint or opaque/translucent tape to create a pattern on the outside of the window glass (with vertical stripes spaced 4 inches or less and horizontal stripes 2 inches or less) or put lightweight netting or screen several inches in front of the window.

Plant native fruit and berry-bearing bushes and trees on your property. Also, maintain ground vegetation and shrubs adjacent to water.

At night, turn off the lights or close the blinds of your high-rise offices or apartment buildings, and spread the word to your co-workers. Thousands of migratory songbirds, which are attracted by lights, are killed each year by colliding with lighted buildings at night.

Out and About

When hiking, biking, going to the beach, or camping, stay on the trails and respect restricted sections of sensitive natural areas, especially during nesting season. Also, keep dogs on leashes.

Purchase shade-grown “bird-friendly” coffee. Shade-grown coffee plantations support tremendously higher numbers of bird species than full sun (deforested) coffee plantations. Forested, shade-grown coffee plantations also benefit other wildlife and the people who live there.

Learn to identify the common birds of your neighborhood, and teach local young people the value of birds and other wildlife.
Cooperate with your local nature preserve or park to improve wildlife habitat.

Get involved in local and backyard bird monitoring projects and clubs.

https://www.nature.org/newsfeatures/specialfeatures/animals/birds/migratorybirds/what-you-can-do/everyday-ways-you-can-help-birds.xml

[Raine]

1. Thanks

for posting this, lots of good information here!

[longship]

2. Keep your pet cats indoors.

Cute kitty cats are bird murderers.

Sorry. It's true.

[crazycatlady]

8. Very true

One of mine used to leave a trail of feathers in the yard.

There are many great bird toys for cats to play with.

[msongs]

3. don't eat them? nt

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. When I bought and moved into my current house,

a month less than nine years ago, swallows started building a nest. Actually, I at first thought it was wasps because it looked a lot like the kind of paper thing wasps make.

To my enormous relief, it wasn't wasps it was swallows.

So for nine years now I've been a step parent of baby birds. About three years ago, in an urban renewal effort, the birds build a new nest, about three feet from the first one.

Over this past winter, because it's been so incredibly mild, I had birds residing in one or the other of the nests most of the winter. I'm beginning to think there's an avian bnb and my place is listed on it.

This year, new swallows, a different species I think because they look different, showed up in April and claimed the nests. I don't think they've laid eggs yet, but that will surely happen soon. The troubling thing is that I've contracted to have a pergola built in the front of my house and I'm a bit concerned about the current birds. I don't know if they'll be able to find their way under the new pergola and back to the nests. I rather hate to be the instigator of a small and local bird genocide, but there you have it.

[xxqqqzme]

5. I put my dryer lint

in trees during nesting season. Birds love to line their nests with it.

[SoCalDem]

6. We have a huge cherry tree and our neighbor has a [ear tree

and we have a perpetual suet block hanging.. our birdies are very entertaining so we feed them

[shraby]

7. We have 2 mulberry trees that they just love.

I tell people the top of it is for the birds, the lower part is for us and the stuff that drops on the ground is for the ants and dogs. Yes, the dogs eat them.

[wishstar]

9. My bird residents have planted a magnificent berry patch for our mutual enjoyment

I have birdbaths and planted a tree in my front yard where birds perch after foraging around neighborhood. The birds seeded the ground under the tree from wild berries and I let the blackcap raspberry vines grow up around the tree in a large neat circle. There are few weeds in the berry patch that is so laden with berries that both us and birds get plenty. I am letting two smaller berry patches grow on sides of my property too. The blackcap raspberry vines have more berries in less space and are much easier to keep until control than blackberry vines.

We can't have bird feeders due to attraction to roaming bears but the bears haven't yet raided the berry patch because we pick the ripe berries every morning and evening.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

10. "Purchase shade-grown "bird-friendly"" coffee.

I'm going to see if they sell that around here, and buy some.