Garden Decor

Sometimes despite your best efforts, those stubborn neighborhood birds just refuse to frequent your yard.  Even if you have bird baths, feeders, and houses there doesn’t always seem a good reason for the lack of feathered friends.  To help in attracting birds to your yard, consider squirrel baffles over your feeders.  Birds won’t go near a bird feeder that’s occupied by a squirrel.  For your bird bath, a water wiggler will help to attract birds to the moving water, and also prevent bacteria and insect infestations.  Birdhouses should be placed in locations with a bit of cover, and also ensure wasps or termites haven’t made their homes inside. 

It’s best to implement these solutions in spring or summer when birds will be looking for new locations to build their nests.

     Now that autumn has arrived, the trees are gorgeous, leaves are falling, and the days are getting cooler.  We’re busy cleaning up our yards and the wild bird population is changing into the winter variety.

     The best foods to provide in your birdfeeders are black oil sunflower seed, peanuts, and especially suet. These enable our wonderful colorful feathered friends to build their fat reserves and hoard seeds for later use.

     Keeping your suet birdfeeders stocked supplies the ultimate cold-weather food for birds.  Suet is loaded with the fat and calories birds need to maintain their energy levels when the weather is cold.
  

     …….Just doing what I can to help keep our winter birds fat and happy and healty and airborne!

     Design a wooden birdhouse for the Carolina Wren. The ♫ song of this bird is so delightful ♫ that it is worth trying to attract!   

     South Carolina is so fond of this melodic little bird, there is a picture of one on the S.C. state quarter! If you’ve put together some of the state quarter garden stepping stones (earlier post) , under or near your new Carolina Wren Birdhouse might be an excellent location for it!

     The wooden floor should measure 4″ by 4″.  The front and back walls should be 8″ tall. Cut a 1½” entrance hole 6″ from the bottom of the front wall.

     The Carolina Wren wooden birdhouse should be placed 4 - 6′ above the ground, post mounted or hung, near thick underbrush.

           House Finches are wonderfully attractive little birds that like to be around people. So attracting them for close observation can be great fun!                         House Finches like wooden birdhouses mounted 8’ to 12′  high on a post, away from trees or buildings.  But the house finch will also nest in a wooden birdhouse near a window of your house. This way you can watch up close all the activity of egg laying, hatching, and feeding the little ones!             The best wood to use for a House Finch nest box is Red Cedar, rough-cut on both sides. This provides the birds with rough wooden surfaces for gripping, both inside and outside of the birdhouse.             The inside dimensions for the wooden birdhouses should be 6” X 6” X 8” (8” height)  Cut a round entrance hole 2” in diameter, to be 4½”  above the floor.             Complete instructions can be found at http://www.50birds.com/MPb0606-412-2.htm. 

            Always wear eye protection!  Other important safety features include using a work bench of proper height, and keeping all equipment out of the reach of little children!

     For outdoor garden decor, decorative birdhouses are great!

     There’s lots of unique birdhouses to choose from - the log cabin birdhouse for the mountain lover in you, the lighthouse birdhouse for those whose favorite hobby is beach combing, and of course the victorian birdhouse for those of us who love reminiscing.
    
      Birds will use them. However, some are more interested in the birds than the abodes. And for those of you who prefer unique birds to unique birdhouses, here are some hints for building wooden birdhouses for the birds you want to see:
    
     Chickadees look for an access hole 1 1/8″ in diameter at a height from 4 to 15 feet above the ground.
     If you’re looking to house a Tree Swallow, the access hole should be 1 1/2″ in diameter, located 1 to 5 feet above the ground.
     And the ever popular Bluebird  will seek to nest through a hole 1 1/2″ in diameter, but about 6 feet above ground.  (A word of warning: those pesky house swallows prefer wooden birdhouses designed for bluebirds. You’ll have to inspect it daily and clean out any house swallow nesting materials.)

The decorative birdhouses can be accentuated with the help of surrounding garden design.  A log cabin birdhouse will look great in a woodsy area. Using rocks to give the area the look of a mountainside will really make your log cabin birdhouse feel right at home.

If you’ve incorporated a sandy area for your birds, a lighthouse birdhouse will fit in perfectly there. A birdbath, also, is an ideal location for that lighthouse birdhouse. It’ll give your birdies a feeling of security while splashing around in their favorite birdbath!

Happy splashing, birdies!!

  Decorative birdhouses serve the same purpose as any other type of  birdhouses, but are unique in their character and style.

  Imagine a splendid mansion: and you are sure to visualize a front lawn and garden complete with birdhouses, birdbaths and a fountain; and of course many elegant birds chirping and flying around!

  Whether you live in a splendid mansion or a little house, or even a garden apartment, decorative birdhouses are the perfect kind of accessory for your garden or lawn or deck. Think of your favorite places and things, and you can find decorative birdhouses to show them off! Dream of the ocean with a lighthouse birdhouse, or just imagine kicking back in your little dream cabin in the mountains with a log cabin birdhouse.

  All the while, you will enjoy being right where you are watching your newfound splendidly colored feathered friends!

Bee balm, Monarda didyma (Bergamot, Scarlet Beebalm, Scarlet Monarda, Oswego Tea, or Crimson Beebalm) is an aromatic herb in the family Lamiaceae, native to eastern North America from Maine west to Ohio and south to northern Georgia.  With whorled heads of scarlet or pink flowers which ooze with tangy nectar,  it provides a natural territory for the hummingbird.  It grows in dense clusters along stream banks, thickets and ditches, flowering from July to late August. So be sure to keep your hummingbird feeder fresh filled during early summer.

So you can watch hummingbirds up close and right on your front porch, hang a basket of fuchsia, for a natural hummingbird feeder, in a shady spot. Avoid the double, ruffled kinds, and choose single-flowered varieties - probing for nectar is much easier for the hummingbird with this kind. (There are about 100–110 species of Fuchsia to choose from!)
 Fuchsia cultivars are wonderful porch ornaments where the hummingbirds keep them pollinated and healthy. When planted on the ground, it’s a favorite rabbit food. So if you like rabbits (and they are cute!) you may want to plant some on the ground also to share.

Augment your birdfeeders with some Flowers Birds Love:

 Echinacea purpurea, an excellent herbal cold remedy, is the purple coneflower. This big, robust prairie native feeds nectaring butterflies while the flowers are young. After the seed heads mature, goldfinches and sparrows feast on its fruit. As it re-seeds the ground and proliferates, there’s also plenty to go around for your own use and to give plants away!

 Another bird pleaser is the wonderful old-fashioned colorful zinnia. This easy to grow annual can be started as seed planted directly in the ground, or started in flats. The tiny yellow true flowers inside the gaudy sepals become excellent hummingbird feeders to be constantly probed by these tiny birds. Plant lots of them and goldfinches will tear the sepals away to get the seeds before they’re even dry! You probably won’t mind trading a few of your precious flowers for the brilliant show of yellow goldfinches.

 Easy and entertaining!
 

Birds need four basics: Food, Water, Protection, &  A place to raise a family.  A fifth important ingredient is Playtime! For this a sandbox is perfect.

Now, of course we don’t know if the birds are actually playing in the sand (probably not) or using the sand for cleaning feathers and eliminating lice and other critters. But it looks like play, and it is certainly fun to watch!

It’s a simple and inexpensive thing to provide. Buy a few bags of sand at your hardware store.  Mark off an area with large garden stones. Try to eliminate all vegitation with weed killer first. Perhaps cover the ground with plastic. Then dump on the sand! Add a few shells or pieces of driftwood for an aesthetic outdoor garden decor touch.

You could also just fill a birdbath or any container of your choice with sand for a unique garden decor point of interest.

If your bird ”sandbox” is where your birdbath isn’t (ie: sand in front yard, wet birdbath in back yard) then you may have a different array of birdwatching in each area. Placing a “sandbox” near large bushes makes it convenient for the birds that nest in those bushes. Some birds might just prefer sand to water for personal hygine. (My research is still pending in that area.)

Anyway, happy birdwatching all you bird lovers!