A garden gazebo is often added to outdoor landscaping as a focal point as well as a place to sit and enjoy the outdoors. Lattacework or trellises offer a place for vine plants or flowers to grow, providing greenness and some coolness to your gazebo experience.
Hang gazebo-style decorative birdfeeders not far from your own gazebo, and enjoy bird-watching while you’re enjoying your back yard! Living lawn and garden decor!
House Finches are wonderfully attractive little birds that like to be around people. So attracting them for close observation can be great fun!
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.)
…and there’s a lot of activity at the birdfeeders today! The House Finches are congregating and having a great time. Occasionally a Black Capped Chickadee will flutter up to these decorative birdfeeders, light, grab a seed, and flit away.
But for the House Finches, it looks like it’s mating time again. They appear to be feasting and celebrating; preparing to raise another brood for this year.
As you know, the nest will accomidate 4-5 hungry little finches, and the male will gather food and tend to his mate while she nurtures the babies.
I’m looking forward to watching all the activity in that little log cabin birdhouse just outside my window!
Looking to build your own birdhouses expressly for little winged occupants? The main features that determine which bird will use the birdhouse are size of the opening, and location.
For instance, wooden birdhouses for Chickadees should be built square, 4″ x 4″. The entrance hole needs to be 1 & 1/8″ in diameter, and positioned 6 - 8 ” above the floor, with the roof placed 2″ higher than the entrance hole. Hang your birdhouse or place it on a pole between 4′ and 15′ abouve the ground.
Black capped chickadees are great fun to watch at your birdfeeders. They’re very active little birds, and very cute! They fly to the birdfeeder, perch a second, grab a seed, then they’re off to perch somewhere else to eat.
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!
A Washingtonian. And a real screecher at that!
Found most commonly in Oceanic areas: the Pacific Northwest Coast, the Puget Trough, & the North Cascades.
They’re just summer visitors (late April to mid-September) in eastern Washington, except for in lowland riparian areas and in developed towns. They reside year round in western Washington.
They feed and breed mostly on the ground.
Using a two-footed scratching method, kicking both feet backward at the same time, Spotted Towhees locate food under leaf litter.
The female Spotted Towhee builds her nest on the ground, and sinks it into the leaf litter so that the rim of the nest cup is even with the litter surface. When disturbed, she may run away like a mouse rather than fly!
They may occasionally be seen sunning themselves, lying down on the grass with feathers spread.
They often bathe in dew or fog drip on vegetation. A dripping birdbath may draw them into view.
A group of towhees are collectively known as a “tangle” or a “teapot” of towhees.