Attracting Birds to Your Backyard

hello everybody my name is Liz Magnanti and I am from the birdhouse in Rochester New York and today we're talking about tips for attracting birds to your backyard there are many different things you can do to make your yard a little bit more bird friendly and we will go over some of those today the first thing you can do is probably the most simple thing and that is adding water to your landscape in some form or fashion because not all birds will come to a feeder or come to a house but they do all need water to survive so birds will drink water and they'll plop into it and splash around in order to clean their feathers and you might see in the wintertime for in it for example birds are very fluffed up they look very big and fluffy and what they're doing is trapping warm air in between their body and their feathers and they're able to do this only if their feathers are clean if their feathers are dirty there you have any kind of parasites or if they're missing feathers it can be tough for them to stay warm so birds will even bathe in water in the winter and you can get a heated birdbath in order to provide them with water in the wintertime or you can get a regular birdbath in the spring and summer like this Robin is enjoying or you can even get a hanging bird water like this Tufted Titmouse is perched on and that you can hang from just about anywhere it looks like a big water cooler and that has little shallow bodies of water the water from the big globe will filter into these little shallow bodies and smaller birds like chickadees tip my gold finches will use that to drink and bathe from if you have a birdbath that's pretty deep you might only get larger birds in it like Robins and Blue Jays and smaller birds do like to have a little bit of a shallow more surface in order to perch in so one thing you can do is add rocks or pebbles to a deep birdbath and that gives some variations in the depth of the water that can attract more birds and then moving water is also very important if you can add some kind of moving water feature to your yard that will bring in a lot more birds birds are attracted to the site and some of moving water so by putting out a little solar birdbath insert like these bird baths tap as soon as the water hits that insert it'll create a spraying effect and you'll get birds flocking tool if you have a moving water feature in your yard if you have a waterfall all of that is fabulous for birds because like I said not all birds will come to a feeder or house but they all do need water so you might get something like a scarlet tanager or a Warbler coming to your yard that wouldn't normally come to a feeder but they will come to a water feature and then another thing is adding bird houses and bird houses Karen um can be very different in appearance and birds don't really care what the house looks like what they're looking for is the size of the hole and how it's mounted so most birds do like a house that's stationary so it's on a pole and it doesn't move around a lot you can mount houses on the side of trees but be careful of that because that can make it make em more susceptible to predators like squirrels raccoons climbing up the tree and raiding the nest of the eggs or the nestlings and the main difference between different birdhouses are going to be the size of the opening of the hole so the smaller the hole gets the more it limits the type and diversity of birds that can go inside of it so if you're looking for bluebirds you need a house with an opening that's an inch and half in diameter or so whereas if you want wrens you only need a house that's about an inch in diameter in opening if you want to get larger birds like owls you'll need something that it has an opening about two and a half inches so there's different types of birdhouses most birds do like a stationary house but you can get houses that hang and birds like wrens don't mind a house that is hanging and moving around in the wind a lot and that goes with chickadees too will nest in houses like this and depending on the size of the hole you might get sparrows in it as well some birds that do nest in houses are going to be the Eastern Bluebird Tree Swallows and both the Eastern Bluebird and Tree Swallows like open area so they like Meadows farm field golf courses so don't be discouraged if you don't see these birds in your backyard they don't they're not super common in suburbia so if there's a lot of trees or a lot of houses around you probably will not get these birds we do have a class on attracting bluebirds which you can find on this channel as well if you're interested in attracting bluebirds you can learn some tips about them on that class if you have bird feeders and birdhouses out you'll probably see these guys these are house sparrows and they are one of our most common songbirds that we have here in the area they are on there and introduced species so they're non-native and they're considered invasives so that means you can actually remove the eggs remove the young themselves or even the birds if they are nesting in a place that you do not want them and they are the male and female do look a little bit different the female and the picture on the left there is light brown whereas the male has more of a dark black mask and darker brown coloring on his wings and on the back of its head another introduced species is going to be the European Starling and they do nest in cavities so if you have a birdhouse that has kind of a larger opening if you're looking to get woodpeckers or screech owls you might get the European Starling nesting in there as well and they are also introduced and considered invasive so you can remove the nest and the eggs and the birds themselves if you do choose to from the house these are wrens that are starting to build a nest in a house and runs use a lot of sticks who in they're building a nest so if you have a birdhouse and you open it up and there's nothing in there but a little pile of sticks that's from a run the wrens the male run will start building a nest and they'll perch on top of it or perch nearby and start singing in and singing to attract a female and once a female comes along he'll take her to the different nest sites and she picks which house she wants to continue nesting in so if you find just a little tiny pile of sticks in one of your birdhouses that was never used that's from a wren there are a couple of species that are pretty common here this is the Carolina wren they're a chestnut type colored bird they've got that bright white eye stripe above their eye but all runs are pretty small at least the runs we have here in the East Coast and they had more of a chubby body so I put the tail that sticks up into the air and then there's the house wren so either of these are common birds that you might find nesting in your birdhouse and then there's chickadees chickadees are also cavity nesters and they're quite small so you can have a house that is perfect per tickety's or wrens with an opening an inch and an eighth in diameter for the whole size but that's still too small for sparrows to fit in so chickadees are really common nesting species that you might get as well and then there's the Tufted Titmouse another cavity nester actually in the same family as the chickadee and nuthatches nuthatches are another cavity nesting species you can attract them to birdhouses if you have a tree in your yard that has some cavities in it you might get them popping in and out where they'll reach well where they're raising their young and then woodpeckers are woodpecker species are also cavity nesters as well and they'll actually excavate their bare cavity and they will build a nest inside and woodpeckers don't build a nest like other birds do they will just lay their eggs on top of the wood chips that are inside of their nesting cavity screech owls are another cavity nesting bird we have here they require a larger box that has an opening of about an inch and a half in diameter and the American Kestrel is another bird that has the same kind of specifics of a house so they'll nest in dead trees but then they'll also nest in birdhouses and then there's also wood ducks if you have a pond or if you have a wooded swampy area you can put out birdhouses and you might be able to attract the wood duck and their young are known for just jumping out of the house or out of their natural tree cavity sometimes dropping 10 20 30 feet into the water or onto the ground as they leave their nest and then there's also the hooded merganser the bufflehead so we do have nesting ducks species as well that will go into cavities and then there's nesting platforms so these are a little different they look like a birdhouse except they're missing their front and not all birds will nest in houses but some of them do nest on these platforms some examples being Robins and you might find them nesting in places you don't want such as on top of your lights on porches they're known to nest in many manmade structures so this is a little roost sometimes I pulled the Robin roosts you can put up they've got little roots on them but they have a nice open front and they'll come to those morning does are another bird that will come to a little nesting perch and then you can get these burned swallow nests and they mimic the actual nests that the bronze bowls will build and the barn swallows will go in there they'll raise their young and they're very very cute looking on their nestlings another bird that'll nests and houses our purple martins and they're different because their colony nesters so they will nest in big groups so these are the big houses that you see usually in an open field or by the lake by the water they like a nice wide open area so you probably won't get those in your backyard on you do need a very specific type of habitat but if you have some a waterfront space you might be able to get the purple mines and then there's always the roosting pouches so not all birds will nest in houses but you can always put out these little roosting houses especially in the wintertime these are great they're too small for birds to build a nest in but they'll go inside there to stand rain snow out of the cold so it's just a way for birds to get out of the elements for a little bit camp birds that don't nest in houses will even use these as well so you could get something like a Cardinal going inside if that doe roosting house is big enough and then you can provide nesting material so all birds need some kind of nesting material to build their nests you can do something like a nesting ball on the left there there's a goldfinch grabbing some nesting material and it's just natural cotton there's some little some little fibers in there as well some string and they'll use those to build their nests and pet fur is another thing that birds will use to build their nests here's a Tufted Titmouse on the right hand side that's actually pulling fur out of an animal and they're pretty notorious for that they're known to pull for right out of dogs or cats if they're outside so they're pretty bold in that way you do want to make sure that you stay away from dryer lint that's a common thing that people have and the cats put out for nesting material but it's not known at the chemicals in your detergents can harm the birds in any way so you don't want to use the dryer lint and to put out the nesting material but your your your pet fur is fine if you're grooming your pet that's great if you have scraps from sowing that's another great thing that you can put out but just stay away from the dryer lint and then the next thing you can do to attract birds to your yard has put out bird feeders and bird feeders can be very elaborate or they can be very very simple the birds aren't very picky and if you're putting out a bird feeder you want to make sure that you at least provide black oil sunflower seed and that will attract the biggest diversity of any birds as far as one type of seed goes you can get blends that will attract a larger diversity but if you're looking to simplify and attract as many birds as you can with one type of seed black oil sunflower seed is the way to go and there is a difference in seedlings so you want to be careful when you are buying food that you get something that doesn't have a lot of filler in it on the left-hand side there you can see there's a seed blend that has a lot of yellow stuff in a lot of little round seeds and birds tend to just throw that on the ground some of it they won't eat at all so if you ever see birds at your feeder that are just tossing seed on the ground that's why they either don't eat it or they'll prefer the larger seeds like the peanuts or the black oil sunflower seed that's in the blends and on the right hand side there this is a good seed blend it has a lot of sunflower seeds in it it has peanuts and the birds really do like those big pieces of seat basically if it looks more appealing for you to eat the birds will like it more even small birds like chickadees and nuthatches and tip mice they love those peanuts so big pieces of seeds are always good for the birds and there's a lot of different types of birds you can get to feeders so if you put out a house houses are great for birds nesting for some time of the year so if you put out a house you might get a bird a bird or two nesting in there depending on the time of the year they might have a couple broods but in general they're just going to be using the house and spraying in the summer they might go in and out of it in the winter for some protection whereas a feeder you can have birds coming all year round and at a single feeder you can have multiple species of birds so as far as feeders go if you're looking to attract birds like Cardinals some larger birds you want to make sure that you have a feeder with a lot of perching room so Cardinals especially do like to have a larger feeder so a nice tray feeder is good a hopper feeder or something like this feeder here which is actually squirrel proof this is a swirl proof hopper feeder and it has a lot of perching room for the Cardinals on it it's got a nice big perch for them if you've ever had a tube feeder with just a little stick purchase those can be really hard for a larger bird like a cardinal to land on so you want to make sure you've got something nice and big for the Cardinals and when you put out something for the Cardinals you can also get the rose-breasted grosbeak which are in the same thing as the Cardinals actually and you can kind of see the resemblance and the beak if you look at the beak of the rose-breasted grosbeak as well as the beak of the cardinal they do look very very similar in that regard in there and so they're similar sizes as well but the red-breasted grosbeak a rose-breasted grosbeak will come to the same type of feeders as a cardinal wuerl and they love sunflower seeds they love safflower seeds so those are a great way to attract them you might get this bird as well this is the house finch not to be confused with the house sparrow the house finch male is it has some red coloration on it and the female is all brown but she's got brown and she's brown with stripes where's the female Sparrow is just Brown without stripes so this is the house finch they're also very common feeders but if you've ever put out a feeder you might find that you get more than just Birds so squirrels are a very common sight at feeders squirrels chipmunks and sometimes they really play it in thick they seem to never be full enough and they are hard to keep out of feeders but it's not impossible there are different type of squirrel through feeders and they operate in different ways but they're all weight sensitive in some regard so when a squirrel gets on these feeders they are weight sensitive so the feeder will somehow close so the squirrels can't get to them the birds can land on the feeders fine they are they're very light so birds have hollow bones they're mostly feathers so they're they are very very light so when a squirrel gets on the feeder there's so much heavier that they will shut the feeder down so with most feeders you can have several Birds on them at a time and they still weigh as much as one squirrel does there's different kinds of squirrel-proof feeders there's even one that will send the squirrel flying around into the air to keep them off but they do really work another thing you can do is if you have your feeders on a pole you can put up what's called a baffle and that's something that looks like a big cone or a big can and that will keep the squirrels from climbing up the pole but keep in mind squirrels can jump about five feet up they can jump seven feet across from an object that might be nearby and they're known to jump 9 feet down from something up high down low so you want to make sure if you put a pole up with a baffle you've got your baffle up for if I heat and it's away from anything else that a squirrel could fling itself off of another thing you can do is add hot sauce or add something hot to your seed so there are different sauces you can add and the idea behind these are that mammals have more taste buds than birds do birds in general have very few taste buds so they can't taste this hot pepper that is on the seed this is a hot sauce called flaming squirrel and when a squirrel takes a bite of seed that is coated with flaming squirrel sauce they do not like it this will also keep deer from going into your feeders if you have deer that are eating your plants you can you can put this in a spray bottle and spray it on your plants and then it'll keep them from eating your hosta so it has multiple uses but the birds just don't taste that hotness that's in the sauce so that's another way to keep them out and then they're set flower seeds so sampler reseed looks a lot like sunflower seed but it's white in color but it's about the same size and a lot of people switch to safflower seed in the spring and summertime because the black birds still need it as well so squirrels don't like this and neither do the big black birds like the grackle or the starlings if you have starlings coming to your feeder they don't like the safflower either so that's another thing you can do to keep some of these pesky creatures out of your feeders and then there's Niger seed and squirrels don't it's a bother Niger seed either it's just very very small so it's not really worth it for the squirrels to go for it that's not a hundred percent but it is pretty common that the squirrels do not bother the Niger seed there are squirrel-proof Niger feeders if you are finding that your squirrels are going after your Niger scene but Niger is very very small so it does require a special type of feeder and Niger feeders will have really small holes in them and the finches will pull the little seeds right out of that feeder and Niger seed is great for gold finches so these are gold finches here and you can see they don't need perches on the feeder either they can cling right onto the feeder this one's made of a metal mesh and they can feed right from it you do want to make sure that you keep your Niger seed fresh so if it's been a few months and you haven't gotten fresh seed and you're not seeing in finches at your feeder that's pretty common the Niger so you can go bad after two or three months so you do want to make sure you don't buy it in larger quantities and then you can use in a two or three month time frame and it can get moldy too so you want to make sure that you keep your feet are clean and if there's any kind of mold at the bottom of your feeder the finches will not come to it so you want to make sure that your theaters clean as well gold finches are here all year round I'm here where we are in upstate New York and they are found here but in the wintertime they will molt their feathers and so they look very different so both benches molt their feathers twice or asthma songbirds when we mold their feathers once before breeding season but the gold finches will molt in the fall so they look more like this bird on the left here and then in the spring and which is right now they're starting to get their golden feathers back so now then they look more gold like this fish here on the right another type of food you can put out for birds is mealworms and insect eating birds like this Bluebird love mealworms oh there you can get live mealworms or freeze dried mealworms Birds prefer the live mealworms but if you get freeze-dried mealworms you can add a little bit of water to them and it'll make them look more alive so not only do bluebirds like them but wrens love the mealworms woodpeckers do really once birds have had their young catch and they're feeding a lot of food they feed them a lot of insect protein so mealworms are great for those birds that are just hatched and they're in their nest boxes you can put out mealworms and the parents will come to the mealworms to feed their nestlings and then there's peanuts birds love peanuts words like this nuthatch this is the white-breasted nuthatch we also have a red breasted nuthatch which is more common here in the winter than in the spring and summer and you can get peanut pieces or peanuts in the shell like this feeder and blue jays especially love peanuts in this show but don't be surprised if you get a lot of chickadees coming to your peanut feeders tip mice also love the peanuts and then not hatches like I said to really do love the peanuts and sort of woodpeckers woodpeckers though are most commonly found on suet feeders and if you've ever had a suet puter before it might be looking kind of like this it's just a little cage and what cutters will come to these what the issue is with some of our larger woodpeckers like the pileated woodpecker here it can be hard for them to cling on there and balance so your best bet is to get something like that so this is called a paddle tail suet feeder and it has this projection at the bottom of it that provides woodpeckers with a place for them to rest their tail so that resting of their tail allows them to be upright when they're feeding and it just makes them more stable and more able to feed more freely from the feeder we do have different lure peckers here and these are our common woodpeckers that you can find at feeders the first is going to be the downy woodpecker and this is probably your most common woodpecker you'll see it the feeder they're about the size of a suet cake itself so they're pretty small and you can tell the difference between up the male and the female and males will have bread on the back of their head so on the left there is the male and the female is just all black and white so this is the downy woodpecker and take a look at the size of its beak it has pretty small beak so it's not only a small bird but its beak is quite quite small for woodpecker compared to the hairy woodpecker which has a larger beat so the hairy woodpecker here on the left-hand side you can see the difference between the downy and the hairy it's a bigger bird so whereas the downy woodpecker was the size of about a suet cake the hairy woodpecker is significantly larger they're going to be about the size of a red-bellied woodpecker and they have a much much larger beak but they do have the same coloration as the downy woodpecker so the females are all black and white and the male will have red on the back of its head and then another common woodpecker we have here is the red-bellied woodpecker and most people call this a redheaded woodpecker because it does have a very red head it does have a little bit of red tinge on its value though it can be hard to see but this is in fact called a red-bellied woodpecker we do have a redheaded woodpecker here and they look quite a bit different and the redheaded woodpecker hasn't all read so they are very very red the thing is the redheaded woodpecker is quite rare so you won't see this bird at your feeder very often and if you do you're very very lucky because they are rare and getting even rarer so this is a very uncommon bird whereas the red-bellied woodpecker is a very common bird to see in your backyard and of course there's the palliated woodpecker those are the big woody woodpecker take birds it can be about 16 inches in length and they're the largest woodpecker we have now in North America so these this is a very very large bird and they can be quite loud when they are calling some other birds you can attract your yard are going to be beat Baltimore Oriole and Baltimore Orioles and migratory so they're not here all year round but they come back up say New York we get them around the end of April early May and mid May they're really flowing in and they will come to feeders as well they have a different diet though so you can't attract them to a seed feeder sometimes they will come to suet if you have an orange flavored suet especially they'll eat mealworms sometimes as well but they really loves citrusy types of foods so you can feed them orange slices they'll also drink nectar like a hummingbird does and you can make your own nectar using white sugar and water white granulated sugar and the recipe is one part sugar to five parts water and you want to boil the water add the sugar let it cool and then you can fill your feeder but the favorite food of the Orioles is going to be grape jelly so they love their grape jelly we sell something called Burberry jelly at the bird house which they go crazy for it's mix of grape and blackberry jelly and they just love it so if you can only put out one type of food for the Orioles the jelly is definitely the way to go and then another migratory bird we have that comes through is the ruby-throated hummingbird and they will come through around early May and they really start coming in and big numbers around mid-may so right around Mother's Day is a good time to get your hummingbirds and hummingbirds are attracted to the color red so putting out a red feeder is always great but you want to make sure not to dye your nectar red just like it's not sure if the dryer lint can affect birds negatively in any way it's not known if red dyes affect hummingbirds negatively in any way so they don't need to die in their nectar so you can just keep it clear and they love that you want to make sure to change your nectar up every two or three days or so because it can get moldy so you want to make sure to keep the theater clean and if you get a feeder you do want to make sure it's red because they do like that color red especially if you're just getting a theater for the first time a red feeder is definitely the way to go and humming birds can be territorial and the ruby-throated hummingbird is definitely very territorial so this picture on the left is something that you probably won't see in your yard they do chase each other around so it's important when you're mounting your hummingbird feeder you do want to keep it separate from your other feeders keep it you know ten 15 feet away or so if you can because hummingbirds are known to chase off other birds that they get too close to their Oh source so they'll chase away pyncheons Bluejays they're very territorial in that in that regard so your best bet is if you want to attract a lot of hummingbirds to your yard to have multiple feeders in different locations in your yard which are out of eyesight of each other and then when you put up bird feeders don't be surprised if you do get some predators coming into your yard especially in the winter time we get more reports of Hawks coming to feeders like this Cooper's Hawk Cooper's hawks are the going to be the most notorious Birds for coming to feeders they are bird eaters so that's their natural diet are going to be bird so where there are birds that will be predators of the birds sharp-shinned hawk SAR another common bird that will come into yards the Cooper's hawks are going to be the most common and then as you get birds into your yard there can be issues that come with that one of them being if you've got a bird nesting the place you don't want or if you have a woodpecker pecking on your house or pecking on something you don't want making a lot of noise that's one thing that that does happen here and there even if you're not feeding birds in your yard and one thing you can do is put up scare tape and that's what's on the left there it's shiny reflective tape and birds don't like shiny reflective things so if you hang this in an area where birds are where you don't want them that can help keep them away and then another thing you can do is put up window decals and window decals are great if you have bird strikes so birds are hitting your windows and that can be they can make a huge impact on a bird population declines on a lot of birds to it windows and it does cause a lot of bird deaths so one thing you can do is put up decals and that's a great way for birds to see that there is a piece of glass there that they can't fly through and we sell a lot of window decals and on the right are our bestsellers so you put them on the outside of the window and to us they look clear they look very very clear you can see through them pretty well but they reflect UV light and birds can see in the UV can see the UV spectrum so they reflect that light and birds can see that there's something there and they won't hit your window so to wrap up there's a lot of different things that you can do to attract birds to your yard feel free to visit our website at the birdhouse and why.com for more information and more feeders we've got a lot of feeders and accessories available for purchase online and we've got some different blog posts as well that you can read but our recommendations for attracting more birds to your yard the first is add some water birds love that water and you can get a really good diversity of birds just by adding that and nothing else provide them with safe nesting sites something that predators can get you something on a pole possibly with a baffle on it so you don't have to worry about raccoons or squirrels climbing up there and reading the nesting site and then see it is always a good thing so anything with black oil sunflower that's a must if you want to attract birds to your yard with a feeder but the more diverse of foods you get that's even better than more things you add the more types of birds you'll be able to get and then make sure to squirrel proof so scroll proofing is very important squirrel proof your feeders by a squirrel proof feeder if you don't have squirrels in your yard now but you start feeding you probably will get squirrels so I can't hurt to start off with a sprawl computer and then also be patient it can take a little while it can take the birds awhile to find your feeder and to find your yard but the more you keep up with it and keep your fears full over time you'll have a bunch of birds and a variety of them as well so please feel free to visit the birdhouse and why.com which is our website we have a Facebook page as well leave your comments below if you have anything that you'd like us to add or if there's anything that you would like a class on in the future and thank you so much for watching

Channel: The Bird House

Views: 47,200

Rating: 4.9369369 out of 5

Keywords: backyard birding, birding, bird watching, backyard birds, woodpeckers, orioles, cardinals, bluebirds, goldfinches, hummingbirds, bird feeding, bird houses, bird feeders

Id: zNeKlUl_P3Q

Length: 33min 2sec (1982 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020