Invite Birds Home With a Beautiful Winter Landscape

Birds add beauty, movement, and color to your landscape. And like all creatures, they need shelter, water, and food to survive. So invite birds to your property this winter by providing these things for our feathered friends.

Create Shelter

Of the three elements necessary for birds, providing shelter is probably the easiest. While bird houses may be purchased or built, they are really a substitute for habitat that is no longer available. If you have a dead tree or snag on your property, remove dangerous branches and leave the trunk standing. Birds find shelter in hollow cavities. In addition to providing shelter, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, creepers, and woodpeckers look for food in these decaying trees. Another way to provide shelter is to include a variety of shade trees, evergreens, and shrubs in your landscape. This way, you will invite different bird species that nest and perch in these different parts of the landscape. Evergreens and shrub borders are especially important in winter, giving songbirds places to escape predators such as hawks and cats.

Provide Water

Water is the next element. If you are lucky enough to have a stream or pond on your property, that is all you need. If you do not have a natural source of water on your site, add a water feature. View birds up close by placing a simple bird bath with a water heater near the house. Add stones to the bottom so the water is not too deep, but still provides water for them to drink. During the few winter weeks when the temperatures remain below freezing, this makes a big difference to the birds. They will gather around the water while we can watch them from the warmth of our homes.

Invite Birds With Food

Use a variety of foods, places to forage, and native plants to ensure birds have enough to eat in winter.

Variety

Although food is not difficult to provide, not all of our birds eat the same things. So provide a variety of foods to invite different species of birds. This ensures that all of your winter visitors find something to eat. Species with thick bills, such as cardinals, have no problem eating seeds and nuts, while others prefer fruit and insects. Birds like thrushes, wrens, and cedar waxwings crave fatty food like suet and peanut butter, as well as mealworms and fresh and dried fruit. So include suet feeders and trays of dried fruit for a great winter addition for birds.

Forage

Providing forage is an easy way to invite birds. Simply set aside areas of your property where birds can find insects and other food. One way to do this is to Leave the Leaves. Many andimals and insects such as native lady bugs overwinter in fallen leaves. So push leaves into garden beds or along property lines and allow ground birds such as sparrows and juncos to do a little hunting. Watch these little birds hop around in leaves searching for these insects.

Stick piles and fallen branches also invite birds by providing a place to forage. Artfully arrange piles of sticks or hide them from view. Either way, you will see little birds, especially wrens, darting in and out while looking for something to eat. Line paths with fallen branches, or simply leave them on the ground to provide places for insects to hide and birds to hunt.

Another easy way to provide places for birds to forage is to leave your perennials standing throughout the winter. Black-eyed Susans, sunflowers, asters, and goldenrod provide seeds that birds eat during winter months.  Find goldfinches and purple finches sitting atop these dried stems long after the plants have flowered. These dried stems provide winter interest in the garden, and can be quite beautiful covered in snow. It is easier to remove these stems in March anyway, when they are completely dried out and you are itching to get out in the yard.

Invite Birds with Native Plants

Plant varieties of native plants to provide for birds in winter. Our birds have evolved with, and are naturally attracted to native plants, which can provide them with everything they need. Dogwoods, hollies, cedars, pine, junipers, hawthorn, bayberry, sumac, viburnum, chokeberry, and crabapple are excellent choices for winter food sources, because their fruit ripens late and may persist through cold winter months. For more information, see our favorite Plants for the Winter Garden or use this handy chart from the Audubon Society.

Native Plants for Birds

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