And so they come, the long winter months when the garden lies still and withdrawn beneath Nature’s decree of dormancy, and the eye sees only the shadows of shrub and tree limbs starkly stenciled upon the snow.
What joy it is then to entice into this bleakness the ardent warmth, the vivacity, the vivid bar of color and song that are the priceless attributes of birds!
The way to accomplish this is simply to provide in appropriate containers — discussed in a previous issue — liberal amounts of the proper foods.
Bird Feeding in Nature
The kinds of foods that birds eat are chiefly dictated by their needs and habits of feeding, as seen in Nature, unassisted by man.
These are the result of the evolution of birds through time to the development of one or another specialization.
Two distinct specializations that comprise most bird feeding are that which requires some birds, such as the weak-billed warblers, to eat only insects, whereas the other induces such birds, as the hard, conical-billed finches, which include the sparrows, to eat mostly seeds.
There are, of course, many birds that eat both or take some exceptions.
Attracting Birds To Your Garden
To such tastes as these, the individual who wishes to lure birds to his garden must cater. Birds that eat insects as part of their natural diet will welcome the lesser exertion of accepting your substitutes.
For the same reason, and when the ground and weeds are sheathed in gleaming ice, will other birds accept your offering of small seed?
Among the birds that you may attract, which are entirely insect-eating, are the brown creeper and the two woodpeckers, the downy and the hairy.
The creeper, a small, inconspicuous, brown-striped bird with a sharp, decurved bill, announces his presence with a high-pitched whistle.
Conscientiously spiraling up boles of trees and peering into cracks and crevices for insect eggs and larvae, he will often yield to the easy loot of a garden feeder.
Woodpecker
The two woodpeckers, black and white striped in back, white-breasted, the males with crimson spots at the back of their heads, vary only in size and will readily leave their erratic patrolling of tree limbs to swoop into the garden for a snack.
These insect eaters will take suet, preferably hung in chunks or pressed into holes of feeders, allowing them to clutch it with their well-developed claws.
These birds will accept Peanut butter, hard fats, and even cottage cheese.
Winter Seed-Eating Birds
Seed-eating birds, which normally exist through the winter by eating seeds that have already fallen to the ground or which still adhere to dried weed stalks, are present much more extensively in the North during the winter.
By far, the largest number of winter birds are in this class and can be easily provided with different kinds of seed, alone or in combination.
Snowbirds
The sight of the first “snowbirds,” or juncos, in October in Massachusetts heralds the opening of the winter bird feeding season.
Dark-sooty-gray mantled adults and brown-mantled juveniles, both with snowy white breasts, skitter about the garden, showing white tail feathers like the coquettish flaunting of petticoats.
With them come rusty-crowned tree sparrows, dapper sprites of birds with gray breasts, and a center, jet “dot” accent.
Occasionally, beady-eyed, sharp-billed song sparrows, attired modestly in striped brown on gray, remain throughout the winter.
Oftentimes, they will spend many daylight hours aggressively protecting their prior claim to feeder space, only to voraciously peck seeds there until you fear they’ll pop their pretty feathers!
Goldfinch
With these feeders depending much on timing and location, you can expect to bring in the goldfinch, sober in olive drab, and some of his gay cousins.
You may look out some morning to find on your feeder a small puff-ball of a bird with a cream breast delicately marbled with rose and a scarlet cap jauntily perched on his forehead.
This redpoll from the North is a blithe and capricious visitor and one well worth waiting and feeding for!
A cousin of his of equally erratic habits is the pine siskin, a small, brown-streaked wisp of flesh and feathers with a sharp bill and a touch of yellow, who usually appears with a flock, with the members of which he communicates in small squeaks and sputters.
Kinds of Small Seeds
The birds in the preceding paragraphs can be drawn to the garden by offering them various small seeds.
The simplest method, of course, is to purchase commercially prepared seed, ready-mixed to meet the needs of birds.
If one prefers, however, he can “mix his own” and combine such seeds of proven edibility as canary bird seed, hemp and millet, chick feed, rape, and buckwheat. Peanut hearts are a delicacy savored by these birds.
Mundane in source and hard to come by are the sweepings from a barn floor where hay is handled.
Yet this mixture contains vast numbers of weed and hayseed, a natural food. They will eagerly gather around it when it is spread on the snow.
Sunflower Seed
Sunflower seed as a bird food deserves particular mention. It draws a large number of birds, some of whom will come for it alone. The prime example is that aristocrat of “the far North, the evening grosbeak.
A handsome bird, strikingly plumaged in yellow, brown, white, and black, with a gold band across his brow, like some Aztec chieftain, he deigns to accept only sunflower seed.
Purple Finches Bird
Other birds who regard these as the only seed worth coming to stations for are the purple finches, the adult males of which often appear crowned with strawberry plush.
The ever-favorite, black-capped chickadee expends enormous effort hammering open the hard shells, speedily consumes the contents, and then “bounces” back for more.
The white-breasted nuthatch —and if you’re lucky, the red-breasted, too! —who is part crank, part unconscious clown and consumed with self-importance, snatches a seed, then speeds off to dine alone!
The bluejay, supreme and resplendent, screams his claim, then arrives with a flourish of wings and gobbles all his cheeks will hold, not unlike a greedy child.
The above-named birds, however, do eat other foods. If the small seeds mentioned, cake, cookie or bread crumbs, prepared cereals, corn meal, and the like, are mixed with melted suet or other fat, several birds — in fact, most birds — will readily consume it.
The importance of fats in birds’ winter diets is great, for they provide the body heat without which birds could not survive.
The sparrows, finches, starlings, jays, chickadees, and a long list of others will welcome this much-needed addition to their diet.
Feeding Birds in Winter
The previous ideas for feeding birds in winter are for immediate use. However, if the fun you derive from it equals that of other hosts and hostesses, you may wish to make a permanent arrangement that includes garden plantings.
These afford the protection from enemies needed by birds and also offer cover as birds enter and leave the garden. In addition, judicious plantings of fruit-bearing trees, shrubs, and vines can provide food for birds almost yearly.
Mountain Ash: Sorbus Americana
One of the most ornamental trees that holds its fruit in Winter is the mountain ash Sorbus Americana.
Native to the region from Manitoba to South Carolina, it grows to SO feet in height, is round-topped, and bears terminal combs of bloom.
These later develop into clusters of globular fruits of brilliant orange hue, which hang on after the leaves have fallen.
Although it prefers a moist location with good loam, it thrives in partial shade and can be used as an accent or specimen tree.
Its bright bunches of berries attract Grosbeaks finches, cedar waxwings, sparrows, and woodpeckers, all of which may be present in the Winter.
Bayberry
A low-growing shrub of much value to Winter birds is the bayberry, Myrica caroliniensis, a neat habit shrub native to the North.
The lanceolate leaves turn bronze in the Fall and hang on, but the small, grayish, puckered, and waxy berries then become conspicuous and attractive.
It flourishes in dry, sterile soils of a sandy or peaty nature. It has been used effectively in borders for lawns, along curving driveways, on rocky embankments, or in exposed seaside or river locations.
This shrub is particularly valuable to late migrants, as well as to the Winter birds. A branch affixed to the window sill in the Fall may bring to your window the charming presence of a myrtle warbler.
Carl Hottes says, “Perhaps no shrub is as universally useful as the Japanese barberry,” Berberis thunbergia, and then offers 14 reasons!
Some of these are that it thrives in poor soil, makes an excellent protective barrier because of its thorns, is splendid in form and autumn coloring, and holds its bright red berries through the winter.
Although it is bitter and not taken immediately during years of food scarcity, pheasants have been observed stripping foundation plantings of it around a suburban home.
Cedar waxwings, fawn-colored birds with peaked crests, and black eye masks, like benign witches on masquerade, were seen en masse as they silently appeared, ate their fill, and then swept away to their mysterious tryst.
Virginia Creeper
Lastly, we may consider the five-leaved vine of the Virginia creeper, Parthenocissus quinquefolia, as a permanent planting for the bird-feeding area.
A gracefully-leaved vine that turns scarlet in mid-Autumn, its deep root system allows it to survive in every difficult spot.
Sandy soil, rocky embankments, hot sunny areas, and cold exposed locations — the Virginia creeper takes them all in its stride.
Furthermore, its heavy foliage offers bird protection and nesting sites, and in the late Fall, it provides blueberries that cling through the Winter as much-needed food for birds.
With immediate use of the foods suggested and later planting of these or some of the many other species of bird-attracting plant materials, your permanent bird-feeding area should become well-established.
44659 by Barbara Elinore Hayden