Birds in the Winter Garden

BirdNote^®

Birds in the Winter Garden

Written by Ellen Blackstone

This is BirdNote.

[Sound of leaves being raked]

Instead of just putting your garden to bed this autumn, why not put it to work as a haven for wintering birds?

Instead of dumping your leaves, rake them to cover your flower and vegetable beds. [Raking] They’ll smother the weeds and decompose, feeding next year’s plants. And in the meantime, juncos, sparrows, and towhees will scuffle around and feed in the leaf litter.

[Sound of Spotted Towhee, doing its own raking]

When you trim back the trees and shrubs, throw the clippings into a heap in the corner of your yard. The pile will break down into nutritious garden compost over the winter, and the Song Sparrows and wrens will thank you for a place to forage and roost. [Song Sparrow] You can also leave the seed-heads on perennial plants – purple coneflowers, sunflowers, and more. They’re a treat for finches, Pine Siskins and other birds. (Editor's note: Birds are not known to eat milkweed seeds, as suggested in the story, but we encourage listeners to plant milkweed for the sake of monarch butterflies and other critters.)
 
[Fussing of Pine Siskins]

Do you need to prune a tree – or even cut it down? Well, fall is the best time of year to do it, because you won’t be destroying any active bird nests. And if you can leave a dead tree on your property -- a snag -- that can be even better for wildlife.

With a little planning, your garden can be a haven for birds like this Bewick’s Wren, all year round.

[Winter call of Bewick’s Wren]

For BirdNote, I’m Mary McCann.

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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Content Director: Jonese Franklin

Narrator: Mary McCann
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Song of Song Sparrow [44866] recorded by G.A. Keller; Spotted Towhee feeding in leaf litter recorded by K. Colver, call of Bewick’s Wren and chatter of Pine Siskins [44845] by G.A. Keller.
Ambient provided by Kessler Productions.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2019 BirdNote   November 2016 / 2019 / 2021 October 2024

ID#  110405gardenKPLU      garden-03c