I am thinking about planting a bird garden this spring in a now kind of ugly
area of my yard at the back of the house near the alley. Stuff I am
considering planting the

Two kinds of amaranth
Two kinds of millet
Sunflowers (various kinds)
Celosia (both the plumed kind and the cockscomb for looks)
I was also thinking about putting a bird bath among the sunflowers so that
they would have food and water.

I'd love to hear any other ideas on design, varieties of plants or
experiences people have had.

mm



"Earl Buchan" wrote in message
m...
The Plant Man column
for publication the week of 01/04/04 - 01/10/04 (740 words)

The Plant Man
by Steve Jones
www.landsteward.org

Make your garden "bird friendly" this winter

Birds and gardens. They just seem to belong together. A landscape
without birds would be a sad place indeed. In fact, we take the
presence of birds in our lives so much for granted that we hardly even
notice them for the most part. They're just ... there. But we'd
certainly miss them if they weren't!

Several readers of this column have sent me e-mail with comments or
questions about wild birds in the garden, and I thought I'd start by
talking about caring for birds during the cold winter months.

At this time of year, birds have three basic needs: food water and
shelter.
We can do quite a bit to provide for all three of those needs!

There are a number of good bird feeders available in specialty stores
or from online sources. Some claim to be "squirrel proof" but for the
most part I'd say "squirrel resistant" is a better description as the
little guys seem capable of overcoming even the most ingenious
obstacles!

Think carefully before you position your new bird feeder. If you like
to watch the birds as they munch away, you'll obviously want to place
the feeder where you can easily see it from your window.

Birds prefer to visit a feeder that is fairly close to a dense bush or
two.
This gives them a staging post where they can land before approaching
the feeder. It also provides a nearby refuge in case they have to
escape from a predator such a hawk or your neighbor's prowling cat!

It is a temptation to buy a sack of the cheapest possible bird feed at
the supermarket. Feeds that contain a high proportion of cracked
corn, milo and wheat are generally low cost, but aren't particularly
desirable to a lot of birds. You'll tend to find a lot of spilled and
uneaten beneath your bird feeder, and that can attract rats. Not such
a good idea!

I find it's worth paying a little more and getting a sack of sunflower
seeds which seem very popular with the birds who visit my garden! If
you intend to attract a particular breed, you might want to consult a
specialty store or look online. I found a long and very helpful
article online at http://birdware.com/owbf.htm titled "Overview of
Wild Bird Feeding" by Aelred D. Geis, Ph.D. If you go to my web site,
www.landsteward.org and find this column under "The Plant Man"
heading, you can click on a direct hot link to that article, which I
highly recommend.

By the way, Dr. Geis advocates keeping bird feeders stocked year
round, rather than just in winter, even though other sources of food
are more readily available in the warmer months. If you enjoy seeing
birds in your back yard, it sounds like a good idea.

At this time of year, I also hang cakes of suet from tree branches. I
buy them ready-made, but it's fairly simple to make your own if you
prefer. I found a number of recipes at http://www.birding.about.com
and again, there's a direct link to that site from this column at my
web site.

In addition to food, it is important that birds have clean, fresh
drinking water available.

The best bird baths have a wide, shallow bowl, no more than three
inches deep at the center. The bird bath can be as plain or as fancy
as you wish:
the birds won't mind either way! A friend of mine set up a "dripper"
in his bird bath and says that birds seems to be particularly
attracted to the sight and sound of the dripping water.

Check your bird bath regularly to make sure the water is clean. Leaves
and other debris that fall into the bird bath quickly turn to slime,
making the water unpalatable. When the temperature falls below
freezing, add warm water to the bath several times a day.

Birds also need shelter, and I'll discuss various types of bird houses
in a future column. Meanwhile, take a moment to check that your bird
feeder is well stocked and the bird bath is clean and fresh!

The Plant Man is here to help. Send you questions about trees, shrubs
and landscaping to and for resources and
additional information, including archived Plant Man columns, visit
www.landsteward.org where you can also subscribe to Steve's free
e-mailed newsletter.

water (dripping) is essential to pulling in birds. forget the little bird bath and
go right for a bog garden which provides food and water.
my mother also would cut up strips of cloth in spring and hang it out there for the
nest builders. Ingrid

"mmarteen" wrote:

I am thinking about planting a bird garden this spring in a now kind of ugly
area of my yard at the back of the house near the alley. Stuff I am
considering planting the

Two kinds of amaranth
Two kinds of millet
Sunflowers (various kinds)
Celosia (both the plumed kind and the cockscomb for looks)
I was also thinking about putting a bird bath among the sunflowers so that
they would have food and water.

I'd love to hear any other ideas on design, varieties of plants or
experiences people have had.

mm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
List Manager: Puregold Goldfish List
http://puregold.aquaria.net/
www.drsolo.com
Solve the problem, dont waste energy finding who's to blame
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Unfortunately, I receive no money, gifts, discounts or other
compensation for all the damn work I do, nor for any of the
endorsements or recommendations I make.

In article , "mmarteen"
writes:

I am thinking about planting a bird garden this spring in a now kind of ugly
area of my yard at the back of the house near the alley. Stuff I am
considering planting the

Two kinds of amaranth
Two kinds of millet
Sunflowers (various kinds)
Celosia (both the plumed kind and the cockscomb for looks)
I was also thinking about putting a bird bath among the sunflowers so that
they would have food and water.

I'd love to hear any other ideas on design, varieties of plants or
experiences people have had.

mm

Those are good plants for the birds, and the water is a good additon, too.
Where are you located? south, west, east, north?
Others in your area would have some suggestons I am sure,
for plants that would grow in your area.
I suggest some plants that have berries for later in the fall/winter.

Be aware tho, mm, that you may very well become addicted, and
soon your entire garden will be, literally, 'for the birds'!

Emilie
Nor Cal

"mmarteen" wrote in message
...
I am thinking about planting a bird garden this spring in a now kind of
ugly
area of my yard at the back of the house near the alley. Stuff I am
considering planting the

Two kinds of amaranth
Two kinds of millet
Sunflowers (various kinds)
Celosia (both the plumed kind and the cockscomb for looks)
I was also thinking about putting a bird bath among the sunflowers so that
they would have food and water.

I'd love to hear any other ideas on design, varieties of plants or
experiences people have had.

mm

One thing you didn't mention was shrubs or trees for nesting sites. Birds
seem to prefer dense foliage in shrubs for nests.The favorites in my yard
are an overgrown, untrimmed forsythia (cardinal favorite), an althea that
has dense foliage, a bridal wreath that is about five feet tall and as wide,
and a couple of Japanese maples along with a holly that a brown thrasher
nests in yearly. Bird nests are impossible to spot in any of these
shrubs/trees unless you pull aside the foliage. We usually only realize
there are nests in these when we hear a male singing or notice activity in
and out of the plant as the parents gather food.

Birds also pick unusual spots. One was a pot of ivy on our front porch which
a Carolina wren decided was the perfect nesting site. Yes, I watered the ivy
from the bottom while the wren claimed it.

John

Oops. Forgot to mention that I am in minneapolis, zone 4a. The space
is in the northwest corner of the lot, not optimal but does get a good
deal of sun especially in the afternoons. I'd love to do a bog garden,
maybe that will be in future versions.

mm



(MLEBLANCA) wrote in message ...
In article , "mmarteen"
writes:

I am thinking about planting a bird garden this spring in a now kind of ugly
area of my yard at the back of the house near the alley. Stuff I am
considering planting the

Two kinds of amaranth
Two kinds of millet
Sunflowers (various kinds)
Celosia (both the plumed kind and the cockscomb for looks)
I was also thinking about putting a bird bath among the sunflowers so that
they would have food and water.

I'd love to hear any other ideas on design, varieties of plants or
experiences people have had.

mm

Those are good plants for the birds, and the water is a good additon, too.
Where are you located? south, west, east, north?
Others in your area would have some suggestons I am sure,
for plants that would grow in your area.
I suggest some plants that have berries for later in the fall/winter.

Be aware tho, mm, that you may very well become addicted, and
soon your entire garden will be, literally, 'for the birds'!

Emilie
Nor Cal

In article ,
(mmarteen) writes:

Oops. Forgot to mention that I am in minneapolis, zone 4a. The space
is in the northwest corner of the lot, not optimal but does get a good
deal of sun especially in the afternoons. I'd love to do a bog garden,
maybe that will be in future versions.

mm

Thanks mm, I thought I remembered you were North, but not sure.
Why not add to your plants and have a "tall grass prairie garden"?
First put in some Echinacea, Purple Cone Flower. Birds love the seeds.
Then add a few grasses: Switch Grass, Panicum
Indian Grass, Sorghastrum (beautiful)
Big Bluestem, Andropogon
Feather Reed Grass, Calamagrostis
Maybe some Milkweed for the Butterflies
You might even try Purple Prairie Clover, Petalostemon/Dalea
It will add Nitrogen to the soil.

How do you feel about goldenrod (or how do your neighbors feel about it?)
It does not cause hay fever. There are some really beautiful cultivars
available now, and it is a great additon to the garden. Butterflies love
it and birds eat the seeds. I have 3 kinds, of various heights.

Emilie
Nor Cal

If you have cats beware to keep any bird goodies high off the ground.

mmarteen wrote in message
...
I am thinking about planting a bird garden this spring in a now kind of
ugly
area of my yard at the back of the house near the alley. Stuff I am
considering planting the

Two kinds of amaranth
Two kinds of millet
Sunflowers (various kinds)
Celosia (both the plumed kind and the cockscomb for looks)
I was also thinking about putting a bird bath among the sunflowers so that
they would have food and water.

I'd love to hear any other ideas on design, varieties of plants or
experiences people have had.

mm



"Earl Buchan" wrote in message
m...
The Plant Man column
for publication the week of 01/04/04 - 01/10/04 (740 words)

The Plant Man
by Steve Jones
www.landsteward.org

Make your garden "bird friendly" this winter

Birds and gardens. They just seem to belong together. A landscape
without birds would be a sad place indeed. In fact, we take the
presence of birds in our lives so much for granted that we hardly even
notice them for the most part. They're just ... there. But we'd
certainly miss them if they weren't!

Several readers of this column have sent me e-mail with comments or
questions about wild birds in the garden, and I thought I'd start by
talking about caring for birds during the cold winter months.

At this time of year, birds have three basic needs: food water and
shelter.
We can do quite a bit to provide for all three of those needs!

There are a number of good bird feeders available in specialty stores
or from online sources. Some claim to be "squirrel proof" but for the
most part I'd say "squirrel resistant" is a better description as the
little guys seem capable of overcoming even the most ingenious
obstacles!

Think carefully before you position your new bird feeder. If you like
to watch the birds as they munch away, you'll obviously want to place
the feeder where you can easily see it from your window.

Birds prefer to visit a feeder that is fairly close to a dense bush or
two.
This gives them a staging post where they can land before approaching
the feeder. It also provides a nearby refuge in case they have to
escape from a predator such a hawk or your neighbor's prowling cat!

It is a temptation to buy a sack of the cheapest possible bird feed at
the supermarket. Feeds that contain a high proportion of cracked
corn, milo and wheat are generally low cost, but aren't particularly
desirable to a lot of birds. You'll tend to find a lot of spilled and
uneaten beneath your bird feeder, and that can attract rats. Not such
a good idea!

I find it's worth paying a little more and getting a sack of sunflower
seeds which seem very popular with the birds who visit my garden! If
you intend to attract a particular breed, you might want to consult a
specialty store or look online. I found a long and very helpful
article online at http://birdware.com/owbf.htm titled "Overview of
Wild Bird Feeding" by Aelred D. Geis, Ph.D. If you go to my web site,
www.landsteward.org and find this column under "The Plant Man"
heading, you can click on a direct hot link to that article, which I
highly recommend.

By the way, Dr. Geis advocates keeping bird feeders stocked year
round, rather than just in winter, even though other sources of food
are more readily available in the warmer months. If you enjoy seeing
birds in your back yard, it sounds like a good idea.

At this time of year, I also hang cakes of suet from tree branches. I
buy them ready-made, but it's fairly simple to make your own if you
prefer. I found a number of recipes at http://www.birding.about.com
and again, there's a direct link to that site from this column at my
web site.

In addition to food, it is important that birds have clean, fresh
drinking water available.

The best bird baths have a wide, shallow bowl, no more than three
inches deep at the center. The bird bath can be as plain or as fancy
as you wish:
the birds won't mind either way! A friend of mine set up a "dripper"
in his bird bath and says that birds seems to be particularly
attracted to the sight and sound of the dripping water.

Check your bird bath regularly to make sure the water is clean. Leaves
and other debris that fall into the bird bath quickly turn to slime,
making the water unpalatable. When the temperature falls below
freezing, add warm water to the bath several times a day.

Birds also need shelter, and I'll discuss various types of bird houses
in a future column. Meanwhile, take a moment to check that your bird
feeder is well stocked and the bird bath is clean and fresh!

The Plant Man is here to help. Send you questions about trees, shrubs
and landscaping to and for resources and
additional information, including archived Plant Man columns, visit
www.landsteward.org where you can also subscribe to Steve's free
e-mailed newsletter.






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[snip]
Thanks mm, I thought I remembered you were North, but not sure.
Why not add to your plants and have a "tall grass prairie garden"?
First put in some Echinacea, Purple Cone Flower. Birds love the seeds.
Then add a few grasses: Switch Grass, Panicum
Indian Grass, Sorghastrum (beautiful)
Big Bluestem, Andropogon
Feather Reed Grass, Calamagrostis
Maybe some Milkweed for the Butterflies
You might even try Purple Prairie Clover, Petalostemon/Dalea
It will add Nitrogen to the soil.


I (hopefully) will have some purple coneflower coming back in another part
of the yard. I will work through the list of grasses. I was actually
thinking of red sorghum.

How do you feel about goldenrod (or how do your neighbors feel about it?)
It does not cause hay fever. There are some really beautiful cultivars
available now, and it is a great additon to the garden. Butterflies love
it and birds eat the seeds. I have 3 kinds, of various heights.


I am a little scared of goldenrod. It may not cause hayfever but at least
the wild stuff that grows around here I am definitely allergic to. I will
check out the cultivars though.

Emilie
Nor Cal


Thanks!

One thing you didn't mention was shrubs or trees for nesting sites. Birds
seem to prefer dense foliage in shrubs for nests.The favorites in my yard
are an overgrown, untrimmed forsythia (cardinal favorite), an althea that
has dense foliage, a bridal wreath that is about five feet tall and as
wide,
and a couple of Japanese maples along with a holly that a brown thrasher
nests in yearly. Bird nests are impossible to spot in any of these
shrubs/trees unless you pull aside the foliage. We usually only realize
there are nests in these when we hear a male singing or notice activity in
and out of the plant as the parents gather food.

Birds also pick unusual spots. One was a pot of ivy on our front porch
which
a Carolina wren decided was the perfect nesting site. Yes, I watered the
ivy
from the bottom while the wren claimed it.

John

Yeah, our neighbor had a robin build a nest in a hanging basket last year.
You never know where they will choose! I didn't mention trees or shrubs
because there are a bunch right nearby in the neighbors' yard mostly aspens
but also an apple of some kind and a crab apple. There was even an elm that
I didn't know about until it got chopped by the city this summer due to
dutch elm disease. Our neighbor's lot is wooded--ours was pretty empty
except for 3 very tall spruces in front. We've got a totally different
ecosystem going on there, with a feeder, suet and heated bird bath this
winter. Birds seem to love the shelter of the spruces, it is kind of like a
mini evergreen forest. The back garden will be more like grassland/praire
since it will be a little more exposed but with trees nearby.

mm

"mmarteen" expounded:

I am a little scared of goldenrod. It may not cause hayfever but at least
the wild stuff that grows around here I am definitely allergic to. I will
check out the cultivars though.

:::sigh:::

No, Emilie, you really aren't. Goldenrod pollen is not wind
pollinated, it needs bees and other pollinators to move around, it's
too heavy. You are allergic to ragweed, that blooms at the same time
yet is very inconspicuous, and is right next to the goldenrod (they
frequently grow together). It's a shame goldenrod has such a bad
reputation, I've even heard allergists make the same mistake.

Here is a link that'll help you identify ragweed:
http://www.ppws.vt.edu/scott/weed_id/ambel.htm

--
Ann, Gardening in zone 6a
Just south of Boston, MA
********************************

"mmarteen" expounded:

I am a little scared of goldenrod. It may not cause hayfever but at least
the wild stuff that grows around here I am definitely allergic to. I will
check out the cultivars though.

:::sigh:::

No, Emilie, you really aren't. Goldenrod pollen is not wind
pollinated, it needs bees and other pollinators to move around, it's
too heavy. You are allergic to ragweed, that blooms at the same time
yet is very inconspicuous, and is right next to the goldenrod (they
frequently grow together). It's a shame goldenrod has such a bad
reputation, I've even heard allergists make the same mistake.

Here is a link that'll help you identify ragweed:
http://www.ppws.vt.edu/scott/weed_id/ambel.htm

--
Ann, Gardening in zone 6a
Just south of Boston, MA
********************************

"mmarteen" expounded:

I am a little scared of goldenrod. It may not cause hayfever but at least
the wild stuff that grows around here I am definitely allergic to. I will
check out the cultivars though.

:::sigh:::

No, Emilie, you really aren't. Goldenrod pollen is not wind
pollinated, it needs bees and other pollinators to move around, it's
too heavy. You are allergic to ragweed, that blooms at the same time
yet is very inconspicuous, and is right next to the goldenrod (they
frequently grow together). It's a shame goldenrod has such a bad
reputation, I've even heard allergists make the same mistake.

Here is a link that'll help you identify ragweed:
http://www.ppws.vt.edu/scott/weed_id/ambel.htm

--
Ann, Gardening in zone 6a
Just south of Boston, MA
********************************

In article ,
(MLEBLANCA) writes:

How do you feel about goldenrod (or how do your neighbors feel about it?)
It does not cause hay fever. There are some really beautiful cultivars
available now, and it is a great additon to the garden. Butterflies love
it and birds eat the seeds. I have 3 kinds, of various heights.

Emilie
Nor Cal



Hi Ann
Just to clarify things, the above is what I posted. I am sure
that GR is not what casues my allergy. Yes, it is ragweed.
TG we don't have it here in NorCal. I even demonstrate that
it's OK by sticking my nose right in the flowers!!
In fact, I have three kinds of GR in my prairie garden, and I
love it.

Emilie

In article ,
(MLEBLANCA) writes:

How do you feel about goldenrod (or how do your neighbors feel about it?)
It does not cause hay fever. There are some really beautiful cultivars
available now, and it is a great additon to the garden. Butterflies love
it and birds eat the seeds. I have 3 kinds, of various heights.

Emilie
Nor Cal



Hi Ann
Just to clarify things, the above is what I posted. I am sure
that GR is not what casues my allergy. Yes, it is ragweed.
TG we don't have it here in NorCal. I even demonstrate that
it's OK by sticking my nose right in the flowers!!
In fact, I have three kinds of GR in my prairie garden, and I
love it.

Emilie

(MLEBLANCA) expounded:

Hi Ann
Just to clarify things, the above is what I posted. I am sure
that GR is not what casues my allergy. Yes, it is ragweed.
TG we don't have it here in NorCal. I even demonstrate that
it's OK by sticking my nose right in the flowers!!
In fact, I have three kinds of GR in my prairie garden, and I
love it.

Ooops, posting before tea again G It was mmarteen I should have
responded to...I thought you'd know the difference, Emilie!

--
Ann, Gardening in zone 6a
Just south of Boston, MA
********************************