Be Green: Ten Things You Can Do For Birds
An exclusive excerpt from The Young Birder's Guide
1. Create bird-friendly habitat.
There are countless ways to create habitat for birds in your backyard. Perhaps the easiest is to let things go wild in one part of your property. Chances are the plants that grow in your wild area will be natural sources of food for the birds. A more focused approach involves providing birds with the four things they need: food, water, shelter, and a place to nest.
2. No chemicals!
It's widely known that seemingly safe lawn and garden insecticides and herbicides can be harmful to birds. Many of these chemicals target the pests that are food sources for birds, so any birds eating treated insects or seeds are also ingesting toxic chemicals. Avoid or at least minimize the use of toxic lawn and garden chemicals.
3. Recycle your trash.
Each plastic, glass, aluminum, or tin item you recycle is one less piece of trash cluttering up the planet and one less ugly and hazardous item that we (and the birds) have to deal with in the environment. Recycling also saves money, eases pressure on habitat, and reduces pollution by the production of first-generation materials such as glass, tin, plastic, and aluminum.
4. Keep your feeders and nest boxes clean.
A once-a-month scrub cleaning of bird feeders will go a long way toward reducing disease transmission. Use a solution of one part bleach to nine parts hot water. Keeping your nest boxes is equally important. Clean out old nesting material several weeks after the nesting season is over. If the inside if really fouled with droppings, clean it out with the same bleach solution described above. Replace the old nesting material with a fresh handful of dried grasses to give the birds some insulation if they use the box for fall and winter roosting.
But how do you know when the nesting season is over? Read on...
5. Monitor your nest boxes.
Cavity-nesting birds face almost constant competition from non-native species that want to use these same cavities (hollow trees, old woodpecker holes, and the nest boxes) for nesting. By checking your nest boxes regularly, you can discourage these introduced species and keep your nest boxes available for native species that need a place to nest or roost. Chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, woodpeckers, tree swallows, purple martins, wrens, and bluebirds are among the species that commonly use backyard nest boxes.
6. Participate in bird counts.
There are dozens of local, national, and even international bird counts in which bird watchers can play a part. The National Audubon Society's annual Christmas Bird Count is one of the longest-running counts. The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology conducts Project Feeder Watch and the Great Backyard Bird Count as well as several other specific annual counts.
7. Reduce window kills.
Mylar strips, crop netting, branches, screens, and hawk silhouettes have been suggested as foils to keep birds from flying headlong into your windows. Placing these items outside, in front of the problem panes, breaks up the windows' reflections of the surrounding habitat so that the windows do not fool birds into flying into them.
8. Keep cats indoors.
Even the most slothful, couch-potato cats can catch birds if given a chance. It's been estimated that housecats kill many millions of birds each year—deaths that could be avoided if these pets were kept indoors. For more information, write to Cats Indoors! Campaign, American Bird Conservancy, 1250 24th Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20037; or go to www.abcbirds.org/cats.
9. Support conservation initiatives.
Every day there are a thousand battles we bird watchers can fight on behalf of birds. The key is picking your spots so that you can make the most effective impact. Not all conservation initiatives are created equal, so be sure you're fully informed about the issues. In most cases, if bird habitat is preserved or created, it's a good thing. After you've created healthy habitat for birds in your own backyard, you may wish to contact the American Bird Conservancy or The Nature Conservancy to see how else you can help.
10. Make a new bird watcher today.
Why not take a friend along on your next bird-watching trip, to the next bird-club meeting, or on a tour of your bird-friendly backyard? The more bird watchers we have today, the more good we can do for the birds tomorrow.
