A few weeks ago, I visited the home of my Master Gardener friend, Ginger. She has a bright, colorful yard with lots of plants and is a very knowledgeable backyard birder. There were several different types of bird feeders and multiple kinds of food offerings available as well as a birdbath. I lost track of how many species of birds I saw at her feeders in the span of just a couple hours. Well, as you might suspect, this visit prompted me to look into birding further and embrace a new gardening challenge.
Migration Mapping
Food, water, and shelter. Those are the basics that you need to supply no matter what type of wildlife or pollinator insect you are trying to attract. But, in the case of birds, you also need to know when the birds you want to welcome will be in your area, if they are seasonal migrators. Fortunately, there is an app for that! Ginger introduced me to a cool website called BirdCast. This online tool is powered by Cornell, Colorado State, and the University of Massachusetts. It predicts how many birds will fly over a city in a night during migration season. For instance, tonight (Monday, October 14, 2024) is predicted to be a high migration night for Jacksonville with over 37,000 birds per kilometer flying over. The site recommends that we turn out our porch lights from 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. so that the birds won’t become disoriented and potentially collide with buildings or other hazards. You can sign up for alerts so you know what nights to go lights out. There is a live migration map, kind of like looking at a weather radar map. I entered Duval County on the migration dashboard and found out that over 13 million crossed over us on the night of October 10! They also have a list of which birds are most likely to be departing and arriving in our area. We get a lot of traffic starting mid-October through April from birds such as Eastern phoebe, house wren, palm warbler, yellow-bellied sapsucker, Baltimore oriole, and more.
Set out the Buffet
Once you know when the bird you want to see might be in the area, the next step is to find out what they like to eat. Everyone knows that you need a nectar feeder for hummingbirds. But did you know that other birds can be just as specific? Eastern bluebirds eat fruit, berries, insects, lizards, small snakes, and tree frogs. They will never come to your seed feeder, but you can provide a dish of mealworms or slices of apples, oranges, peaches, or bananas. They may also visit a suet feeder, along with woodpeckers, cardinals, and jays. Ginger told me that she attracts painted buntings to her yard by putting out a tube feeder full of their favorite seed, white proso millet. Painted buntings are loved for their bright, colorful feathers and winter in Atlantic coastal counties from northern Brevard to the Georgia border. They eat grass and weed seeds, berries, fruits, and insects and nest in dense shrubs, vines, and low in the tree canopy, 3-9’ above ground. This is the bird I want to attract! My feeder is stocked with white proso millet mix and my bath is full!
Painted Bunting photo by Ginger Ayer
Mosquitoes, Cats, and Squirrels
Speaking of bird baths, the best ones have a shallow, rough basin with gently sloping sides. Site it near a tree for perching and clean it with a mild bleach solution every 10 days. To keep mosquitos at bay, add mosquito bits or dunks. It doesn’t hurt the birds or other animals or insects, but it keeps your birdbath from becoming a breeding haven. Cats and squirrels are also interested in your bird habitat as a food source. To mitigate the threat of neighborhood cats, place feeders and baths 10-15’ away from shrubs so there isn’t anywhere to hide and pounce. Place feeders 10-15’ from tree trunks and overhanging limbs to keep squirrels from jumping on them. Use baffles to keep them from climbing up the poles. I personally enjoy all the wildlife in yard, squirrels included. So, I just hang my feeder from a shepherd’s hook.
To learn more about creating habitats for wildlife as a part of your Florida-Friendly yard, go to Ask IFAS on the web and search for “Wildlife habitats.”
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