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Get Birds to Move into Your Yard And Eat Bugs
More than the obvious reasons for attracting birds to your yard is birds are great for pest control. Make your garden and yard welcoming to our feathered friends.
Backyard birds eat a combination of seeds, berries and insects. In the spring time, birds are working to fill mouths of their hatchlings, and a baby bird’s favorite meal…freshly caught bugs.
Since pests that live in your garden are at their peak in late spring and early summer, bird eating bugs are great for gardeners. Instead of us dealing with all of the common garden pests, birds can save us lots of time by combing our gardens. Birds will search for cabbage worms, whiteflies, aphids, earwigs, grasshoppers, cucumber beetles and grubs.
Here are a few tips on how to make your yard bird-friendly during the spring and summer months.
Taking Cover: If you are planning the design of your landscape and you would like to attract more birds, it’s important to provide areas where birds can take cover from the weather. Birds will need to find a home in the spring and early summer so plant some small trees and shrubs that are appealing to birds for their nesting site. Nesting birds will have hungry baby birds to feed and that means more mother birds combing your yard for food.
Provide Water: All birds are attracted to water for drinking and bathing. Since birds like moving water and if you already have a birdbath, you could add a bubbler to it to attract more birds. If you don’t have a birdbath, adding an outdoor fountain to your landscape would help attract more birds. You would be providing the moving water that attracts birds, while adding an appealing feature to your garden.
Offer Food: People who feed birds, sometimes put their bird feeders away once warm weather arrives. Birds that spend most of their time eating insects enjoy to change it up once and a while. Offering a bird feeder can provide an occasional snack for your feathered friends. Keep one feeder filled with a nice quality seed blend that will appeal to chickadees, cardinals and sparrows.
Here is a list of birds and some if the insects they eat:
- Bluebirds: grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, larvae, moths
- Cardinals: beetles, grasshoppers, leafhoppers, stinkbugs, snails
- Chickadees: aphids, whitefly, scale, caterpillars, ants, earwigs
- Grosbeaks: larvae, caterpillars, beetles
- Nuthatches: tree and shrub insects such as borers, caterpillars, ants and earwigs
- Oriole: caterpillars, larvae, beetles, grasshoppers
- Sparrows: beetles, caterpillars, cutworms
- Swallows: moths, beetles, grasshoppers
- Titmice: aphids, leafhoppers, caterpillars, beetles
- Warblers: caterpillars, aphids, whitefly
- Woodpeckers: larvae, beetles, weevils, borers