How to Make the Perfect Home for Birds in Your Garden

Are you trying to encourage birds into your garden? Well, the various birds that visit throughout the year are a pleasure to watch as the seasons change: from swallows arriving in the dead of winter to chiffchaffs visiting in the spring and summer, you’ll get to enjoy their beautiful birdsong and observe as they busy themselves with nest building and hunting. If that sounds like your idea of heaven, create the perfect home for birds in your garden with these top tips…

Welcome little creatures

Make your garden home to a variety of wildlife: chiefly, those small (but delicious) invertebrates that make up such a large portion of birds’ diet! Bugs and critters will make the most of bug hotels, piles of logs and unmoved stones, as each of these serve as a habitat for the kind of creatures that are eaten by wrens and bluebirds, for example.

Give birds a home

Birds will make their own nests in your garden if you don’t trim the greenery back too far, but you could also make them a bird box. Nest boxes can be positioned in the garden (just be sure to face it away from direct sunlight, and ensure that there’s a direct flight path for birds entering and exiting the nest box), or you could put them in the roof space too. House sparrows and starlings will appreciate the ready-made accommodation – particularly over the winter months when temperatures drop.  A note of  caution as you may need to get rid of starlings as they can be a particularly  invasive species who make nests in wall recesses and leave their trails of feces on the sides of buildings.  Their droppings can be very acidic and cause damage to your paintwork and property and the nests can cause gutter blockage and be a fire risk in wall recesses.

Include the right plants

Birds need a variety of flora to make homes in, hunt from and make shelter in, so make sure that your garden caters for their needs. Long grassy areas are valuable to birds due to the fact that they’ll hunt for the worms and bugs that reside in there, and thick, lush hedgerows will provide birds with a place to quickly duck out of harm’s way if they’re approached by a neighbourhood cat. Wild birds will also eat fruit and berries, so consider planting trees that offer fruit throughout winter (and as an added bonus, you’ll get to look at the beautiful blossom every spring).

Provide birds with nuts and seeds

You can also turn your garden into a haven for birds by installing a bird feeder. There are lots of different types on offer, including squirrel-proof designs from outlets such as Wild Bird Feeders (a good idea if you’ve a problem with pesky squirrels!). So, consider what species of bird you want to cater for, what animals you want to ward off, and how much you have to spend. Bird feeders will provide birds with a lifeline if they’re not having much luck hunting, or if neighbouring gardens have become too ‘over-pruned’ to accommodate the bugs the birds usually eat.

Make sure birds have water

Another thing to do is to include a bird bath in your garden. Not only do birds drink from them, but they’ll also use them to cool off in during hot months. They love playing in them too, as you’ll see if you watch how distracted they become when splashing about in the water! Do them a favour and make sure there are hedges or trees within easy reach of the bird bath: they might need to make a quick dash if a predator tries to take advantage of them while their guard is down.