6 surefire ways to get birds visiting your garden

Photo by David Quimpo, courtesy of Haribon foundation

Having your own garden and maintaining it is truly one of today’s best luxuries and simple pleasures. Being around nature not only relieves stress, it also helps keep you healthy forcing you to move around and generating cleaner air.

But did you know there’s another reason to finally build that urban garden of yours? Birds. Uh huh, these winged animals loves green spaces, they’d totally drop by for a visit. Which in turn should make your garden more relaxing, and better in general.

This weekend, Haribon Foundation is launching Birds in the City, an urban bird watch campaign that aims to raise awareness on urban birds. Haribon encourages everyone to go birdwatching between 6-9am and 4-6pm on Saturday and Sunday, and noting down perched birds wherever you may be.

In line with this, the environmental organization shared ways on how to attract them birds to your garden.

1. Plant fruit-bearing trees and flowering shrubs. These fruits won’t only feed you, they’ll feed the birds too! And they won’t just provide shade for you, they’ll also provide protection and places for rest for them birds!

To ensure familiarity, opt for Philippine native trees like Bignay, Kamagong, and Banaba. Choose flowering plants like orchids.

As much as we all want to feed these birds directly, it’s best not to. Human food supplies may increase their dependence on your garden, and expose them to cats.

2. Leave leaf litter to rot. Woohoo, one less chore to do! Leaving leaf litter is like setting up a free buffet for the birds. Leaf little is where worms, slugs, snails, and ants like to hang out, which are delectable food items for the birds. It all works out!

3. Place a dead wood in your garden. Just like leaf litter, dead wood is favorite hiding place of insects, which is a favorite thing for birds to eat. Place a rotting log against a side of a tree, so it can also provide shade.

4. Let the light in. Sunlight that is. Sunlight highlights the variety of plants in your garden making it more inviting to birds. All the more they’ll want to drop by.

5. Provide water supply. This is one of the easiest things you can do to attract birds. Recycle old laundry buckets or pots and fill it with water. Make sure it’s shallow enough for birds to bathe in comfort and put it in a corner where humans or cats or dogs won’t see it.   

6. Give your garden the rustic look. Set up old wooden boxes in your backyard and birds will think you’ve given them shelter. — LA, GMA News