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Wild Animals & Birds
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The Monday Garden
December 28, 2003, issue no. 92
Bird Food
by Sue Sweeney
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What do your birds have to eat on this winter day? Once we said that the
wildlife should fend for itself. |
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This was once a meadow, now it's a garden. So, now, when so much of our
wildlife's habitat has been converted for human use, and, comparatively, we have
such wealth at our fingertips at the supermarket, consider the needs of the wild
ones.
You can help by putting out food for the birds and small furry guys. Decorate
outside with raisins, cranberries, apples, bread, orange slices, peanut butter
on bagels, seeds and the like can go in a feeder or decorate your shrubs.
Longer-term help is to grow things that feed our friends year-round: bushes and
small trees that hold their fruit into the winter; grasses and flowering plants
with useful seeds. Nothing looks sadder to me than an empty winter garden.
However, providing for the small ones also fills the garden with winter interest
for you.
Remember that its important to feed consistently so that tiny birds don't use up
all the energy for the day searching in vain for food that was there yesterday
but not today. You can do this by putting out enough food so you only have to
re-supply weekly and by leaving a variety of seeds, nuts and berries in the
garden for the birds.
Remember also, that whatever seeds the birds and squirrels eat, they spread. So,
limit your choices to native (to the area) plants and non-invasives.
An interesting idea for ground cover with winter berries: Ken Druse, one of my
favorite horticulturists, and a fellow ex-Brooklynite, recently wrote in the New
York Times about re-establishing our once native cranberries. We think of
cranberries as sunny bog plants but apparently they'll tolerate a much wider
range of conditions, including fairly dry soil and part shade. |
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