California’s drought replaces regular water with bare creek beds and depleted reservoirs. For small birds, staying clean and hydrated can be a challenge. Here’s how to help them out. Designing a water feature for birds transforms a decorative garden feature into a survival aid. With food and water available in the same area, small birds saveContinue reading “Water the birds, too”
Category Archives: Birds
Six requirements for a successful hummingbird garden
Attracting hummingbirds to a garden requires a few simple design elements to create an area they can call home (when they’re not migrating). Their needs are simple enough: water, food and shelter. There’s nothing like having breakfast outdoors while hummingbirds buzz around the garden. In the summer, it will need to be an early breakfast,Continue reading “Six requirements for a successful hummingbird garden”
Got Birds? How to bring nature back into your outdoor environment
Imagine every yard with at least some habitat designed in: food plants for bees and butterflies, berries for birds, a variety of plants for foraging. Looking at the typical suburb in a satellite photo, you might notice the dominant plant type: lawn. It might be a great place to play from time to time, butContinue reading “Got Birds? How to bring nature back into your outdoor environment”
The Joys of Fennel
Fennel plants are a great way to attract insects and birds to your garden.
Photographing hummingbirds in action
How to photograph hummingbirds in your garden
A (mostly) native garden by a stream
A mostly native garden thrives along a suburban streambank.
Got birds?
Many species of birds enjoy the wildlife garden in winter, moving through the garden’s different habitats in their daily routine.
It’s bird-eat-bird out there
Funny how we tend to think that providing food and habitat in the garden will create some kind of harmonious place where everyone gets along, a kind of Bambi scenario where all the animals are friends. This wasn’t true with the insects, and it’s not the case with the birds, either. I found a brokenContinue reading “It’s bird-eat-bird out there”
It’s nesting season
If you look closely, you’ll find two mourning doves. One is sitting on their nest, a loose gathering of twigs that doesn’t look like it could support even a tiny egg, let alone a bird or sometimes two. Every year, a pair of mourning doves arrives at the river birch to start a family. OverContinue reading “It’s nesting season”
How hummingbirds start their day
Photos of hummingbirds bathing early in the morning