Bob from Tyrant Farms models a BirdsBeSafe Cat Collar Cover. See Tyrant Farm’s excellent article on reducing bird predation by cats, enriched by their personal perspective.
There are plenty of big problems facing the natural world around the globe. Deforestation and habitat loss, mass species extinctions, climate change. Mentally getting to grips with the magnitude of any of them is difficult for any individual to do, though ultimately necessary if you’re going to live with reality. Then there are local threats to birds and nature, many of which are more comprehensible on our individual scale of understanding. While we shouldn’t let small scale problems blind us to or distract us from engaging with large scale catastrophes, we also shouldn’t take the opposite course of ignoring the obvious and avoidable problems right in front of us, especially not when there are easily implemented solutions.
And there are! That’s the good side of this equation: a human being can look at the below issues that reduce bird abundance around their own home, take action, and see results. Having more birds around your home is not a mere statistical proxy or abstract measure of environmental health. It’s a worthwhile object in itself and an enrichment of your life. As Thoreau put it, quoting the Sanskrit Harivamsa:
An abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning.
Or as civilized people the world over have echoed throughout the course of human civilization, really – you don’t need to go to Hindu cosmology for this basic good sense.
‘If it was summer-time,’ said Mr. Meagles, ‘which I wish it was on your account, and in order that you might see the place at its best, you would hardly be able to hear yourself speak for birds. Being practical people, we never allow anybody to scare the birds; and the birds, being practical people too, come about us in myriads.’
– Dickens, Little Dorrit
If you’re reading this website, you probably like birds. If you like birds, you’d probably like to have more birds around your home. This is how to do it.
House finch fledgling – Photo by Jerry McFarland
This is a fairly long article, so here’s how things are going to go. First, I’ll tell you how to minimize some of the most common bad things we do that directly reduce bird populations, namely:
Then I’ll discuss the common things people do to attract or encourage birds, including how to make sure that these are helping them, and not merely concentrating them in one place while being subtly detrimental in other ways.
Building collisions probably kill over half a billion birds each year in the United States (with a significant range of uncertainty; see study here). Some of these collisions take place in cities with skyscrapers, huge expanses of glass, and lots of bewildering nighttime lighting. There is now increasing awareness of the unnecessary toll these buildings take on birds and forward thinking cities like San Francisco have now integrated bird safe window requirements into their building codes. Basically, at the time of construction, there is small to no additional cost to use glass that has discrete, ultraviolet patterns that don’t affect human views, while greatly increasing visibility of the surfaces to birds.
Meanwhile, if you live in a typical single family home, you can take personal responsibility and more or less eliminate bird collisions with your windows. The basic immediate fix is to stick things on the window. The traditional black vinyl static cling decals work fine, as long as you have enough of them. Note that it isn’t the shape that matters: a black hawk silhouette will not scare all the birds away; you are just trying to point out the existence of a window surface.
There are some modern variations on the decal idea that are rather less obtrusive if you don’t want a bunch of big black shapes on your window. Ultraviolet decals are almost clear to humans and are visible to birds. The downside is the UV coating does wear out over a year or so, depending on sun exposure. They are made by WindowAlert.
WindowAlert UV decals are actually even less visible than this suggests.
The American Bird Conservancy has also made their own version, called BirdTape, which uses a translucent (though not transparent) blue material. This is perhaps less distracting than the black decals, but they will still block your view. The advantage here is that this product comes in long rolls of tape, or in pre-cut 3×3” squares, so it is very affordable if you have a troublesome window that needs a lot of coverage and where you want to put a grid or pattern. You can get BirdTape from our Novato store, or on the ABC website, where they also have a helpful listing of other options for making your windows bird safe.
Finally, note that really anything you stick on the window will break up the dangerous reflection: decorative stained glass pieces (though note that they will be most effective for the birds if placed on the outside) or window-mounted bird feeders included.
Advanced, permanent, comprehensive techniques include using bird safe glass when replacing windows or installing a wire grid outside of your window. If you are considering energy efficiency upgrades to your old, drafty, single-pane windows, for instance, you could replace them with bird safe glass with permanent, embedded UV patterns. If you aren’t changing your windows, but have a stubborn collision problem that decals aren’t fixing, you can go with a wire grid like the Bird Crash Preventer, a local product from Santa Rosa National. These will eliminate window strikes and don’t actually block your view, since the wires are so thin. Another comprehensive solution is CollidEscape window film, which can be custom printed with their patterns or your own image on the outside, but which are perforated for outward visibility. We’ve had good experiences or reports of these two vendors, but for more options see the ABC solution list.
Cats
At any point in the estimate, that’s a lot of dead birds. Full study here.
Statistically, feral cats and pet cats with outdoor access kill a shocking number of birds. Studies put the figure at one to four billion birds per year in the US, more than any other direct human source. You might think that animals fed by people would have less impact than the wild predators that need to eat the birds to survive, but actually cats have a singularly disproportionate impact for a few reasons.
Many cat owners can tell you one: cats will often kill birds beyond their need to satisfy their appetite, irregardless of how much food they are already receiving from humans. Most wild animals don’t have the leisure, energy, or expectation of reward to lead them to engage in lots of superfluous hunting. The other big impact of subsidized cat populations is that they allow a much greater density of predators. It’s not uncommon to have several neighborhood cats regularly passing through your yard. But how many wild bobcats do you see? While availability of food and other habitat requirements limit how many natural predators can fill an area, human residential areas can host much larger cat populations than what could be sustained in the absence of human support.
So, the fact is that cats kill a lot of birds. Our immediate question: what can you do about a cat catching birds in your yard? This topic can often rile up a certain segment of cat-loving people (and a large segment of bird-loving people), but a practical look at the problem shows a spectrum of solutions. Implement the ones that are feasible in your situation.
If it is your cat or the cat of a known person who is friendly and amenable to reason, there are various forms of cat control.
Most comprehensive, obviously, is to turn it into an indoor cat. This is possible, though there is often a resistant transition period for cats used to being outdoors. My favorite cat control/bird protection campaign is the Cats Safe at Home Campaign, with an actual collaboration between the Portland Audubon Society and local cat advocates, groups which are often at loggerheads over this issue. Along with providing practical tips for transitioning a current outdoor cat to indoor life, they also allow for the compromise of “make your next cat an indoor cat.” Which is sensible, reasonable, and pretty much the opposite of typical political discourse.
Then there are partial restrictions on outdoor access. This could be by time, such as reducing outdoor access during the nesting season when there are lots of vulnerable baby birds out and about. Or it could be by space, by giving your cat access only to a restricted part of the yard, such as a large “catio” in which no birds can enter, or through special cat fencing which at least restricts the hunting area (search “cat fence” for myriad options).
BirdsBeSafe Cat Collar Cover. In addition to saving lives, they also make the world feel like a big game of cards or a Renaissance Faire.If the cat is going to be outside without restriction, the most effective way to reduce their bird predation is with a BirdsBeSafe cat collar or a CatBib. Bells are ineffective, but either of these two products make a big difference. Birds see these big colorful things moving towards them and get out of the way. The bib also physically interferes with the cat’s pouncing success, though because the restricted movement is more annoying, they are more often rejected by cats. The collars, while sufficiently big and colorful to provide a visual alert, can usually be successfully introduced to even a formerly non-collar-wearing cat. Some of the pickiest cats may be initially unhappy with this new apparel, but almost all adapt after a few days. Note that cats wearing a BirdsBeSafe collar can still hunt less visually acute prey such as rodents and reptiles.
If the cat is feral, you can contact Marin Humane Society about possible action. Their general stance regarding ferals is to advocate Trap-Neuter-Release, the effectiveness of which is debated by some bird advocates, but most would agree that a colony of neutered cats is less harmful to birds than a rapidly breeding colony of ferals. In certain cases, kittens or cats with some degree of human socialization can be captured and adopted.
If the cat belongs to a neighbor who will not do anything:
You could discourage them actively (chase them, spray them with water), but this will often only be temporary and inconsistent, will just push them into other undefended yards, and will get you angry and excited.
You could discourage them less actively: motion sensor devices that either spray water or emit sudden blasts of high frequency noise, odor-based repellents, anti-cat fencing toppers, or spiky mats if they have particular favored resting areas. See a list of some specific products here.
You can place your feeders in as safe a location as possible. If you notice cats sneaking up on a certain location via adjacent plant cover, move your feeders more into the open. If cats are catching birds directly on your feeders, raise them out of reach. If cats are catching birds under your feeders, reduce ground spilling by using trays on seed feeders and no mess foods like peanuts, suet, small cup treat feeders, and hummingbird nectar.
Pesticides and rodenticides
There are various kinds of poisons people use to kill unwanted animals. But these have consequences for birds. One of the saddest in its counterproductive futility is the use of rodent poisons that can cause secondary poisoning of hawks or owls that would otherwise consume far more rodents. If you want to kill rodents, you should be willing to kill them with traps and dispose of the bodies: don’t use poisons just for the “convenience” of not having to clean up after them. You probably wouldn’t throw your other toxic waste out in the middle of your yard (especially wrapped up to look like a delicious owl treat), so why do it with a poisoned rat?
Barn Owl – Heide Couch
Of course, both trapping and poison are really just treatments of the symptoms of a rodent problem. Any rodents you kill will be replaced by new ones, so if you don’t want to have to spend the remainder of life killing rodents in perpetuity, more long-lasting remedies will involve removing habitat and food sources. Remove ivy and dense ground covers, restrict access to fruit trees and vegetable garden when possible, store food for pets and wild birds securely, and make sure they can’t get into your house. Providing housing and food for a rodent population while trying to kill them one by one is ineffective. For ongoing control, you may also be able to attract barn owls to your property with a nest box: see Raptors are the Solution for more.
Insecticides can similarly cause secondary poisoning of insect-eating birds, with negative cumulative effects. And in the bigger picture, they also indiscriminately reduce insect populations, usually killing some bugs that weren’t causing you the slightest inconvenience. The fewer insects you have, the fewer insect-eating birds you will see in your yard. Nature is not bug-free, and that is an unrealistic standard for your yard. If you really need to control a specific pest on a specific plant, use the least toxic, most targeted, and lowest dose treatment that you can to minimize collateral damage.
Attract and Support: Good Things Done Well
Plants and Landscape Maintenance
Gardening for wildlife is a large topic in itself which goes well beyond the scope of this article. Although the typical garden is bounded in size in such a way that will limit its ability to actually replace lost natural habitat, there is still much that can be done to increase food availability, appropriate vegetation types for foraging, and nest sites via your choice of plants and how you maintain your yard. Compared to the more “artificial” methods described below for attracting birds, there are essentially no detractors of wildlife gardening: it is almost entirely benign and hard to screw up too badly. For more, check out books like The California Wildlife Habitat Garden, California Native Plants for the Garden, and The Landscaping Ideas of Jays.
Blue elderberry
If you’re not quite ready to launch into a full-scale replacement of your default lawn and neatly trimmed boring ornamentals with a diverse array of native plants resplendent with bird-attracting fruits and flowers, there are still some basic tips which you can begin to integrate:
Add a few plants with berries that attract birds or flowers that attracting hummingbirds (and usually some insect pollinators as well). This is the easiest and most rewarding entry step. Look in those books for recommendations, or visit a nursery and see what they have. My favorite is this blue elderberry I planted. That plant is incredible: I watered it occasionally for the first few months and then never again, it’s gone from 2 ft. tall to 20 ft. in three years, and it has attracted bluebirds, robins, mockingbirds, and a host of sparrows to its berries.
Do add some artful untidiness. It’s amazing the amount of spotted towhee and Bewick’s wren activity you can summon up through a simple brushpile or a few shrubs with low ground cover (not just an ivy-like ground cover, which appeals mostly to rats, but something with a little bit of verticality).
Tree trimming: don’t do it during nesting season (March-August) if you can at all avoid it. Even normal ornamentals can host bird nests, which are easily overlooked or ignored.
As described above, avoid unnecessary use of poisons and insect sprays.
Bird Houses
The next most obvious and uncontroversial way to support your local bird populations is through the use of bird houses, or nesting boxes. Even birdfeeding skeptics, who I’ll deal with in a moment, admit the virtues of bird houses without much resistance. What bird houses do is imitate natural or woodpecker-excavated tree cavities, the required type of nest site for a variety of cavity-nesting birds. Here in Marin, these fall into a few main categories:
Woodland birds well-adapted to suburbia
Oak Titmouse
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Bewick’s Wren
Woodland birds that favor more natural habitats
Woodpeckers
Nuthatches
Ash-throated flycatcher
Open country birds (near fields, wetlands, etc.)
Western Bluebirds
Violet-green Swallow
Tree Swallow
Tree swallows – Susie Kelly
In areas of human habitation, there is often a scarcity of old and especially dead trees, making nest sites the limiting factor to bird reproduction and population size, even when food and foraging habitat may be adequate. If you want to see an increased number of local birds, there are few more direct and immediately satisfying actions than to see a pair of local bluebirds produce two broods of four birds in your nest box, year after year.
Can nest boxes do harm? Rarely, since nest boxes that are adopted by birds are usually superior to natural cavities. But there are a few potential problems which are easily avoided:
Predator access: the use of the smallest possible entrance hole limits predator access and the addition of a “predator guard,” a small tunnel-like extension of the entrance hole, makes it harder for jays or crows to access eggs and chicks. If climbing mammals such as raccoons are a threat, you can foil them by mounting your house on a freestanding pole with a “baffle,” a metal disc that blocks mammal access.
Overheating: if boxes are in an exposed and sunny location, a few precautions should be taken to avoid turning it into an egg or chick-cooking furnace. Use a box with a natural or light-colored roof, ensure it has adequate ventilation along the upper part of the bird house walls, and has a wide overhang that shades the upper part of the box. Or place it somewhere with some shade. Orienting the box so that morning sun from the east shines into the entrance hole, while afternoon sun from the west does not, is also preferable, all else being equal, though often not required if you following the preceding tips.
Trapped chicks: in the case of swallows specifically, it is possible for tallish boxes with smooth interior surfaces to be difficult for chicks to exit from. If you are in swallow habitat, make sure to have a rough, unfinished surface beneath the entrance hole on the inside of the box, or add a piece of mesh or cut a “chick ladder” of grooves and divots.
Hummingbird at nesting material ball (available in store) – local photo by Linda NayesUnhealthy box condition: The one generally recommended act of nest box maintenance is to clean out the box once a year in fall after the nesting season is completed. Remove any old nest material that could harvest parasites and give them a nice clean, fresh start for next year. To do a thorough job, use a bucket of water and a solution of 10% bleach, or 50% vinegar, or a commercial enzyme cleaner to thoroughly disinfect the box.
On nest material: as a side note, some people like to provide nest material such as pet hair, yarn ends, or commercially-available balls of cottony nesting material. This is all good. But do avoid putting out dryer lint, which is not an appropriate nesting material, as the fibers are too small and turn to a wet, uninsulating mush when exposed to any water.
Nest boxes help birds pretty indubitably in a direct and observable fashion. Equally importantly, they give humans a direct connection with birds as few other things do, providing pleasure and motivation which can often shape your whole relationship with them. As I noted in my Aldo Leopold essay, when the great conservationist saw that the majority of farmsteads he observed had no nesting boxes, he didn’t understand why they wouldn’t. “Did the other 88 have so much pleasure that they needed no more?” This is also a valid reason to have a nest box.
Feeders are marginally more contentious, with some (generally imperfectly-informed) parties raising potential cautions. Overall, however, the balance of research shows them as being a slightly good thing for the birds and a very good thing for developing a bird-people connection, with the worries either erroneous, overblown, or avoidable.
First, are there benefits to the birds? Sometimes, though often small or situation-specific. It has been documented, as you would expect, that birds with regular access to feeders, are in a better than average state of well-being, with regular food availability contributing to various markers of good health. This can potential lead to more birds in a few situations. In the nesting season, abundant food availability might prompt a nesting pair to have a larger brood than they would if food was scarce. And in less abundant conditions, such as in a harsh winter (in generally harsher climates), it can reduce bird mortality due to food scarcity. Outside of these situations, feeders will rarely do much to directly boost bird populations.
Can feeders do birds any harm? Here are the questions and objections one hears, from utterly erroneous to worth preventing:
Will they prevent natural migration? No. While certain populations of generally migratory waterfowl such as Canada geese have taken up permanent residence in amenable parks, for instance, there is no documentation of songbird feeders preventing migration. Feeders may play some role in extending the northward range extension of some summering birds like orioles and hummingbirds, but this is a gradual and sustainable occurrence, not a sudden “forgetting” to migrate.
Most of our disease scares relate to winters of pine siskin irruptions. They happen. Photo by Nicole Beaulac.
Will they cause dependence or a loss of foraging instinct that will lead to disaster if the food source is taken away? No, studies have shown that birds that visit feeders continue to forage for wild foods as well. Most natural food sources are temporary and birds are adapted to that: they are always looking for their next food source and ensuring that they take in multiple food types. Feeder-food is supplemental, not a replacement.
Do feeders spread disease? There are some diseases that can spread among common social feeders birds, most notably conjunctivitis among house finches and salmonella among pine siskins (and to a lesser degree goldfinches). These diseases would exist without feeders and most of our knowledge of their spread and prevalence comes from observations at feeders, but it is possible that a crowded and uncleaned feeder could accelerate the spread of a particular salmonella outbreak, for example. The solution is to keep your feeders clean, offer non-siskin attracting foods during this time, or take those feeders down for a few weeks during the outbreak. Outside of these particular circumstances, this is usually not an issue. For more on feeders and disease, see here.
Hot pepper suet is one of the easiest no-mess, no-rodent foods. Visit the shop for advice.
Is this food good for them? As described above, feeders are supplemental to wild caught food. They do not need to provide the birds’ complete nutritional needs. Most typical wild bird foods, such as sunflower and other seeds, nuts, or suet cakes, are perfectly healthy parts of a bird diet. Processed human foods, including nuts or bread products with salt, should be avoided.
Am I encouraging “bad” animals? If you feed jays and crows specifically, it is possible that this could actually depress local songbird populations, since these species (who are very adaptable generalists that don’t need extra help) regularly prey on eggs and young birds. Careless and messy feeding could also attract unwanted rodents or other mammals. We’ve written extensively about how to avoid that problem.
As with nesting boxes, one of the prime beneficiaries of feeding birds is the human overseeing the project. Leopold weighed in here too: “a feeding station is the best of classrooms for learning ornithology,” he noted. Feeders provide valuable data for crowd-sourced projects like Project FeederWatch and The Great Backyard Bird Count. They increase an individual’s knowledge of local bird species and their distribution. And they often serve as a gateway to further action to support and better know the birds, often the most accessible examples of wild nature available to modern humans.
Closing notes: the importance of the backyard
For birders, one of the greatest benefits of paying attention to the birds in your own yard and neighborhood is that it refocuses you, replacing some fraction of the unnecessary, expensive, and ultimately harmful impulse to wanderlust. It encourages a sense of husbandry and responsibility rather than mere skimming over the birdlife of the world, country, or state as an invulnerable playground for your amusement. For environmentalists, a little attention to the backyard can likewise ground and center us in concrete action, rather than mere words and advocacy.
A man who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending his own ways is worth more to the conservation movement than a hundred who are insisting merely that the government and the industries mend their ways.
If you are concerned about the proliferation of trash, then by all means start an organization in your community to do something about it. But before – and while – you organize, pick up some cans and bottles yourself. That way, at least, you will assure yourself and others that you mean what you say. If you are concerned about air pollution, help push for government controls, but drive your car less, use less fuel in your home. If you are worried about the damming of wilderness rivers, join the Sierra Club, write to the government, but turn off the lights you’re not using, don’t install an air conditioner, don’t be a sucker for electrical gadgets, don’t waste water. In other words, if you are fearful of the destruction of the environment, then learn to quit being an environmental parasite.
– Wendell Berry, “Think Little”
“Learning to quit being an environmental parasite” in its full dimensions can seem like an impossible task, embedded as we all are within a larger industrialized society. But within the context of fostering your neighborhood birds, learning to avoid the direct sources of harm and implement the simplest supports is a relatively easy task: we’ve covered the most important examples of both in this article. In this field, you don’t need endless research; you don’t need to exhaust yourself in barking against the bad: here you can take action. Do these things today and you will have more birds in your yard next week. Do these things from now on, and you will have more birds in the rest of your life.
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One Reply to “Bird Conservation at the Backyard Level”
Excellent, Jack – thank you! Love the photo of the blue elderberry – gorgeous, gorgeous.