Attracting Birds to Your Backyard

With thoughtful planning you can encourage specific birds to your backyard. Do you have favorite types of birds? You can hang any birdfeeder in your backyard. Perhaps you like it because it is whimsical. Maybe the design follows a particular theme, be it color, shape or size.
But did you know that certain foods and seeds will attract specific birds? Be creative and see what you can attract with a variety of foods. Try popped popcorn (without salt or butter), hulled sunflower seeds, peanuts, soaked raisins, pieces of fruit (orioles like oranges), fruit seeds (melons, apples), grapes, or mealworms.

Bat Houses

Bats are in need of protection if they are to survive. They have proven themselves as valuable members of our ecosystem, and we must increase the awareness of people who have the ability to protect or to destroy these little creatures.
Bats are declining, world-wide, at an alarming rate, due to human misunderstanding. They have typically only one offspring per year, making their comeback slow and in need of our help.
Bats eat an amazing amount of mosquitos. Some experts estimated that one bat can eat between 600 to 1000 insects, mosquitoes included, within a period of one hour. An the guano is a great fertilizer for your garden.

Barn Swallow

Barn Swallows breed from Alaska across Canada, throughout the United States, and south through central Mexico. With the proliferation of human-provided nesting sites, the North American Barn Swallow population has increased in most places during the 20th century. Numbers are especially up in the central and eastern United States. Barn Swallows show strong fidelity to their natal site, most nesting within 20 miles of their birthplace and some much closer. Members of a pair typically stay together to raise a second brood and return in successive years to the same nest site. If you have the right habitat, barn swallows are easy to attract. A simple nesting perch may be placed under the eaves, inside a garage or barn, or on the side of a building.