Just about everyone wants to attract birds to their garden. I don't know what prompts our fascination with our feathered friends, but I do know it's easy to sit and watch them go about their business for long periods of time.
It's a sad fact that we're losing our songbirds. In the twenty odd years that I've lived on our land, the number and variety of birds has diminished. I used to count ten to twenty pairs of Cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis); I used to enjoy Catbirds (Dumetella carolinensis) and Rufous-sided Towhees (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) - but not any more. And those are just the ones I know by sight.
This is mostly due to loss of habitat. It's not just the destruction of forest in wintering areas, but the break-up of the continuous bands of cover that used to exist. Many species require large tracts of unbroken habitat to survive. Little islands of woodland, for instance, make it much easier for parasitic species, like Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater), to dominate.
Individually, we can't do a lot to stop mass distraction of habitat through construction and clear cutting, but we can make our gardens hospitable to many species, both to their benefit and our own.
Our shady gardens will attract different species than sunny gardens will. If you live in another part of the world or the US than I do, the birds that visit you will differ from those that visit me in my Mid-Atlantic USDA zone 7 garden. In addition to those who will come to bird feeders, I host various Warblers and Vireos well as the illusive Wood Thrushes (Hylocichla mustelina) whose hauntingly sweet refrain echoes in my woods in early morning and at dusk. I've never been able to spot this bird, but I listen each spring to make sure one has returned to sing accompaniment to my garden tasks through the summer.
If we have wooded areas, we're likely to see some of the woodpecker family. These birds need dead and dying trees both for nest building and food since they are built for walking the trunks in search of the insects that live in dead wood, so, if at all possible, leave a few dead trees around. If this isn't feasible, a nice rotting log will also attract them.. There are three woodpecker species that live in or near my garden: The Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens), Common Flicker
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