Just as the brilliant autumn colors had merged into the subtle golds of grasses and parchment white of hostas, portents of winter arrived this past week: gray skies and white snow.
Planning your landscape to include colorful plants and sculptural elements can dispel the gloom. You can keep it lively by selecting plants that attract birds, create interesting shadows, and by adding shelter and feeders, woo colorful birds.
Winterizing the garden for wildlife can bring many hours of enjoyment as one watches the antics of the chickadees and nuthatches, the bright colors of blue jays, pine grosbeaks and cardinals and the indefatigable behavior of the woodpeckers. What is amusing and beautiful to us is serious business to the birds.
During the long freeze there aren’t insects or fresh fruit to eat and seeds may be in short supply. Winter nights are long; weather can be brutally cold with driving snow, sleet and storms that last many hours or days. Birds need high energy food to help them stay warm and to keep them alert and active when predators are about. Birds also need a reliable water source, not only for drinking, but also for bathing to keep their feathers clean and healthy.
Birds also need shelter, places to hole up at night and when the wind howls and clouds hurl snow. Brushy shrubs can also be food sources. Winterberry has bright reddish berries that are often not attractive to birds until winter’s chill is making us very uncomfortable. These last resort foods make it an attractive shrub for us as well. A small variety is now available. Winterberry prefers a moist site but watering and soil preparation will make it a good choice. A non-fruiting species that shelters many birds in our yard is an overgrown globe arborvitae. Small birds dive into its dense foliage when predators approach and there is a constant group of sparrows scritching under the shrub seeking bugs during the non-snow season.
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Cotoneaster is another great choice: its abundant fruit tempts flocks of cedar waxwings before their travels south. In larger yards with the room to accommodate large shrubs, elderberry is a great fruit producer to attract waxwings, scarlet tanagers, gold and purple finches, catbirds and robins during their build-up for migration. Although it is not a winter shelter, it is an early bloomer that also brings in courting waxwings. Lilacs can also be a good shelter plant if your are diligent at pruning to create a dense shrub on which to perch en-route to your feeding stations.
Different feeders suit different species. Sunflower seed is the ubiquitous seed choice for most species but ground feeders such as sparrows like white millet spread on the ground. Tube feeders for small birds, heavy wire screen feeders (some are bear-proof!) with many spaces for birds to cling, and mesh bags or wire mesh feeders for thistle seed become a riot of activity. Fly-through platform feeders bring in the blue jays and cardinals; pine grosbeaks prefer ground-level platforms. Suet is a high protein food source that will sustain many birds but especially attract woodpeckers. A flowering crab with its brightly-colored apples will be a natural feeding station that will even attract grouse. To see one walk along a slender branch and then fall into a snowbank as it reaches for an apple is most amusing.
A pan of warm water or a heated birdbath will give birds a drink, one that doesn’t cool their internal core. Take care of the birds and they will extend garden pleasures for you into winter.
