One year for my birthday, I asked for a wooden birdhouse to hang in the backyard. We lived in an older, heavily treed neighborhood with lots of bird activity, and I wanted to watch these little songbirds up close.
My husband mounted the birdhouse onto a big oak tree, and we waited expectantly. No one ever came.
It turns out that birds, like humans, are picky about where they live. You can’t just throw up a tiny A-frame and think they’ll come flying in. They crave ambience. They need to be dazzled.
Why We Wrote This
As our writer discovered in her fumbling foray into birding, sometimes a small failure can spark deep exploration and a richer satisfaction than any quick success might offer.
Although I volunteered at an animal shelter where small birds were frequently brought in, I knew nothing about them. Birds, I learned, appreciate dense shrubs and a water fountain, as well as something tasty to eat. They’re territorial and like to settle in.
Our backyard at the time – much like our house when we bought it – was a fixer-upper. We could see its potential right away, but just as a bird builds a nest twig by twig, it would need to be tackled bit by bit.
I made a list of things to be done: Clear brush and dead bushes. Tear down rotted pergola. Get sod. Mulch. Plant flowers. Buy a bird feeder. The list was endless, and I wanted it all done overnight.
Each weekend we’d make a dent and I’d get to cross something off. We hung a feeder with some cheap seed from the supermarket, and birds began to come. No one stayed long, but there was movement. We had visitors.
One day I checked out some children’s books on birds from the library (they’re shorter and easier to skim) and made notes on what food attracts which species (orioles like oranges). Climate change, I learned, is the biggest threat to birds, and creating a habitat – even in a very modest space, like my backyard – could be a small part of the solution.
Gradually, as my to-do list got shorter, our yard began to take shape. We splurged one spring and had a local landscaper design a curvy garden bed along the side and back fences. He sketched out what could go where and gave us price options.
“Would you like a butterfly garden?” he asked.
“Yes!” I replied enthusiastically, without fully knowing what that meant.
So, in a small side area, he planted colorful flowers and local species of plants known to attract everything from bees to butterflies to hummingbirds. It was small but mighty. As our yard got more colorful and things started to bloom, more winged visitors began to show up.
We stopped using pesticides, upgraded our birdseed, and made monthly trips to Wild Birds Unlimited, where the manager told us which species were passing through and what would lure them to our yard.
My husband and I became hooked on bird-watching. I left a pair of binoculars near the window, and he started looking up every new bird that visited. We were officially bird nerds.
Our cardinal and blue jay repertoire expanded to include chickadees, goldfinches, woodpeckers, wrens, herons, orioles, and doves. My once-sad backyard had become a little world unto itself. Or as one friend called it, “a tiny state park.”
I also discovered to my utter amazement that there were very specific, easy steps we could take to certify our backyard as a wildlife habitat with an official plaque from the National Wildlife Federation.
We’d already set up several feeding stations and a birdbath, so next we installed a nesting box and some milkweed plants for caterpillars. Our yard was suddenly abuzz with blooms, feathered friends, and birdcalls.
Soon after, I began to compost. Our highfliers weren’t the only ones to enjoy the pile. Possums, nature’s garbagemen, would stop by each night to see if there were any overly ripe bananas or fruit. Tree frogs showed up, and there was a cacophony of night herons in the trees behind our house at dusk that sounded like monkeys. It was a full-fledged circus back there, and I was delighted.
I set up my desk in front of a window so I wouldn’t miss any of the action. The original birdhouse is still in the tree, still vacant. It’s a reminder that while things may not always go according to plan, sometimes they go much better.
