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| Birds provide eco-friendly insect control (Spring 2005) |
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Do bugs bug your roses? Do caterpillars enjoy your cabbage before you do? Do mosquitoes make it impossible to enjoy warm summer nights? Maybe it’s time to enlist Mother Nature’s insect-control army to improve your quality of life. Bring on the birds!
A single bird can eat 1,000 insects in an afternoon, providing it with critical amounts of fat, protein, and potassium needed to maintain its high metabolism level. Compared
to insecticides, birds provide an efficient job of insect control—with no negative impact on
the environment.
Sign ‘em up
To enlist the birds, you need to learn the species of insect eaters that reside in your part of the country and then effectively attract them to your property.
“Insect-eating birds help control pests at every stage of life,” says Judy Barrett, an expert on organic gardening from Taylor, Texas. “They eat insect eggs, larvae, and adults. Birds such as barn swallows and purple martins can eat pounds of mosquitoes and other flying insects in a day. Robins, mockingbirds, chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, and titmice are all vociferous insect eaters. Bluebirds’ favorite summer foods include grasshoppers, crickets, ground beetles, spiders, and caterpillars.”
Other insect eaters include meadowlarks, red-eyed vireos, yellow warblers, Baltimore orioles, wrens, and eastern phoebes.
Even birds you might not think of as insect eaters feed insects to their young to provide the protein they need to grow in their early days of life.
By providing the birds’ basic needs—food, water, shelter, and a place to raise their young —you will be treated to an unending source of entertainment and beauty while keeping your insect population under control.
Cultivating plants that produce seeds, fruits, and berries will provide food. Allowing flowers such as sunflowers, goldenrod, thistles, coneflowers, and daisies to go to seed will attract finches, juncos, and sparrows and other seed-feeding birds, which feed their young insects. Stocking feeders with seed that is popular with the birds you are trying to attract can enhance your natural feeding efforts. Sunflower seeds, cracked corn, and nyjer thistle are favorites.
Birds have preferences of where and what they eat. Some like to feed on the ground, while others prefer to eat at raised feeders. By providing several different types of feeders, each filled with the types of feed birds are attracted to and locating them where those birds prefer to feed, will assure frequent and regular visits.
Feed beef fat
Beef suet attracts a number of desirable insect eaters. “This is beef kidney fat,” says noted horticulturist Tom Clothier. “This can only be obtained from an independent butcher, as supermarkets no longer process whole cattle in most areas. It can be used as is, or it can be rendered in the microwave and then mixed with corn meal, rolled oats, peanut butter, and sunflower seeds. Birds feeding on suet during the winter and bringing their offspring to the feeders in summer are mostly insect and caterpillar eaters.” These include downy, red-bellied, hairy, and redheaded woodpeckers; white- and red-breasted nuthatches; sapsuckers; and blue jays.
Suet, in cake form, is available at stores that sell birdseed. Wire, cage-type feeders in which it can be served are also available.
“Birds attracted to high-oil-content seeds include house finches, chickadees, and
cardinals. They prefer insects, but need the oil in these seeds during the cold weather when insects are not plentiful,” continues Clothier. “Keep the insect-eating birds on your property all winter, and they will stay all summer.”
Clothier suggests that many people feed the birds during the winter purely for humanitarian sympathy, and for the color and life they bring to the winter scene. “I provide food and shelter during the winters for only one reason:insect control. Over-wintering birds manage on seed proteins and seed oils, but continuously search out insect eggs and pupae as it is their habit to forage when they are not resting or socializing. Many of these birds will remain close to your property all year long.”
Water is a habitat necessity for birds, not only for drinking, but also for bathing. A natural water source such as a pond or creek is ideal, but a birdbath works well, too. Containers with water should be three feet off the ground and about three inches deep. The birds’ need for water doesn’t diminish in the winter, so it’s important to keep the water source thawed. Birdbath heaters are available to accomplish this.
Improve the habitat
Birdbaths should be in sunny locations. If the location you choose is not successfully attracting birds, try changing its height and location until you find a combination that works. Our feathered friends prefer clean, fresh water, so change it frequently and scrub the bottom with a stiff brush every few days.
Planting a variety of trees, evergreens, and dense shrubs provide needed shelter. Consider plants and foliage that produce berries, seeds, fruits, nuts, sap, and nectar for year-round food, as well as provide shelter and nesting spots.
Providing a place to raise their young is also important to attracting insect-eating birds to your property. Some birds build their nests in shrubs and trees of different heights; others prefer higher tree limbs, cavities in dead trees, or chimneys.
Other insect eaters can be enticed by providing nesting boxes or birdhouses. Wrens and bluebirds, for example, use houses built to specifications to which each of these species is attracted. Purple martins colonize and prefer birdhouses with multiple “apartments” mounted 15 feet or higher. Nesting platforms located under eaves attract barn swallows.
Supplementing nature’s supply of nesting materials will keep the bird population close to home. Pet hair, small sewing scraps, dryer lint, small pieces of string, and small twigs, in visible locations in your yard, will quickly disappear when birds are nesting. Mud, moss, and
grass clippings are also attractive.
Using birds to control your insect population and using pesticides to do the same are not compatible philosophies. Using pesticides kills not only the pests that birds feed upon, but also other “good” insects in your garden. Beneficial insects include honeybees, wasps, ladybugs, earwig, beetles, praying mantis, green lacewing, and butterflies.
Your relationship with birds is one of mutual benefit. You provide for some of the birds’ basic needs, and they help keep down the insect population and treat you to an unending source of entertainment and pleasure. It’s a win-win situation if ever there was one.
To learn more about attracting insect-eating birds to your backyard, go to the National Wildlife Federation’s Web site, www.nwf.org. You will find information on creating a habitat, established habitats in your area that you can visit, a list of resources to help in establishing a habitat, and much more.
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