Garden Centre

Friday, June 6, 2008

Garden Visitors

I was showing a visitor around the garden today and she paused at my fig tree which has a lovely crop of figs this year, and said ‘Don’t you have a problem with birds?’

I shook my head. I don’t have a problem with birds. I knew what she meant which was that surely birds got into my soft fruit like hot, sharp knives through butter, but that’s not a problem for me.

We used to feed birds, religiously buying fat balls and winter seed and so on, and the more we got into it, the more complicated it became – was the bird food ethically produced? Were we creating dependency in feeding the birds? Did our food cover all the various kinds of bird and their needs? Then a bird-watching friend pointed something out to me – birds do not eat commercially produced bird food in their natural environment (apart from anything else, they can’t open the packets with their beaks). It was a revelation. Instead of buying bird food, we began to garden to provide naturally occurring bird food.

So we planted lots of native species, particularly berrying plants and those which set winter seedheads. We stopped dead-heading roses so that the rosehips could provide winter food and we focused on ensuring that our pond was an insect haven so that swifts and martins could take insects on the wing over it.

We do cage some of our soft fruit, but some we leave for the birds to strip. We don’t have a problem with the figs because there is always enough other natural food around for the birds to enjoy. And given the choice I’d rather have less figs and more robins, bluetits, starlings, sparrows, house-martins and thrushes, any day.

Bluetit courtesy of foxypar4

Labels: garden birds, garden wildlife

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:29 AM

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