How to Attract More Birds to Your Yard

Birds are fascinating creatures. And according to recent research, feeding birds makes humans happier!

If you want to draw them to your yard, focus on providing their basic needs: food, water, shelter, and nesting areas.

1. Food: Simply adding a bird feeder or two and a birdbath will make your yard more attractive. But if you’d like to see more of a variety of birds, concentrate on what food you put in your feeder. The Audubon Society has a great reference chart and an article about the research that helped us understand Who Likes What.
2. Water: Keep birdbaths clean and full. In the winter, keep the water warm and unfrozen by adding a birdbath heater or investing in a heated birdbath.
3. Shelter: Birds need different types of plants and areas in a landscape to thrive. Yards with trees, large and small shrubs, groundcover, and open lawn give a wider variety of birds more opportunities to use the area for all their needs. Having diverse landscape plants also helps provide the foods birds eat, such as berries, fruits, nuts, insects, and small seeds.
4. Nesting areas: Adding a few birdhouses will benefit some species that like to nest in houses. Others will build their nests in trees or shrubs, under the overhang of a building, on the ground, and many other places. Here are some tips for spotting the nests of birds from Cornell University’s Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

More than 50 species of birds feed on nectar and contribute to the critical task of pollination. Our MSU Extension Publication 3839, “Creating a Pollinator Garden” will help you choose plants that attract these birds, as well as learn how to construct a diverse pollinator garden that attracts a wide variety of pollinators, including bees and butterflies.