Attracting birds to your garden

Birds bring color and personality to every season in our back yards, and it turns out attracting them is not difficult.

Birdseed - even the good stuff - is cheaper than a trip to a tropical island. And as Jennifer Brennan says, having eight cardinals to enjoy with your winter coffee makes living here worthwhile.

Here are tips from Brennan, horticulturalist at The Chalet in Wilmette, Ron Zick, owner of Wild Birds Unlimited shops in Arlington Heights and Glenview, and Tim Joyce, who manages the Glenview store when he's not feeding birds at his Mount Prospect home.

The cast

If you see only robins, sparrows and pigeons in your back yard, here are some you're missing. You could watch cardinals, blue jays, nuthatches, goldfinches, brown thrashers, Eastern towhees, warblers, waxwings, tanagers, juncos, rose-breasted grosbeaks, catbirds, downy and redheaded woodpeckers and red-tailed, sharp-shinned and cooper's hawks.

Getting started

Put out feed that all birds like in a feeder they can all use. This will attract a lot of birds, including the maligned sparrows. Once the buzz has started and the crowd knows the way to your feeders, you can get more selective and specialized to attract the pretty birds.

The basics

Birds need what you need: food, water, a safe place to rest and spots to raise their young.

The menu

At Wild Birds, they say birds like seeds with high oil content such as sunflower, safflower, white millet, cracked corn and peanuts. Goldfinches eat Niger thistle seeds, and hummingbirds drink sugar water. Buy only enough for a few months; birds don't like stale seeds.

Feeders

Trays work for peanuts in and out of the shells and sunflowers. Tube feeders can hold different types of food, and some are adjustable so only lightweight birds can use them. Thistle seed for finches is dispensed through a mesh tube. Hopper feeders have the all-important roof to keep the feed dry and dispense on demand. Joyce has a feeder with what looks like a crack in a tree that holds butter and corn for woodpeckers. Different birds prefer eating at different heights, and in the winter, he scatters seed on the ground near the shelter of the hedge for the ground feeders.

No points for neatness

Birds are not impressed with manicured lawns. They want seeds (even weeds) and insects to eat, and thorny bushes and brush piles to hide in. If this makes you cringe, Brennan suggests being selective: Cut down the black-eyed Susan because it reseeds so prolifically, but leave up plants that look good in the winter such as coneflowers and Joe-Pye weed. Birds even like to perch on the flat tops of your sedum flowers. And, of course, for insect eaters, pesticides are a no-no.

Plants

Think variety. You want flowers like coneflowers that provide seeds and shrubs of different heights in your hedge, and you know that native plants are easier to maintain. Consider shrub roses, blackhaw viburnum, dogwood, serviceberry, chokecherry, elderberry and beautyberry. Vines include wild grape and Boston ivy, and evergreens are good for winter shelter. Trees that humans might find unattractive like those that weep sap and drop crabapples attract insects, a smorgasbord for birds.

Squirrels

Put your feeders where squirrels can't jump to them from trees or your house. You need a baffle around the pole, 5 feet off the ground, and a simple tube of metal can work. Of course, there are feeders that promise to be squirrel-proof. If you hang your feeder on a tree branch, it needs a baffle and must be away from the trunk. Don't worry about the poor squirrels. They can pick up anything dropped on the ground.

Other pests

If you're nervous about rodents' feeling at home in your yard, Brennan recommends waiting until after three nights in a row of 20-degree weather before mulching your plants or setting up a brush pile. By then the mice, chipmunks and voles will have found somewhere else to huddle. she mulches just after Thanksgiving. Cats are dangerous hunters of birds, which are most vulnerable when they are on the ground.

Rest stops

Many of the birds we love to see, from hummingbirds to goldfinches, are flying through on their way north in the spring and south in the fall. They like the same things as the permanent residents and will see the activity and stop in.

House keeping

Most feeders need cleaning at least three or four times a year. For your own sake, clean everything before winter. The hummingbird feeder should be cleaned every few days, and some people recommend washing feeders as often as once a month with a bleach rinse. Rake or sweep under the feeders. One of the mixes Joyce uses is called a no-mess blend because everything is hulled so there are no shells to drop on the ground.

Myths

Yes, you can go on vacation, says Zick. It would be nice if a neighbor feeds your birds, but they only get 15 to 20 percent of their calories from people and forage the rest. Don't worry, hummingbirds will migrate even if you feed them. Some come from very far north, so you can feed them almost till the first freeze.