Supporting Your Local Garden Birds
Garden birds needs 1) water, 2) shelter and 3) food.
Creating a pond, particularly one with a shallow area and/or rocks that animals can perch on, will benefits lots of garden birds. If you can't have a pond then providing a bird bath or just putting out a dish of water during dry spells, including when the ground is frozen, is the next best thing and it will make a big difference to the birds in your garden.
Shelter is vital for resting, to provide cover from predators (our local sparrowhawk) and for nesting. Trees, hedges, and shrubs are all useful and the more variety the better. The tits, robins, and finches in our garden spend a lot of time in our mature hawthorn tree, between feeding, whereas the dunnocks and wrens benefits most from shelter provided by low-level shrubs and ground-cover plants. Fallen twigs and leaves are also needed for nesting materials so are best left on the ground.
Garden birds typically eat seeds, worms, molluscs, larvae, fruit, nuts, and insects (see the table below). Stop any pesticide use in your garden to ensure there is sufficient food for garden birds. For the seed-eaters, we have plant varieties that provide food for garden birds. Providing seeds and fat balls in bird feeders is great but can't replace the invertebrates that many garden birds feed on. Leaving fallen leaves and other debris provides a habitat for many of these invertebrates. A rotting log pile is great for insects and so for birds.
