One of the most heartbreaking things about birding is realizing just how many wild birds we’ve already lost. Over the past century, habitat loss and urbanization have decimated wild bird numbers, and have even caused some species to go extinct.
But habitat loss has also provided us with a precious opportunity. By turning our urban backyards into havens for wild birds, each of us can make an enormous contribution to protecting and even restoring species that have been declining.
Here, we’ll be learning more about how we can help wild birds recover, but not before facing some stark facts about the severity of the current situation.
One-Quarter of Birds Across North America Are Gone
An unprecedented scientific conservation study published in 2019 revealed that a shocking 2.9 billion birds have disappeared across the USA and Canada since 1970. Believe it or not, that’s more than one in four of all birds across the continent!
What on earth could have caused this catastrophic decline? While the wildlife dead zones created by modern agriculture are the number one cause, urban development has taken a sharp toll on wild bird populations, too.
The sweet sound of birdsong that used to fill large expanses of forest, grasslands, and marshes has largely been replaced with the hum of motor engines on the lifeless concrete landscapes that were built upon them.
Without our support, few birds can survive in such an environment. In a moment, we’ll be learning some of the things we can do to help them.
Which Types of Birds Have Been Hit the Hardest?
The same landmark scientific study compiled by seven scientific institutions revealed that grassland birds have seen the greatest losses. Horrified by the findings, scientists calculated that more than half of all birds that used to chiefly reside in prairies and meadows have disappeared over the last 50 years.
Shoreline birds, boreal forest birds, and western forest birds have all declined by around 30% in that time, too. Eastern forest birds suffered a 17% loss since 1970, but that might be because the east coast had already seen massive losses before the last 50 years.
Perhaps most disturbing for everyday birding enthusiasts, though, are the massive losses in the common backyard bird species. One in three dark-eyed juncos, white-throated sparrows, and Baltimore orioles have been lost, as well as one in four blue jays and rose-breasted grosbeaks. Imagine!
9 Things Urban Birders Can Do to Protect and Restore Bird Populations
The facts about population decline may be hard to swallow, but thankfully, we are not powerless to help wild birds ourselves!
Turning our backyards into sanctuaries for birds is not only tremendously rewarding for you as a birder, but can make a substantial difference to wild bird numbers, too.
Let’s take a look at some of the most effective steps you could take:
Install Birdhouses
Because so many of the ancient trees that cavity-nesting birds relied on have been cut down, there’s now a severe shortage of suitable nest sites for species like chickadees, nuthatches, wrens, and bluebirds.
By installing birdhouses in your backyard, you’ll be offering a lifeline to pairs of birds that are desperately looking for suitable cavities to raise their young. Putting up a nest box only takes 5 minutes, and each successful brood is a massive contribution to wild bird numbers.
In a single brood, a pair of chickadees can raise more than ten offspring. Now imagine how many they can produce when given several birdhouses over several years!
As a bonus of helping birds in this way, you’ll get to enjoy the miracle of watching them build their nests, feeding their young, and finally seeing the fledglings taking their first wingbeats into the big wide world. To my mind, few things could be so meaningful.
Plant Native Trees, Shrubs, and Flowers
Because most backyard birds rely heavily on insects, grubs, and caterpillars to feed themselves and their young during the spring and summer, you want your backyard to be buzzing with insect life to support them.
The best way to encourage insects in your garden is to plant lots of native wildflowers, shrubs, and trees. While pollinating insects will feed even on exotic flowers, many people don’t realize that only natives will provide them with a suitable habitat to raise their young.
Most native insects will only lay their eggs on native plant species. This means if you have a garden full of exotic, foreign plants, there won’t be any caterpillars and grubs for wild birds to feed their young with.
Native wildflowers are an oasis of humming insects that will feed wild birds all summer long, and attract hummingbirds and butterflies, too. Planting native shrubs and native trees that also provide berries during the fall and winter provides the best of both worlds.
- 🐝 SEEDS INCLUDED: Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias Tuberosa), Chinese Forget Me Not (Myosotis sylvatica), Columbine (Aquilegia...
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Leave Overgrown Edges of the Garden
While neat, manicured gardens may look appealing to the human eye, they present something of a desert for wildlife. By keeping grass cut short and removing dead plant material, gardeners contribute to habitat loss rather than wildlife restoration.
For the native wildflowers and weeds to produce both a habitat and feast for your local birds, you need to let them grow tall and leave their dead stems standing to offer up both seeds and insects that overwinter inside them.
Remember that wild birds have evolved alongside these plants for thousands of years, so allowing the plants to complete their full seasonal cycles is the best way to let them nourish the birds that live there.
Even if you don’t want to turn your entire backyard into a wildlife sanctuary (although that would be an incalculable contribution!), leaving at least some overgrown edges to your garden will do wonders to provide critters, nectar, and seeds for wild birds to eat year-round.
Plant Fruit-bearing Trees and Bushes
Because habitat loss has caused the decline of so many of the fruit-bearing trees and shrubs that wild birds rely on, they now often struggle to stock up on enough food to survive the winters.
You can do a huge service to help wild birds fuel up to survive the coldest months by planting native berry bushes that fruit in autumn such as aronia, blackberries, grapes, cranberries, holly, dogwood, pokeweed, viburnum, and poison ivy (which is not toxic to birds!).
Trees with autumn fruits such as culinary apples, crab apples, pears, late plums, Sorbus species, American persimmons, and hackberries will also be greatly appreciated. Even if you harvest many of these yourself, when the trees mature, there will be plenty for the birds, too!
Boycott Chemicals
For those wishing to increase the number of birds in their backyard, one of the greatest steps to take is boycotting chemicals.
While some are safer than others, any kind of garden chemical can have a detrimental impact on wildlife. The effects of the worst insecticides are all too obvious. The dead insects poison the birds, and other birds are less likely to move into the lifeless desert left in its wake.
But it’s important to know that herbicides and fertilizers take their toll, too. By reducing the number of earthworms and microorganisms, herbicides and fertilizers deplete the base of the food chain that omnivorous birds thrive on. Fewer soil organisms mean fewer insects and fewer insects mean fewer birds.
Instead, adopt organic methods, and enrich your soil with compost and manure instead of chemicals. You’ll be amazed at how much more soil life there is, how much less you’re watering the soil, and how many more birds there are happily plucking earthworms and beetles from the ground!
Provide Freshwater
Water means life. Without freshwater, no bird can survive, and clean water sources can often become scarce in cities, especially during winter freezes.
In my work as an ecological gardener, I often tell my clients that creating a garden pond is the single greatest step they can take to foster more wildlife in their gardens.
Not only does a pond give birds a place to wash and drink from, but it also attracts a living menu of invertebrates that will support birds such as dragonflies, mollusks, and more.
In winter, when most sources of freshwater are frozen over, heated bird baths truly come into their own. By maintaining a supply of liquid water for wild birds, your garden could easily become one of the most important stop-offs for birds in the neighborhood.
Offer Shelter, Especially Evergreens!
In the wild, there are usually plenty of sheltered places where birds can escape from the bitter cold or rough, stormy conditions.
In cities, we need to make sure there are enough sheltered spots for birds to use, too. While some small birds such as wrens will use birdhouses during cold winter months, many birds feel safer congregating in evergreen shrubs and trees.
By retaining their leaves or needles throughout the year, hollies, laurels, pines, firs, and cedars can all provide a lifeline of shelter for all kinds of birds during the coldest months.
Not only useful for birds, but evergreens can also be extremely beautiful and provide a year-round screen around your property. If you select native species that also provide fruits or seeds for your birds, then all the better!
Feeding Birds
Providing a backyard habitat that produces lots of insects, fruits, and seeds for birds to eat might be the very best thing you do to support wild birds, but additional feeding can provide a lifeline, too.
At wildbirdscoop.com, we’ve written dozens of articles on the best bird foods and feeders to keep backyard birds stocked up, and you’ll likely already know that the very most important time for feeding is winter.
Calorie-rich, fatty foods like peanuts and sunflower seeds are especially useful for replacing the nuts and seeds that wild birds would have stocked up on before their native habitats were replaced by urban environments.
By offering a wide variety of bird foods and feeder types, you’ll make sure your feeding efforts reach the maximum number of bird species.
Participate in Bird Studies
Project Feederwatch and eBird are two innovative projects that allow you and me to contribute to wild bird monitoring programs.
By submitting our observations from our backyards or birdwatching outings, we feed the pool of information on bird populations so that scientists can track local trends.
With this information, conservationists have more leverage to implement effective strategies for preserving and regenerating the habitats that are so crucial for wild bird survival.
ebird.org now even has an app where you can submit birdwatching observations from your smartphone.