How Vital Is Your Backyard Bird Garden To Song Birds?

All yards can, potentially, be natural habitats for birds.

Even though our neighborhoods occupy what was once their natural habitat, it needn't be a catastrophe. The right selection and location of plants will offer a nearly natural habitat for song birds.

Surprisingly, wild birds readily accept this substitution, and our backyard bird gardens become an extension of the surrounding natural habitat.

Making your backyard into a bird garden can be the focus of many family activities. In fact, just watching and feeding songbirds is a great way for the entire family to become aware of bird conservation.

Keep in mind that those family members with limited mobility can still enjoy nature from the deck or patio, even a window. Imagine the benefits of a bird garden for seniors and shut-ins, and for the ill or disabled.

Bird gardens are perfect natural habitat classrooms. Learning about the different bird species in your area can be lots of fun.

An essential tool is a good, easy-to-use field guide, such as Birds of North America, or Peterson's East and West. Search online for the term "bird field guides" for more information.

You will learn that birds are grouped according to physical characteristics. For example, distinguishing a crow from a turkey is obvious just by looking at them.

These characteristics are helpful in identifying the birds that visit your backyard bird habitat : Overall size ; Shape of their bodies; Coloring; Specific markings; Shapes of their beaks; Shape of their wings and their feet while in flight.

Your family, especially the kids, will soon become experts at recognizing bird calls. While each species is unique, most are quite obvious. A Sparrow's "chipping" is quite plain when compared to a Cardinal's lovely "trilling" song.

From a bird's-eye view, a natural bird habitat can actually be a neighborhood of backyards... and each backyard gardener contributes to the success of this unique bird habitat.

So, the question remains... just how vital is your individual backyard garden to wild birds?

If you have selected and located your plantings correctly, wild birds will be as comfortable in your backyard as they would be in the wild.

Undeniably, the answer is... you and your bird garden are unquestionably vital to their survival!

Susan Nelson Hopkins is an online gardening expert from Carlsbad, NM and writes for a unique group of websites at http://www.susansgardens.com . She specializes in creating gardens that will attract birds. For an original version of this and other gardening articles, visit http://www.susansbirdgardens.com/cs-pro/spin/?c=gardening . For more bird gardening information, please visit www.susansbirdgardens.com