Projects for the Birder's Garden: Over 100 Easy Things That you Can Make to Turn Your Yard and Garden into a Bird-Friendly Haven

Science News, Jan 1, 2005

PROJECTS FOR THE BIRDER'S GARDEN: Over 100 Easy Things That You Can Make to Turn Your Yard and Garden into a Bird-Friendly Haven FERN MARSHALL BRADLEY, ED.

This guide offers dozens of ideas for easy, low-cost ways a person can attract birds of all kinds into a yard or onto a windowsill. Included are instructions on how to make a bamboo water display-birdbath called a tsukubai and a hyacinth-vine shelter for wrens. Readers learn that hanging a cedar shingle covered in peanut butter will attract woodpeckers and chickadees. Recipes for homemade suet cakes explain how to load them with tasty insects. The section on birdhouses ranges from hollowed-out gourds for chickadees and swallows to a wren house made of plastic pipe. This section also explains how to provide sanctuary for birds from predators. The description of each project includes details about avian behavior and how it affects the design of feeders, birdhouses, and water features for various species. A final section outlines how to attract hummingbirds and butterflies. Rodale Pr Inc. 2004, 312 p., b&w illus., paperback, $17.95.