Creating Your Bird Friendly Home Habitat: Cultivate native plants that offer food and shelter for birds.

Birds need a variety of plants for both shelter and food. A simple landscaping rule of thumb for creating good bird habitat is: “minimize lawn, maximize plant diversity.”

Click for ‘Gardening for Birds’ information.

Some native plants that produce fruit for birds include Chokecherry, Rocky Mountain Juniper, Serviceberry, Wax Currant and Wild Plum. Contact your
local county extension offi ce to fi nd out what fl owers, shrubs, bushes and trees grow best in your neighborhood.

  • Native plants also attract insects for birds to eat—now that’s sustainable!
  • Trimming hedges discourages nesting birds.
  • Dead or downed wood is attractive to birds for shelter and for food storage. If dead trees or brush piles are not an eyesore or a hazard, leave them.
  • Plant shrubs and bushes in groupings, (rather than in rows or far apart) which will encourage birds to forage, nest and use them for shelter. Plantings provide cover for feeding and nesting.
  • Letting some areas “go wild” is a good way to encourage a greater diversity of birds to come to your yard.
  • Mulch encourages birds to forage for insects and grubs that live in the mulch.

Provide bird baths.

Water is an important resource for birds. Water, especially if it’s moving, will attract more birds to your yard. When considering what type of bird bath to provide,
remember a few guidelines:

  • Find one with edges that slope gradually, rather than with a deep lip.
  • Find one with a rough-textured surface to provide better footing.
  • Consider one that has tiers with recirculating water, and put gravel in one tier to provide a wading area.
  • Or, make a recycled bird bath by reusing gallon jugs or other containers, or hang a shallow dish from a tree or an overhang.
  • Place the bath within 15 to 20 feet of shelter or under a tree to provide birds with a quick getaway when predators appear.
  • Replace water every other day for sanitary purposes and to prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs.

Provide a variety of bird feeders and food.

Your local county extension offi ce can assist you with tailoring your backyard to the birds that inhabit your area. Your neighborhood ecology and migration
patterns will help you decide on the appropriate feeders and food for your yard. Different birds forage at diff erent heights and prefer diff erent kinds of feeders (from platform to hopper to tube feeders) and diets (from seed to suet, nectar to fruit). Suet is a fat that many birds enjoy, especially in winter when food is scarce. You can:

  • Smear suet on trees.
  • Put suet on pine cones and hang them from tree branches.
  • Recycle mesh bags to use as suet feeders.
  • Make your own suet. Peanut butter is a great substitute for the animal fat used by commercial companies. You can fi nd a variety of easy recipes
    on the Internet.

Change the feed regularly to keep it from becoming stale, sprouting or rotting. Clean your feeders once a month or so to reduce the possibility of spreading disease (hummingbird feeders should be cleaned at least once a week).  Some food ideas:

  • Black oil sunflower seed is a favorite of many birds (buying hulled seed will help prevent a mess on the ground);
  • Finches and pine siskins like nyjer (niger) seed; jays, chickadees, titmice and woodpeckers go for peanuts;
  • Ground-feeding birds such as doves, juncos and buntings like millet; use a low platform feeder just a few inches off the ground, and only put out as much seed as the birds will eat in a day.
  • Be creative in feeding your birds: natural and unprocessed

Be creative in feeding your birds: natural and unprocessed foods are the best – including berries and oranges, which orioles really enjoy.

Provide grit.

Because birds don’t have teeth, grit is stored in their crops and used to grind food, which helps digestion. You may have seen a bird alongside a road collecting grit. An easy way to provide grit is to crush some egg shells (bake or boil to sanitize) into tiny pieces and place them next to your feeder.

Check out the Guide to Backyard Birds for more ideas, plant and bird lists, and tips to enhance your bird-friendly habitat even more!

Gardening for Birds

The Front Range consists of an area that rises thousands of feet in elevation. As you go up in elevation, the vegetation changes. At lower elevations along the Front Range, you typically find grasslands. As the elevation increases, you find more shrublands, eventually transitioning to coniferous forests at higher elevations. Interspersed within these plant communities are wetlands, or areas around rivers, lakes and streams, with their own vegetation types. By providing suitable plant communities in your yard, you provide important habitat for different birds, so knowing the ecosystem in which you live will help you know what bird species you can hope to attract. Scroll down to learn how you get started creating a native plant sanctuary in your own yard!

Grassland Demonstration Garden

Grasslands along the Front Range consist largely of short-stature grasses, including blue grama and buffalo grass. While much of the shortgrass prairie along the Front Range has been converted to agricultural and urban areas within the last century, pockets of native prairie can still be found on the eastern edge of the Front Range. Trees are rarely found within this plant community, except for wetter areas where the plains cottonwood thrives, providing important habitat for birds and other wildlife. In general, this ecosystem is highly drought resistant and can exist up to elevations of 6,000 feet. Below is a list of plants currently planted in the Grassland demonstration garden at the Environmental Learning Center.

Native Plant List (Note: always refer to scientific names (in italics) when referencing plants)

blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis)

blaze little bluestem grass (Schizachyrium scoparium ‘Blaze’)

mintleaf bergamot (Monarda fistulosa var. menthifolia)

colorado four o’clock (Mirabilis multiflora)

upright prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera)

soapweed yucca (Yucca glauca)

Rocky Mountain Penstemon (Penstemon strictus Benth.)

Montane/Forest Demonstration Garden

This ecosystem is composed of two different communities. The first is pinyon-juniper woodlands that can exist from 4,900 to 8,000 feet. The pinyon-juniper woodlands are dominated by pinyon pine and/or juniper, and occur in a limited distribution along the south end of the Front Range. Trees are relatively short (usually less than 20 feet tall) and are often mixed with other plant communities including shrublands and grasslands. The second community are ponderosa pine woodlands that can exist from 6,000 to 8,000 feet. Ponderosa pine trees are drought resistant. This ecosystem can have understory plants (shrubs and grasses) that add to the bird diversity found here. Below is a list of plants currently planted in the Montane/Forest demonstration garden at the Environmental Learning Center.

Native Plant List (Note: always refer to scientific names (in italics) when referencing plants)

pinyon pine (Pinus edulis)

woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca americana)

lanceleaf tickseed (Coreopsis lanceolata)

wax currant (Ribes cereum)

Old man’s whiskers (Geum triflorum)

sticky purple geranium (Geranium viscosissimum)

American plum (Prunus americana)

Shrubland Demonstration Garden

Shrublands vary in density and may include Gambel oak, mountain mahogany, skunkbush sumac, and antelope bitterbrush. Some shrubs, such as black chokecherry, can grow quite large. Shrublands are sometimes interspersed with trees or patches of grass. This plant community can exist at elevations from 5,000 to 9,500 feet. Below is a list of plants currently planted in the Shrubland demonstration garden at the Environmental Learning Center.

Native Plant List (Note: always refer to scientific names (in italics) when referencing plants)

Gambel Oak (Quercus gambelii)

alderleaf mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus montanus)

skunkbush sumac (Rhus trilobata)

western sandcherry (Prunus pumila var. besseyi)

butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)

golden currant (Ribes aureum)

blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata)

Wetland Demonstration Garden

Wetlands are areas along rivers, lakes, and streams. This plant community has the highest plant and animal diversity among ecosystems along the Front Range because of the presence of water. Wetlands can vary from marshes (always flooded) with cattails and bulrushes, to wet meadows (periodically flooded) with low grasses and sedges, to flowing streams, rivers, and ponds, each with differing types of vegetation including plains cottonwood, American plum, snowberry, and willow species. This ecosystem can exist at all elevations along the Front Range. Below is a list of plants currently planted in the Wetland demonstration garden at the Environmental Learning Center.

Native Plant List (Note: always refer to scientific names (in italics) when referencing plants)

common snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus)

common sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale)

Colorado blue columbine (Aquilegia caerulea)

beach-head iris (Iris hookeri)

plains cottonwood (Populus deltoides)

Click the following links for more information about ways to create a wildlife friendly yard:

USDA PLANTS Database

Colorado Native Plant Society

High Plains Environmental Center

Audubon Native Plant Database

Audubon Rockies Habitat Hero

Homegrown National Park