Proper ingredients are recipe for backyard birding

MILLBROOK — There is a recipe for creating backyard and urban landscapes that attract both resident and migrating song birds throughout the year.

Proper management of the urban bird habitat will meet a bird’s needs: food, water and cover.

Because both resident and migratory birds’ food needs change with the seasons, there is a recipe to follow when selecting plants for food and cover.

“The recipe includes one evergreen shrub, two nectar-producing species, a thorny species and a berry-producing species,” said Doyle Keasal, Extension specialist, environmental educator and Discovering Our Heritage coordinator with Auburn University.

Keasal and Shirley Farrell shared the basics of getting started with birding, identification based on visual characteristics and bird calls and how to attract songbirds with habitat, bird feeders and nesting boxes Sunday at the Alabama Nature Center at Lanark near Millbrook.

The nature center is a 350-acre natural area of fields, streams, wetlands and ponds with five miles of boardwalks and trails and is the Alabama Wildlife Federation’s outdoor education facility.

Open daily to the public, the center has weekend programs planned throughout the summer for snakes, fishing festivals, outdoor photography, hydrangeas and an outdoor challenge.

Farrell suggested two things that would help someone getting started in birdwatching: field guides on birds and binoculars.

“It’s OK to start off using a children’s field guide,” she said as she passed out a handful of guides to look at from Peterson, Sibley, Audubon and National Geographic. Her favorite was “Birds of North America” by Kaufman because of the color tabs, descriptions and enhanced images. Another one was “Birds of Alabama” which included a CD of the bird calls.

They suggestion trying the “8 by 30” and the “10 by 42” models.

Farrell’s hint on purchasing binoculars was to find someone who had been birding for a long time and ask them to let you try out all of the binoculars they had used over the years and kept in a drawer, or go to an outdoors store and look through a selection there.

Her husband, Frank Farrell, had two suggestions on selecting binoculars. One was to look for the longest eye relief part possible for those who wear eyeglasses and want to use binoculars. His second hint was to look for the model that gave you a wide field of view which helps in locating the bird when you bring the binoculars up to your eyes.

Shirley said newer models of binoculars allow you to focus down to six or seven feet away and look at things like butterflies and insects. The older models only allow you to focus from about 15 feet away.

She said bird song identification has gone high tech with songs on iPods and Palm Pilots as well as bird song identifiers that play bird songs and even frog sounds.

Both Farrell and Keasal suggested that if someone wanted to use bird feeders to bring birds in then the black oil sunflower seeds were best with the striped sunflower seeds second.

His list for a variety of birds during different seasons of the year included sunflower hearts, safflower, red millet, white millet, cracked corn, raw peanuts, suet, apples, bananas, grapes and raisins, oranges, nectar, dry grits and mealworms.

He said the most important thing about the water is keeping it clean by hosing it out every two or three days.

“It is important to place the source near cover about 10 to 12 feet away,” he said. “Also birds are attracted to the gurgling sound of moving water.”

Look on the Web at http://www.aces.edu for publications about birding and habitat like: ANR-716, “Hummingbirds in Alabama,” ANR-554, “Feeding Birds,” ANR-778, “Attracting Wildlife To Your Backyard,” ANR-687, “Eastern Bluebirds” and ANR-612, “Attracting Purple Martins.”

Two other publications available from the North Carolina State University to look for are “Landscaping for Wildlife with Native Plants,” and “Managing Backyards and Other Urban Habitats for Birds” at http://www.ncsu.edu/goingnative.

For more information about the Alabama Nature Center and upcoming programs visit http://www.alabamawildlife.org.