Well, I wrote the other day about how to keep cats out of the garden, and now we’re going to talk about how to attract birds into your garden (yet somehow you still need to keep those damn pesky cats away! A gardener’s life is tough)

Attracting birds to the garden brings more benefits than you might think.  Firstly, you get the pleasure that comes from watching the birds eat, play and bathe in your garden, but as well as that, they also help to keep the insect population down.  Just one bird can eat between 500 and 1000 insects in one afternoon!

To attract birds, put down a variety of seeds on a bird table.  Different types attract different types of birds.

Create some sort of bird bath for them to drink from and bathe in.  Ideally, it should be around 3 inches deep and about three feet off the ground (I’m thinking about those pesky cats again) .  If you create motion and sound simply by hanging a leaking container over the bird bath, that will help to attract them.

They also like shelter, so if you don’t want to put an actual bird box up, then dense twigs and branches are their favourites, like evergreens.

If you can put up a bird box for nesting, you’ll have feathered friends for life.  You can buy them very cheaply and ready made, just make sure its weather resistant with a pitch roof, which most do nowadays.  Check also that it has ventilation holes in the sides for air and the bottom for draining.  The best ones have a removable roof or a hinged roof so that you can clean the box easily.  You should clean the bird box after each nesting season - or if you don’t fancy that little job then make sure you buy a cheap bird box that meets all the other criterion and then it’s as easy to buy a new one each year.