Garden Stuff with Sandy Lang

GARDEN BIRDS

January/February: Mid-/late-summer. Do your last summer-veggie plantings. Get ideas from a garden centre. Hot days and our sandy soils dry fast. Deep watering doesn’t work on sand, so shallow water every two days (HCC doesn’t allow daily). Water mornings. Evening watering = wet leaves overnight = fungal disease.

Bird friendly: Birds will visit your garden if it’s bird friendly. What makes for a bird-friendly habitat...? Plant natives. These are our native birds’ natural sources of food and shelter. But urban gardens aren’t large, so you can’t create much of a native forest. To enhance your garden’s bird habitat, make changes to better provide for bird •safety, •rests, roosts, nests, •water and •food.

Safety – Keep cats in at night. But ~12 neighbours’ cats visit your garden, so your own moggy is only ~8% of the problem. Trap rats.

Cover – High cover (trees) creates safe places to rest (day) and roost (night). Low cover creates good places for cats to lurk. Minimise low cover. Dense trees/shrubs/hedges create safe places for secret nests.

Water – Eastbourne is on sand, so few puddles/ creeks. Birds really need water, esp. in summer. Install a shallow bird bath, 5+ m from cat cover. Keep it topped up.

Food – Install a feeder station 5+ m from cat cover. Avoid bread, fat and seeds. NZ birds don’t eat these. But they do attract introduced N hemisphere birds, which outcompete our native birds for habitat. Our native birds eat fruits, nectar and insects. •Fruits (vitamins, minerals) e.g. a half apple. •Nectar (energy) e.g. a 1:8 sugar:water mix in a nectar feeder - not a saucer (wasps, faecal contamination, disease). Google nectar nest •Insects (energy+protein) Plant native trees/shrubs to attract insects. Also...

Eco-pile: Make an ‘eco-pile’ - see www. mulchpile.org/43. This creates food and habitat for many small invertebrates – and these are good food for native birds.

Disease: Feed stations and bird baths are ‘birdbusy’ places, so great for disease-exchange. So, keep them clean.

Dependency: Consistent feeding creates dependency. So, birds starve when you go on holiday. So, offer consistent feeding in winter/ early-spring (June to September) when food is very scarce. The rest of the year offer erratic feeding e.g. one week on, one week off, to minimise dependency.