Buena Creek Gardens

San Diego's finest selection of new and uncommon flowering plants

A Garden for Birds - part three of a four-part series
by Steve Brigham

     Many of the most enjoyable animals in any garden are our little feathered friends. Although I'm not an "expert" on birds, I have gotten to know some of them pretty well over the years, at least from a layman's point of view. And so here's the third installment in this series on birds in our gardens. This month we'll take an in-depth look at a few of my favorite and most entertaining seasonal visitors to my garden -- each with its own time of year here -- and the plants they're most attracted to.

Here For The Winter
     It's mid-August as I write this, just about time for my summer vacation. We're going to the mountains of Northern California this year, so maybe we'll see one of my favorite birds, the Cedar Waxwing. These stylish medium-sized birds are a beautiful blend of yellow, brown, and black with silky feathers and an aerodynamic crest that gives them a "fancy-hairstyle" look. In the summer and fall, they live and breed far north of here, feeding mainly on berries, which is their favorite food. But even if we didn't travel north this summer, we'll see the waxwings anyway before long, since in the winter they're going to visit us!
     It seems amazing for just a 7" bird, but the Cedar Waxwings actually can travel over 2000 miles a year between their summer and winter homes in their relentless pursuit of ripening berries and comfortable temperatures. And although their traditional favorite foods have been native berries, in the past 20 years or so they have notably expanded their menu and their travelling to include the fruits of cultivated plants and gardens they never visited before. I never saw Cedar Waxwings in my garden until about ten years ago, when one winter day a flock of them showed up here for the first time. But they've returned every winter since then, and it isn't hard to figure out why. In the front of our property is a large old Indian Laurel Fig (Ficus retusa) which shades our house. In the wintertime and into spring, it is loaded with thousands of 1/2" purple figs -- and hungry Waxwings! This flock of about 50 birds spends each day perching in a nearby (conveniently deciduous) Pecan tree and flying back and forth to eat our figs. They just never get tired of eating figs -- each bird must eat 100 figs (or more) a day! (So many birds enjoy our Laurel Fig -- it's really a great tree to grow if you like birds!)
     When the Waxwings are feeding in winter, they are both gregarious and noisy, with a high-pitched wheee from each bird blending into an entertaining chorus. By springtime, you can tell they're getting ready to travel, since the flock becomes even more cohesive and group flying practice begins. This is when they really start putting down the chow, and in between berries the entire group will fly together as one big fast-moving cloud. Then one day, they're gone -- headed north on their own summer vacation!

Here For The Summer
     One of our most beautiful birds of all is a resident of tropical Mexico in the winter and travels to San Diego for the summer. Not too long after the Waxwings leave, we'll see the first flash of yellow from the Hooded Oriole, which like the Waxwings is expanding its range into gardens that have its favorite plants. Like the Waxwings, the Orioles were not always in my garden, but once they found it several years ago, they kept coming back each year. Our Hooded Orioles are bright yellow 8" birds with grey wings, further distinguished by a dark black "hood" on the head of the male birds. Happy in small family groups, they are the earliest birds to wake up and the last ones to go to sleep -- busy birds that punctuate their activities with an entertaining chatter of whistles, trills, and rattles all day long. Being tropical in nature, they love palm trees (fan palms especially) and other big-leaved plants -- and that's why they love my garden. You see, the Orioles don't come here each summer just for vacation, they come to have babies, too -- and big leaves are what they like for their elaborate hanging nests. These birds are master weavers, and build beautiful woven baskets of straw-colored fibers that are often attached to the underside of either palm or banana leaves. This provides great protection for the nest from rain (we know it doesn't rain much here in the summer, but the orioles don't take any chances!) and actually camouflages the nest quite well (you often won't know an oriole nest is even there until you hear the babies!).
     Of course, the Hooded Orioles have to eat, too -- and so any garden that they choose to live in has to offer regular meals. Orioles will eat bugs, but what they really like is nectar. You can actually buy oriole feeders, which work like hummingbird feeders but are specially constructed for these larger birds (some orioles may learn to use hummingbird feeders, too, but this is largely a rather clumsy if comical affair!). In my garden, however, the orioles are quite happy with the nectar they get from the flowers of two large trees -- first the Weeping Bottlebrush (Callistemon viminalis) and then later in the summer the Natal Coral Tree (Erythrina humeana). Like the Waxwings, the orioles depend on their special food plants -- and if you plant these plants (and have some fan palms), the orioles will be happy to spend their summers in your garden, too!

Singing In The Spring
     Since they travel such long distances between their summer and winter homes, both the Waxwings and the Orioles breed later in the year than most of our birds. The time of the year when the most bird action occurs in our gardens is, of course, Spring. This is the breeding season for most of our birds -- and that means plenty of beautiful songs and courtship displays. No garden is complete without songbirds, and we have some great ones in San Diego County.
     Some types of birds are very quiet, while other types are either talking or singing all the time. All birds in the garden typically have two different types of sounds that they make -- unique sounds that distinguish different species and may be used to identify them. A call is like talking and may be heard year 'round -- usually a simple sound that is used for day-to-day communication. A song, however, is frequently more complex and is used to establish territory and as a courtship display during breeding season -- in some species, songs are repeated over and over and over when it's time to sing. While all birds' songs are special, there are a few that really stand out to our ears because of their very melodious nature. Two examples of common garden birds that are famous for their complex songs are the Song Sparrow and the Mockingbird, both virtuosi in their own right. And if you're lucky enough to live near some undisturbed open grassland, you may be privileged to hear the beautiful music of the Western Meadowlark. In my spring garden though, there are two other birds that are my favorites for really singing their hearts out -- without them, it just wouldn't be spring!
     The Common Yellowthroat is a beautiful 5" yellow bird with a bold black mask on the male somewhat like the Hooded Oriole. (Oddly enough, our local races of both the Hooded Oriole and Common Yellowthroat have the brightest yellow coloring of any variant in their respective species). You might even mistake the Yellowthroat for an oriole, but orioles are not here in early spring and no oriole ever sounded like this! The Yellowthroat is a bird I heard many times before I ever saw it, because of its habit of moving quickly from tree to tree. Its song is a loud ascending wichity-wichity-wichity-wich! spiral melody which carries a long distance as it echoes throughout the garden. Once it gets going, this bird does not stop -- all spring long. And then suddenly one day it's gone -- but they always come back each spring to sing again!
     The champion singer as far as I'm concerned, however, is also the champion of being heard but seldom seen. This is a well-camouflaged 7" brown bird with cute white rings around its eyes that is normally shy and quiet. But when it comes time in the spring to sing, it really lets loose for a few weeks with a haunting song that echoes through the trees in such a way that it is often difficult to pinpoint exactly where the bird is. This master of song is the Swainson's Thrush, which favors moist woods and is at the southern end of its range here, and for the past several years it has decided that my garden is moist and woodsy enough for at least a seasonal home. The song of the Swainson's Thrush is remarkable -- a melodious whistling ascending spiral of notes that sounds like it is coming from every direction at once. Once you've heard it, you'll never forget it -- reason in itself for having the type of woodland garden that this bird enjoys!

Feeding In The Fall
     So many enjoyable birds are attracted to large trees -- where they're concerned it is true to say that "if you build a forest, they will come". But even if you don't have a forest, there are many birds that will be happy to dine at bird feeders, which is a great way to enjoy birds in any size garden. Fall is a good time to provide extra food and water for our feathered friends, and they will thank you just by being their cute little selves. In part four, the final installment of "A Garden For The Birds" will take a look at which birds you can attract with which food, including the flowers most favored by our always-popular hummingbirds!