One guarantee for good bird watching in your own yard is to place feeders there. It seems like half of all the homes in the Phoenix area maintain sugar water-filled hummingbird feeders to attract the hyper-fast, iridescent Anna's variety. Seeds will bring a plethora of house finches along with more colorful residents like northern cardinals. Suet is popular with many birds including woodpeckers. And migratory orioles are known to return to specific homes that put out orange or other fruit slices.
But the absolute easiest and cheapest way to attract birds to your backyard is with simple landscaping. I was reminded of this very recently when I noticed one of the desert's most common birds, the verdin, making frequent stops in a museum palo verde tree I planted over a year ago.
It seems fitting that a bird as associated with the Desert Southwest as the verdin would find good foraging in Arizona's official state tree. Two varieties of the drought-tolerant tree thrive in our deserts, and both native peoples and animals have learned to live off their seeds. Its beautiful yellow blooms are a highlight of spring landscapes.
But as we enter chilly winter, very few native flora are blooming let alone going to seed. So I have to wonder what the little verdin is actually eating from the tree. Maybe there are near-invisible grubs or insects that it's able to spot with its own eagle-eye precision. Some of the leaves of the palo verde are actually drying out and dropping at the moment, so I'm curious if in dry, cool times the bird actually eats the leaves.
In any case, the peeps coming from your backyard are a sure sign that a verdin has found a safe and fruitfull feeding ground in one of your trees. And who knows, spotting its small, dense nest in the spring might prove that your home is also a secure place for it to raise a family.
But the absolute easiest and cheapest way to attract birds to your backyard is with simple landscaping. I was reminded of this very recently when I noticed one of the desert's most common birds, the verdin, making frequent stops in a museum palo verde tree I planted over a year ago.
It seems fitting that a bird as associated with the Desert Southwest as the verdin would find good foraging in Arizona's official state tree. Two varieties of the drought-tolerant tree thrive in our deserts, and both native peoples and animals have learned to live off their seeds. Its beautiful yellow blooms are a highlight of spring landscapes.
But as we enter chilly winter, very few native flora are blooming let alone going to seed. So I have to wonder what the little verdin is actually eating from the tree. Maybe there are near-invisible grubs or insects that it's able to spot with its own eagle-eye precision. Some of the leaves of the palo verde are actually drying out and dropping at the moment, so I'm curious if in dry, cool times the bird actually eats the leaves.
In any case, the peeps coming from your backyard are a sure sign that a verdin has found a safe and fruitfull feeding ground in one of your trees. And who knows, spotting its small, dense nest in the spring might prove that your home is also a secure place for it to raise a family.
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| Verdin in a backyard palo verde tree. |
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| Verdin in a backyard palo verde tree. |
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