July 24 column: Attracting birds to your garden

Being the avid birdwatcher that I am, you probably can imagine I’m excited to share today’s column with you. It’s all about attracting birds to your garden. Here’s a link to it in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: When caring for birds, think shelter first.

You will learn what we’ve done in our own yard to meet their needs for food, water, shelter and housing. In it, I discuss which types of food are eaten by the many birds we see and learn an important tip about leaving seedheads for birds to eat during the winter months.

To illustrate that, watch this video that I shot early last December of goldfinches eating the seeds off of black-eyed Susans, coneflowers and bee balm that I left for them while doing my fall clean-up:

Wasn’t that a cool sight? It was so interesting to see those seedheads were being put to good use!

I hope you’ll enjoy today’s column and do what you can to attract birds to your own garden. They are a delight to watch and I sure have fun sharing the photographs I’ve taken of them with you!