If You Build it, they Will Come

White-crowned Sparrow by Ingrid Taylor (CC BY SA 2.0)

One of the reasons we planted a native garden is to attract as wide a variety of birds as possible. After all this work, it turns out that two different nearby birders consistently enjoyed more variety, and more importantly, “better” birds in their yards. What are “better” birds, you ask? To birders this generally means harder to find birds. We were jealous.

At first we chalked it up to elevation. We’re at 1350 feet and they both live about 750 feet lower. We were stuck on that for a while, until two much better birds –American Tree Sparrow and Fox Sparrow – showed up in both of their yards for a week or more in early spring. In New Hampshire, we’ve seen the Fox Sparrow only a handful of times, and we’ve never seen the Tree Sparrow – a gaping hole in our state list. We visited our friend’s feeder and enjoyed great views of the Fox Sparrow, but missed the Tree Sparrow yet again. The window for seeing this migrant was closing fast. We searched for it in other spots. No luck. It was time to figure out what their yards had that we didn’t.

These birds were appearing at feeders near brush piles and tree cover. But, we had a brush pile. Why wasn’t it attracting birds?

Having spent literally thousands of hours in many different locations throughout North America watching birds – the good, the better and even the best – we should be able to come up with an explanation. Ah ha! The light finally went on. Most birds want to be able to quickly hide from view when necessary. That’s one reason you usually only get to see them for seconds. Our brush pile (picture at left) was too exposed. It needed to be closer to trees or bushes. Plus it was too compacted for the birds to get into it to hide.

So we did some research and set about building a better-bird-attracting brush pile. The Sierra Club website guided us through it. We scouted a new location right at the forest edge, yet still visible from the kitchen window. We laid large branches horizontally to create an 8×10 foot base. Next, we placed large cross branches to create little tunnels the birds can use to hide and roost. We added smaller branches and twigs with some conifer branches at the top for overhead cover.

This looked more like an official brush pile. We threw out a little sunflower seed and hoped for the best.

Within a few minutes our resident Chipping Sparrows began investigating the pile. We hoped the activity would attract attention from “better” birds. The next day we had some “good” birds at the new brush pile- White-throated Sparrows. We were pleased but we had seen these in the yard before, so we were not ready to declare an outright success. Then, two days later, one of our target “better” birds showed up – a White-crowned Sparrow!

The White-crowned Sparrow is a stunning migrant who stopped here on its way to breed in northern Canada. Our timing was very lucky – it stayed only three days. Here’s a better picture. It’s such an elegant sparrow and an absolute treat to have in the yard.

White-crowned Sparrow by Ingrid Taylor (CC BY-SA 2.0)

We still haven’t seen the American Tree Sparrow but at least we have attractive habitat for it when it returns from its breeding grounds in northern Canada in the fall. As the saying goes, if you build it, they will come (with a little luck)!