A Landscape Habitat for Birds

A pair of goldfinches must be nesting nearby.  Several times a day, they light on our little granite water basin for a drink, I stop mid-chore to enjoy their bright yellow presence amid the greens of the foliage around them.  They seem to prefer the trickling water from the bamboo spout into the basin more than the still water in the blue birdbath.  But wouldn’t that be a gorgeous picture … bright yellow birds in a blue birdbath.

Bird highway along the fence line

Over the ten years that we’ve lived here, we’ve gradually developed a “bird highway” the length of our narrow garden west of our house.  To preserve our view of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains, we keep the foliage height at a maximum of 15 feet.

So what’s a “bird highway?”  It’s a foliage thoroughfare that allows birds to travel from one place to another under the protection of overhanging branches, with rest stops for food and water.  Ours is a combination of small deciduous trees, some Japanese and vine maples, a golden rain tree, and a pink dogwood; and a few small-growing evergreens, a mountain hemlock, a blue foliaged cypress, and a bay laurel.  We’ve added perennials and woody shrubs between and below the trees to create feeding and resting spots.  A clump of six-foot tall yellow Rudbeckia ‘Herbstone” towers over blue and white hydrangeas, pink roses, and white garden phlox.  We’ve tucked shade perennials, hardy geraniums, hostas, bronze heucheras, hellebores, astilbes, and dwarf hardy fuchsias beneath.  A shallow, blue birdbath sits, almost hidden, next to a blue hydrangea.  And our granite Japanese water feature trickling water from a bamboo spout into its basin is the final rest stop at the north end of the highway.  Small birds love to travel from limb to limb and hiding place to hiding place, along this highway that connects the greenbelt below us to our neighbor’s giant maple and birdfeeders across the street.

Our daily visitors include chickadees, towhees, rosy and yellow finches, bushtits, wrens, sparrows, flickers, robins, and hummingbirds.  This summer, because I thought visiting grandchildren would enjoy watching the birds, I hung a feeder with black sunflower seeds in a Japanese maple.  Guess who loves to sit and watch the most.