The importance of biodiversity and the systems approach have been repeatedly stressed. In this week's blog post, we want to draw attention to the important role of birds for gardeners.
Planting our feathered friends in our gardens can bring us many benefits.
Birds - our best friends
Most notable of all is their insect consumption. Several groups of songbirds are insectivorous. These include swallows, grasshoppers, bumblebees and warblers. As they feed on insects all year round, they spend the winter period further south, where milder weather does not cause them to hide their food.
Many species, however, follow a different strategy while insectivores are available, but as they become scarce they switch to plant food. These include sparrows, tits, greenfinches, tengelic and also chickadees, which are our most common winter feeding visitors. A few colonising bird families can already significantly reduce the cost of insect control.
Would you have guessed? During the rearing of a single brood (22 days), the coal fly collects tens of thousands of insects, most of which are various caterpillars.
Of all the birds of prey, owls are the easiest to successfully colonise, and they are particularly good at killing small rodents such as mice and voles.
As well as physically controlling pests, they also affect us humans. Research shows that listening to birdsong can reduce stress and improve concentration. And birdwatching (especially in children) increases attachment to nature.
There are several ways to help birds settle:
- Development of watering places and dust baths
- Winter bird feeding
- Planting food crops (e.g. elderberries, thistles, snowberries)
- But the surest way to make sure that birds really stay around when they are most useful is to put out a variety of nest boxes, burrows, or in the case of swallows, artificial nests.
The best time to build a burrow is in winter, when there are fewer gardening tasks to do and it can be done in a place sheltered from the wind and cold.
But it's good to know which type of burrow is right for which bird.
Burrows with a circular hole are called A, B and D based on the diameter of the hole.
Different types of burrows:
Type A burrows are favoured by the bluegill, the friend fly and the pine fly.
Type B burrows are favoured by sparrows, coal tits, chickadees and woodpeckers.
The D-type burrows are occupied by the sergeant, the earwig and the wheat bank.
Type C burrows have a square opening that covers the top third of the burrow. These are preferentially occupied by the grooved dabchick, rusty-tailed and robin.
To learn how to make a burrow, we recommend the following article from the Hungarian Ornithological Society: Article from
If you're thinking of creating a bird-friendly garden, first and foremost consider that you need to reduce the use of insecticides. In fact, the consumption of poisonous insects often results in the death of nestlings.
In such gardens you can also use the SoftGuard, which is made from the chitin that makes up the skeleton of insects, so it will not cause any harm to our songbirds. A SoftGuard-Although we often experience a mild contact/repellent effect, its real power lies in activating the plant's natural defence system.
This way, in the weeks after application, the plant is prepared for possible invaders. Repeated monthly doses of 2dl/10l during the growing season to prevent fungal and bacterial infections and to control softer insects (e.g. aphids, leafminers).
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