35 Bird-friendly Gardens
About this episode
A garden can become habitat with a few thoughtful choices. Ecologist Tom Hunt shares practical ways to support Australian birds in gardens, balconies and nature strips.
Episode illustration: Red Wattlebird
Tom Hunt is an ecologist on the Wild Deserts project, with work focusing on birds, plants, habitat restoration and wildlife conservation. Growing up surrounded by bushland and birds in the Adelaide Hills, Tom has been a keen nature lover for as long as he can remember. The career he’s made out of that passion that has taken him to every corner of Australia to work on conservation projects. He also tries to sneak in as much extra birdwatching as he can both at home and in the field.
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Kirsty: I would like to acknowledge that this episode was recorded on the traditional country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. I would like to pay my respects to Elders past and present. I recognize and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land, sea and sky. I would like to extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person listening to this podcast.
Kirsty: Welcome to Weekend Birder. I'm your host, Kirsty Costa. It's been such a joy to hear from some of the thousands of listeners who tune into this podcast each week. Rebecca L and Stuart K have both been in touch to request an episode on creating bird friendly gardens. Well, friends, it's my honor to introduce you to Tom Hunt. Here is how Tom developed his love of wild birds.
Tom: I don't remember when I first started noticing birds, but I was, yeah, a very young kid. I grew up in the Adelaide Hills, which is a slightly less urbanised area just outside of Adelaide. So there's usually get a lot more wildlife, a lot more birds and yeah, for as long as I can remember I was noticing birds and appreciating them. And my parents set up bird feeders in their backyard so you could see birds fairly close and they also planted lots of native plants. So yeah, there was lots of reasons for birds to visit their garden. And I think that ignited my passion for birds as well as then, relatives seeing that I was vaguely interested in birds. And so every birthday and Christmas I would get bird books to add to my collection, which, which fast tracked that interest as well. So yeah, it started just from when I was a child, I think. I reckon every child I've met is a born naturalist, really. Every kid is interested in bugs and leaves and, things they find in the garden. I guess it's just a matter of whether you keep that going into adulthood or you don't get as distracted by by other things as you go along. And yeah, I feel really lucky that I have kept that going and I get to have wild birds as a big part of my job now as an ecologist.
Kirsty: Tom is an ecologist on the Wild Deserts Project. You might have heard about this in the news. Here is how Tom got to where he is now.
Tom: I did an undergraduate degree at university just in Science - Bachelor of Science, which is kind of the basic kind of catch-all science. You can study and do a bit of everything. But I focused a lot on biology and wildlife subjects. And then after finishing study, I went on to do a lot of field work doing things like bird surveys because I could identify quite a few birds around my area. It was a bit of a learning curve doing that elsewhere, like in the deserts and the Mallee and the heathlands that I was lucky enough to find work. But yeah, you slowly build your repertoire of of knowing birds over time, especially the bird calls, which is probably the most important bit of skill. I suppose the most important skill that you can have bird watching is actually being able to identify calls, but that takes a lot of practice and work. But over time I got better at that and and then branched into other bits of ecology work here and there. So doing plant surveys and then mammal surveys. I did a lot of volunteering. I think in the environmental sector there's lots of opportunities, but a lot of them are unpaid. But it gives you a chance to to build your skill set. And so I did lots of that. And then I got an offer of a of a job on the wild deserts project, which is where I'm working now. Wild Deserts is a collaborative project that's run between the New South Wales Government and the University of New South Wales and a group called Ecological Horizons that are based in South Australia. But the Wild Deserts Project area itself is in Sturt National Park in the far north west corner of New South Wales. As far as you can get without it being South Australia in Queensland. So right on the border there, this corner pocket of New South Wales, you get on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert. So it's rolling sand dunes and mulga country and dry clay pans and things like that. The Wild Deserts project has been set up to reintroduce mammals into Sturt National Park, mammals that are locally extinct. So that over the last 200 years since European colonisation species that have gone extinct, so species like the Greater Bilby, the Golden Bandicoot, the Western Quoll... they're all species that have disappeared since humans introduced cats and foxes and changed the way the land is used. And so this project is designed to get those species back in the landscape because each of those species has a really important role in the environment. So bilbies and bandicoots dig up the soil, aerate it, spread seeds and fungal spores and so increase germination, things like that. Western Quolls are top predators, so they they control over abundance of smaller animals. Each of these species has an important role to play, and since they've disappeared from the landscape, the ecosystem has has really struggled to keep healthy. So by reintroducing these species, we can restore some of those components that made that ecosystem, all those interactions between plants and animals and soil and the rest of the environment, we can keep that as healthy as possible. The problem is that cats and foxes are still a problem. These animals haven't haven't yet developed ways to combat them or be as predator aware as they might be. So we needed to construct fenced areas in this desert environment to 20km square. Areas have been fenced off and all the cats and foxes and rabbits have been removed from those areas and kangaroos as well. So the rabbits and kangaroos can't overgraze the vegetation, the cats and foxes can't damage the populations of these animals, reintroducing, introducing. So it's a kind of wild sanctuary that's been developed up there and we haven't reintroduced all the species yet but we're getting there. And it's really exciting to see the landscape improve over time. And all the seed germination that you see or the digging and all the populations of these endangered animals really improving. So it's a really exciting project to be a part of, but it is a big learning curve for me because it's it's basically all mammals, which I have less experience with compared with birds. But yeah, it's nice. It's a nice project to be a part of - to see something positive happen in the environment when so much there's so much negative trajectories of species disappearing. It's nice to be part of something positive and we still get a bit of birding in here and there as well.
Kirsty: We will definitely have to come back on this podcast to talk about the birds of outback New South Wales. In the meantime, Tom is here to share what he has learnt about improving the habitat for wildlife. He says that the place to start is in our own backyard and local area.
Tom: Since Europeans colonised Australia over just over 200 years ago, we have changed this environment and to an almost unimaginable degree. Number one, the amount of land we've cleared, that's the that's the biggest thing that has caused the disruption of ecosystems in Australia and the decline of native species. And on top of that we have introduced invasive species. So especially cats, foxes and rabbits have probably had the biggest impact. But there's also invasive bird species like starlings and Indian miners in the eastern states and invasive plants - blackberries, broom, lots of rampant tropical species which are taking over areas of the tropics. So even in those areas that Europeans haven't cleared to make way for agriculture or housing or cities and infrastructure like roads, there's a lot of pressure remaining on those small patches of vegetation. That means there's there's so many issues facing native species. It's really no wonder that there's there is so much biodiversity decline in Australia. And so I guess Wild Deserts is a a very isolated example of really taking an environment and trying to improve its ecosystem by putting in species that were lost, their native species, removing an invasive species and seeing how that environment returns to what it might have looked like using those principles. You can you can try and improve the ecosystem for native wildlife anywhere you are, even in the middle of capital cities. There are so many ways to help native species. You might not be building a 50 kilometre long feral proof fence network, but there are there are so many little things you can do to help wildlife just in your backyard and in your garden.
Kirsty: Tom is going to give us some advice about plants, water nest boxes, feeders and other stuff that we might think about doing to support the birds that live around us. Let's kick things off with plants. What should we grow and why should we grow it?
Tom: In your own garden? You can create an environment that is very attractive to a number of birds. It's probably quite easy to attract 2 or 3 of the most abundant bird species there are, but those species are usually the ones that are doing quite well in urban areas anyway. So what I would recommend people try and do is plant species that will help, the little guys, the species that are struggling a bit more in cities and towns. So they're often ones that are a bit more shy, a bit less boisterous. You get very loud species like Rainbow Lorikeets are pretty ubiquitous everywhere. Now across southern Australia, you get things like magpies and larger honeyeaters like Red Wattlebirds are quite common in a lot of backyards, so those species have adapted quite well. It's usually the smaller species that are struggling if you want to attract them and provide a bit of habitat for them, We need to look at what they use in the wild, which is usually very dense vegetation and vegetation that is not easy for say, predators to to get into. So smaller shrubs that have a very dense growth habit, things like grevilleas, some native peas, banksias and things like that, because the larger birds will often chase the smaller ones away. And so having an area where those small birds can can hide in and can also forage is important. So small birds, things like thornbills, pardalotes, robins and wrens, they are often looking for surfaces to forage on leaves under leaf litter and not not so much attracted to big trees that you might have or open canopies or lawns and things like that. And so by planting quite dense native shrubs in your in your backyard, you'll be much more likely to attract these things. It provides a nesting sites for them. It provides food for them between leaves. A lot of them are insectivores (so that means they eat insects and other invertebrates like spiders and centipedes, things like that) - you don't actually have to put really any food out for them. If you plant these plants, they will they'll be much more likely to visit your place. In some areas, in cities, no matter what you plant you're never going to get some of these species. Unfortunately, to get these species or to get any species in your garden, there needs to be what's called a source population. So an area where these species are abundant or where these species exist already, that they can then move into your backyard. If you live next to some natural bushland and you plant your garden with a lot of native plants, then you're much more likely to get these species. And so things like thornbills and fairywrens in the middle of the CBD are quite rare in a lot of places, but there's smaller honeyeaters things perhaps like New Holland Honeyeaters or Spinebills that they even exist in the bigger cities. If there's enough habitat around because these honeyeaters especially are quite mobile so they can move tens or hundreds of kilometers, whereas things like fairywrens and thornbills have much smaller home ranges. Don't be discouraged if you can't attract every species that might have once been there. There are always smaller species that you can always help by planting those really dense shrubs and especially spiky shrubs (which might not be as nice to humans) in our garden. If there's really spiky plants, there's a lot of acacias like that, some grevilleas as well. Those spiky shrubs really help smaller birds. The other thing about planting is that in Australia of course we have lots of nectar feeding birds and planting native flowers is a good way to attract some some different species to your garden. The problem is, is that a lot of the humans are attracted to the bigger showiest flowers that there are, and those flowers are often have evolved over prehistory to attract the biggest pollinating birds. So yeah, your things like your wattlebirds, your Rainbow Lorikeets and your Noisy Miners, which Noisy Miners especially are very, very aggressive birds. They're natives, but they have done very well in towns and cities. They can really aggressively defend a patch of flowering plants. So if we plant lots of eucalypts with lots, big flowers and you can get some grevilleas with amazingly large flowers, with lots and lots of nectar, that actually can mean that you scare away the smaller species you might be trying to attract because these big bully birds come in wanting all that nectar. And they're very aggressive to those smaller species. So again, if you're looking for native flowering plants that might attract birds, I would recommend going for the smaller flowered grevilleas. Some of them are still utterly spectacular things like Kangaroo Paw, which have relatively small flowers, which the bigger birds can't get into as easily. And some of the smaller banksia species. But even if you do have some of these showy flowers, as long as you have those really dense areas that we talked about before for smaller birds to hide in, they can they'll still come. They'll pop out and take a bit of nectar from those bigger flowers and still be able to feed before the bigger birds chase them away. So having that real structural diversity in your garden, all those different layers. Ground covers, dense shrubs, small trees, the more diversity you have in your plants, especially if they're all native and especially if they're they're locally native. So the birds in your area have have evolved to feed off those species over millions of years. The more diversity you can have in all of those things, the more diverse the birds that will come to your garden are and the more you can actually help the populations of the birds in the wider landscape that might be struggling. If you think about all the backyards that are out there, if they all planted, really good habitat, plants, birds could exist much more easily in the city. And you are seeing that in some areas where there's some great native backyard plantings over larger scales. Whole communities get together and you see birds that are that are much rarer in other spots coming back.
Kirsty: I wake up to the sound of Noisy Miners in my front yard in Melbourne almost every morning. These birds feed on the large gum tree on my nature strip and are very territorial. So based on Tom's advice, I'm going to make sure that my garden has some small flowered plants and lots of bushy shrubs for little birds to hide in. Animals need three basic things to survive shelter, water and food. Let's talk about water as this is something that is often overlooked.
Tom: All birds need to drink, no matter the species. Having water in your in your garden is actually maybe even the most effective way to get the biggest variety of birds visiting. Planting particular plants or putting out food might attract a few particular species. But all birds need water, and especially in hot weather you can attract a really big diversity of of species to your yard that you wouldn't see otherwise. There are a few things to keep in mind. If you do put out water, you need to keep it topped up. So the best way to to attract birds is is not only to keep it permanent, but it's also the safest way. So if birds come to know that there's water there, they might rely on that, especially in hot weather. So keep the water topped up, keep it clean. So clean it usually once a day or every couple of days because water, especially if it's in the sun, can grow algae. If lots of birds are visiting, they can potentially spread disease through it. So you need to be really mindful of keeping that water fresh for them. I mean, you'll often see birds, they might be drinking from a muddy puddle somewhere, but often that has just formed from rain. So it's actually despite the dirt in it, it's relatively fresh. So old stagnant water, not only do the birds not like it as much, it can actually be harmful through spreading disease or having pathogens in the water, bacteria that that might make them sick. So having a bowl made of potentially a glazed ceramic, that makes it really easy to clean and a shiny surface. Or anything that really holds water, you can just get a plastic plant pot tray is fine as well as long as it's relatively shallow. And that means birds can't drown in it. Birds often like to sit in the water and wash themselves as well as drink it, especially in warm, wet weather to call themselves down. So either having a shallow tray or at least an area of your water dish that has a shallow area is really useful, especially for smaller birds to bathe in. And also having things like you can just place sticks from your garden, small branches or sticks into that water, which not only allows smaller birds to kind of perch exactly where they want at the height they want so they can drink the water. But it also lets things like if you get skinks or bees or other insects falling in, it's a way for them to crawl out not only to save their lives, but also to stop dead insects fouling up the water and things like that. So there's lots of good reasons to place sticks in as far as where to put it in your garden. Probably your best chance of having a popular water bowl is by placing it near some dense cover, some dense shrubbery, because birds often especially small birds, are really wary about going out into the open. There are lots of predators, sparrowhawks and goshawks birds of prey like that are quite common in planted gardens. But even things like kookaburras can take small birds, and bigger birds will also chase smaller birds away from water sources that are in a really open area. So birds are much more wary to take water from, a bowl that's in the middle of a lawn where there's nowhere to hide. So if you put that in some way that they can pop out, drink their water, hide away in a shrub, again,it'll have much more chance of success placing the bowl near dense shrubbery or somewhere the birds can hide is good. You can have water on the ground. People often choose to put it on a on a plinth or a stand, maybe to be able to see the birds better. Having water on a stand is safer for birds if there are things like neighborhood cats roaming around or if you have pets at home, having a raised water dish is a lot safer. But if you can have a water dish on the ground as well. Yeah, as long as you keep the area free of ground predators and things like cats that that might be able to more easily attack birds from there.
Kirsty: We're learning so much from Tom, not only about how to make our gardens more bird friendly, but actually how to do things effectively. In episode 27 of Wekend Birder Zora Verona spoke about how she primed her new birdbath with some leaves. Highly recommend listening to that episode if you haven't yet. Nest boxes are another way that you can attract birds to your garden.
Tom: Lots of Australian native species need hollows to roost in, sleep in and especially to breed in with cleared habitat where very old hollows have taken hundreds of years to develop. Clearing woodland removes all those really precious hollows and a lot of hollow nesting species in Australia really struggle to find places to roost and to breed. So what we can do in our backyard is provide that for them. If we're providing food and shelter as well, we're also able to provide a breeding area for those those special species that are hollow nesters. Each species, though, has a different requirement. For what it likes in a hollow. So in the wild they'll be looking at every different tree hollow they can find and finding the one with the right size hole, the right depth, the right aspect - whether it's looking north or south or whatever. And so there's no one size fits all for a nest box. It's important if you want to attract particular species to provide nest boxes that that are suited for them and place them in areas that are that are appropriate for them. Some birds like them very high in trees and other birds don't mind them low to the ground. There are lots of resources online where you can find those bits of information. So BirdLife Australia has a lot of great nest box resources. There are a few published books as well. One by Gould League in Victoria has some great nest box designs that you can build yourself. There's also a lot of people online who who on their Etsy stores or wherever will sell pre-made nest boxes that you can buy. So there's a lot of options out there, but it depends what birds you want to attract and what birds you might be able to bring to your area. Providing those nest boxes is sometimes the only way you get particular species in an area. Things like Australian Owlet Nightjar can be quite common in urban areas. If there are nesting hollows around, they'll take up nest boxes as well. But other birds, like kookaburras, owls, lots of parrot species, will use nest boxes as well. And so it's just another piece of the puzzle that we're trying to restore in that the ecosystem that's been lost because of the urban area, you're just adding that extra bit back in that extra element that that helps a lot of birds actually call your backyard home.
Kirsty: If you want to provide a nest box for a particular species, you could also get some advice from your local council or shire. Ask to speak to the Environment or Biodiversity Officer and I'll also put a link to BirdLife Australia's nesting boxes website in the episode notes. What about feeding birds, Tom? Is that a thing?
Tom: Bird feeding, of course, is one of the most popular ways that people attract birds to their backyards, and there is a lot of controversy behind it, especially in Australia compared to, say, Europe and the US, where bird feeding is very, very common and very widely accepted and often encouraged by birding groups. For overwintering birds, you get snow, it helps the birds survive winter. We don't have that in Australia. And there is also this idea that there's lots of downsides to feeding birds. There's lots of risks which are there, but it's yeah, it's not really talked about at all. The problem with, I suppose abstinence (not doing it at all or encouraging people to stop completely) is that it does not work regardless of where you are in Australia. Studies show that it's, between 20 and 40% of your population is going to be feeding birds, which is a huge number of people. It's a huge number of backyards that provide food for birds and it's only getting more popular in Australia. My personal opinion is that it's actually much better to talk about it, to make it acceptable, but to make sure people do it correctly. Unusually, in Australia we have a lot of carnivorous birds that come to our backyards which which they don't really have overseas and it's pretty special. You get these big birds like kookaburras and magpies, butcherbirds coming in to your backyard. And a lot of people like their calls, like how intelligent and charismatic these birds are. And so they'll put out bits of meat or cheese or whatever they can to attract them. And it's a very common practice. But it's also feeding meat to birds can be really risky, not only because meat can spoil quite quickly. So there's a bacterial risk spreading disease, a phenomenon especially seen in magpies is malnutrition from these food sources. So just feeding mints to magpies can be really risky. The mince itself can get stuck in in their bills and cause infection, bacterial infection. But they're also usually quite low in micronutrients like calcium and they might be quite high in other in other elements that actually inhibit the uptake of what little calcium there might be. And so sometimes horrifically you see magpies that have lost bills completely because they've been feeding in people's backyards. The bills get infected, They they lose their calcium, they they can break off. And those birds, even if they're being supplementary fed, will often, often die, but in quite unpleasant ways. So I think it's really important to let people know what what you can feed birds safely for attracting magpies, for example. You need to be able to provide them with whole meals. So and especially food that has calcium supplemented in it. Even things like pet food biscuits are a bit more of a complete meal and they have more nutrients and things like that. There are lots of things you can mix into, say, mince or bits of meat that you might want to feed magpies and and kookaburras and other carnivorous birds that will be much healthier for them. So there's lots of nutritional supplementary mixes that you can just get from pet stores that you can mix in. Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of information online where you can find out the best things to feed different species of carnivorous birds. Darryl Jones is a big researcher and writer in this area, and he's published a book called Feeding the Birds at Your Table, which is a book all about feeding Australian birds and how best to do it. And in there he has a recipe for a good magpie mix and a lot of other really useful information for for feeding birds. So if people are really interested in feeding birds, right, I'd recommend that as a as a great resource. The principles of, feeding the right thing to magpies really applies to to all other birds, making sure that the food that you provide is nutritionally beneficial for them. So not things like bread, the scraps from from the table usually aren't good and there are actually some foods which can really harm particular bird species. So really doing your research into what to feed them is really important. But in saying that there's lots of different foods that you that you can really safely feed birds. There's some wild bird grain mixes that you can get from supermarkets that people feed their pet birds, but you can put out for wild birds that will attract finches and seed eating parrots and pigeons. There's you can even put out nectar mixes. There's nectarivore mixes which are a kind of protein rich, sweet powders which you mix with water. You can put that out and attract things like lorikeets and honeyeaters and other nectar feeding birds and things like fresh fruit will attract fruit eating birds, especially if you're in the tropics. There's things like Figbirds and koels and parrots and bowerbirds and things like that that you can attract if you if you're lucky enough to have those those cool birds nearby. The main thing is that probably the number one most. One rule is keep the food fresh and keep the feeding table clean. After you clean a food table, use a bleach solution every every day to a few days when you clean that food up. Because there's been a lot of cases elsewhere in the US and in Europe where really deadly bird diseases have spread through populations of wild birds that have decimated them and largely driven by people putting out food in their backyards and not cleaning tables properly. Because sometimes you see bird feeders and there are, dozens and dozens of birds and often different species all vying for the food that you've put out, which is really exciting to see. But it also is a reminder that these birds are getting in really close contact with maybe individuals, the same species that they wouldn't normally be so close to, or individuals of other bird species and, and sometimes diseases as as we know from COVID-19, diseases can jump from from species to species in rare occasions. And that can also happen at bird, at bird feeding tables, which which wouldn't normally happen in wild areas. You could bring species together that you normally wouldn't. So making sure your feeding tables are clean and just like water that they're out of harm's way from from predators and that they're placed somewhere where there's smaller birds can get shelter, those things are all really important.
Kirsty: That's great advice. If you're going to commit to feeding birds, you've got to do right by them. That means researching the correct food to feed them, cleaning the feeder regularly and ensuring that they are not in harm's way. As Tom mentioned, different people have got different opinions about feeding wild birds in Australia. If you happen to see someone feeding magpies mince in the street, you could have a gentle and respectful conversation with them about what they might need to add to their mince to make it more healthy. I'll put a link to Darryl Jones' book in the episode notes. For Tom, birdwatching has opened up a whole new world of things that he never noticed in nature before.
Tom: Birds are everywhere. That's why so many people are so enraptured by them. Guess what I've really come to appreciate over time is that going out birdwatching and really enjoying that, I've also become much more interested in everything else around the birds as well. Guess that started with wanting to know what birds were feeding on plants they were. They were using in the wild. And then that led to kind of being able to identify 1 or 2 plants and then being interested in finding out, hang on, what are these other plants that are around and what's that flowering at this time of year? And then slowly you start as well as looking up into the trees, you start looking down as well onto the ground, into the undergrowth. And that's actually been one of the most exciting things over the years, is become comfortable with a lot of the birds in my area, suddenly realising there's this whole world of of nature and biodiversity and wonder and excitement that I haven't even scratched the surface of, when suddenly I have started noticing lichens or fungus in autumn and winter or different plants flowering at different times of year. And that's been one of the most exciting things for me over time. So I guess I would encourage maybe when you're out birdwatching to to not always birdwatch, funnily enough, you can get an even greater appreciation for the natural world if you open your senses to everything around the smells, the sights, the sounds. Obviously by developing a interest in, things beyond birds and the nature that's out there. Beyond birds, you develop a greater appreciation for what we have, what we've lost, and you understand better ways to actually conserve all of it. Better ways to attract birds to your garden by seeing what they use, better ways to understand how all those ecosystem pieces fit together. And I think it makes any part of nature really interesting. So even if you get to a spot where you're like, "Oh, there's actually not many birds here as I was hoping. It's pretty quiet". And we've all had those days birding when it seems pretty dull. But if you're in any part of bit of intact bush or, along a nature strip or along a creek, then you can kind of just pivot and appreciate and enjoy all these other things whilst you're distracted. Then you'll probably actually spend enough time there and see that rare bird you're trying to see as well.
Kirsty: Well, Wekend Birders, we now have some really good info that we can use to get out there and improve our gardens, nature strips balconies and courtyards. We also have some advice that we can share with the people around us. The Noisy Miner recording was uploaded by Marc Anderson on Xeno-canto. More information about bird-friendly gardens and the Wild Deserts project that Tom is working on can be found in the episode notes and on the Weekend Birder website. And keep those topic suggestions rolling in, friends, and I'll keep doing my best to make it happen.
