How to make your home a haven for songbirds

With spring in the air, homeowners take to the great outdoors where the flowers are blooming and the birds are filling the air with their song.

Here are 10 simple home projects to attract songbirds to your yard.

Create a songbird border along your property edge by planting trees and shrubs that meet the needs of birds throughout the year. Select native plants adapted to the weather extremes of your local climate. The border can take the form of a hedge or windbreak, depending on your property size.

Plant several of each species adjacent to each other, selecting a mix of plants, with the tallest planted at the edges of the property and shorter species tiered toward your home. Include at least one species of thorny tree, such as hawthorn or raspberry, for nesting. Also include evergreens, such as spruce, holly, or juniper, for cover. Plant berryproducing shrubs-such as dogwood, serviceberry and viburnum-that will provide fruit throughout the seasons.

Plant long-lived native trees like oaks and maples where space permits. Such trees can provide food, shelter, and singing perches for birds for centuries to come. Planting a long-lived tree is a gift to future generations of birds and people.

Create a brush pile in a corner of your property. Each time a storm drops limbs, heap them up. During spring cleanup, save those downed branches and tree trunks from the community wood chipper. Layer the larger logs as a foundation, then build up the pile in successive layers. In large fields that are growing into young forest, create living brush piles by cutting neighboring saplings most of the way through the trunks, then pulling them into a collective heap. Songbirds will find shelter from extreme weather in such cover throughout the year.

Rake leaves under shrubs to create mulch and natural feeding areas for ground-feeding birds such as sparrows, towhees and thrashers. Earthworms, pill bugs, insects and spiders will thrive in the decomposing leaf mulch and will in turn be readily eaten by many songbirds. In general, overly tidy gardeners are poor bird gardeners.

Remove invasive plants from your property. Learn which species are native and which are not. Most invasive species hail from other continents. Because they have no natural predators here, they often form monocultures and crowd out native species. In contrast, native trees, shrubs, vines and groundcovers typically provide a mix of foods that ripen just in time for migrating birds and offer better nesting sites.

Reduce your lawn by at least 25 percent to favor meadow plants and taller grasses. Tall grasses provide seeds and nesting places for birds. Cut this meadow just once each year, and let the remainder of the lawn grow 3 to 4 inches tall before cutting.

Take the "healthy yard pledge" to avoid lawn pesticides and wasteful sprinklers by visiting www.audubonathome.org/ pledge. Currently, 50 percent of U.S. households treat their lawns with chemicals that kill about 7 million birds each year. These chemicals also leach into our groundwater, where they move to wells, streams, lakes and oceans. Learn more about healthy habitats at the website www.audubonathome.org.

Clean out old bird and mouse nests from nest boxes in early spring. When setting out new nest boxes, consider the preferred habitat for different

species as well as the size of the entrance hole and its distance above the ground. Face boxes to the east in northern latitudes to provide extra warmth. In forests, play " w o o d pecker" by using a power drill to create 1inch holes in dead snags 4 to 5 feet off the ground. These holes will serve as nest cavity starts for chickadees and titmice.

Create a bathing and drinking pool for birds by setting out a shallow bird bath

or upside-down garbage can lid. If cats visit your yard, be sure to place the pool on a pedestal. Clean it frequently with a stiff brush to prevent algae growth, and replace the water every few days to eliminate mosquito larvae. For

greater success,

add a dripping

device.

Clean tube

feeders with a

bottle brush and a

10 percent solution

of non-chlorine

bleach solution. Rinse

thoroughly and dry in

the sun before refilling.

Under feeders, rake up

soggy seed that could grow deadly mold. Move feeders close to the

house to avoid window strikes. Collisions with windows may kill as many as a billion birds in the U. S. each year. Birds at feeders that are spooked by a hawk or other predator will scatter in all directions. Move feeders within 3 feet of a window. At such close distances, birds are less likely to gather lethal momentum when startled. The birds will be safer, and you'll get a better view.

Keep your cat indoors for the safety of both the birds and your cat. There are about 100 million pet and stray cats in the U. S. They kill hundreds of millions of birds each year, especially in the spring when young songbirds are fledging, often on or near the ground. And cats themselves are safer from collisions with cars, predators, diseases and parasites when kept indoors.