There are lots of good reasons to welcome birds into your garden, but here’s one more: they eat a whole heck of a lot of bugs! You can easily attract birds that will gladly gobble up beetles, snails, aphids, whitefly, scale, caterpillars, ants, earwigs, and then some. For example, insects make up more than half of Starlings’ diet, and they are probably the deadliest enemy of cutworms and japanese beetles out there.
Photo by JP Stanley
To attract birds to your balcony, roof top, or urban yard, you have to make your garden look attractive to birds. Twiggy shrubs and small trees offer cover to a bird when startled and will make them feel more secure about venturing closer to your garden. I often see Lantana, Bougainvillea and Potato Vines trained into patio trees. All three provide the kind of shrubby protection and perching options birds like.
Birds are also attracted to water for drinking and bathing. You’ll get bonus points from them if that water is moving. Don’t worry, moving water doesn’t require crazy wiring or a call to a landscape contractor. There are plenty of solar powerd fountains
This might sound counterproductive, since you’re trying to attract birds so that they’ll eat bugs, but putting out a small feeder is another good idea to get the word out that the eating is good at your place. As you’ll notice in the list below, some of the most common birds at urban bird feeders are also great bug eaters. The feeder will entice them in and then the creepy crawlies on your plants will do the rest.
Which Birds Will Eat What?
To show you a bit of what you could get rid of by attracting the right birds, I made a list of common birds seens in urban environments and noted what kind of bugs they like to eat.
- European Starlings: cutworm, weevils, ground beetles, millipedes, spiders
- Grackles: beetles, grasshoppers, caterpillars, spiders
- Killdeers: beetles, caterpillars, grasshoppers, fly larvae, spiders, worms, snails
- Orioles: caterpillars, larvae, beetles, grasshoppers
- Sparrows: beetles, caterpillars, cutworms
- Swallows: moths, beetles, grasshoppers
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The birds eat the sunflower seeds off the flowers! I could watch them for hours.
I absolutely love this post, Fern! Fantastic info. I’ve been thinking about birds a lot in the last few months, so your compiling this was so helpful to me.
I’ll take the birds that eat the spiders!! lol. Great post – thanks for sharing that info.
I attract many birds to my feeders with black sunflower seeds. I have had goldfinches, house finches, chickadees, titmouse, various sparrows, cardinals, red bellied woodpeckers, blue jays, and flickers. I am in a city, but close to the border with some horse farms and big fields so it’s not as urban feeling as you would think. The birds are fun to watch in the morning while I have my coffee on the patio.
I forgot to say I don’t really want birds that eat spiders, but I know it happens lol. The spiders eat many insects, and they are quite beautiful too, so I like having them around. I do have to watch out for orb spiders in the fall, they like to spin an enormous web that covers the opening to my patio. I walked into it once and I can’t describe the panic and flailing of the arms that happened! So I look out for her, I never kill the orb spider but she creeps me out! All others are very welcome.
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