Snagging Perches For Winged Friends

Most people cut down dead trees. Jesse Grantham plants them.

Grantham, director for Audubon sanctuaries in the Western United States, says the limbs of those dead trees, called “snags,” provide a perching place for a variety of birds.

He is experimenting with a way of attracting birds to an urban setting.

Only a few days after two 25-foot-tall snags had been plopped into 2-foot-deep holes in Sacramento, several species have been seen perched on the bare redwood branches.

The list includes visits by mourning doves, house finches, plain titmice, Anna’s hummingbirds, Swainson’s thrushes, scrub jays, western tanagers, American robins, black phoebes, ash-throated flycatchers, Nuttall’s woodpeckers, mockingbirds, starlings, red-shouldered hawks, bushtits, black-chinned hummingbirds and green herons.

Grantham, whose job includes overseeing more than 8,000 acres owned by the society in California, says the reason birds stop there is that it “probably provides a good visual point for them.”

Grantham would like to see more property owners leave such snags standing as a perch for birds, but he realizes it’s an uphill fight: “It’s a matter of aesthetics for most people.”