Clean yard unfriendly to winter birds

Tony Ianniello will not spend time this fall pruning his shrubs and trees, bagging leaves, cutting the grass short and generally making his property nice, neat and trim in preparation for winter. Instead, Ianniello wants to make sure his home is a refuge for the scores of birds that will be looking for food and warmth during the coldest time of year in Somers, N.Y. He will follow a number of practices to make a bird-friendly yard so that if snow blankets the region, his yard will be a riot of hopping, chirping color, just as it was last winter.

“I had piles of wood on the ground,” Ianniello says, “and there were robins and bluebirds, cardinals and other ground feeders out looking for insects.”

Ianniello, a 54-year-old electrical engineer, also maintained a heated bird bath.

“I had the littlest chickadees and a red-tailed hawk land on that thing because they are always looking for open water in the wintertime,” he says. “It was a real treat. In the middle of winter, birds would line up in the trees, hanging around and waiting their turn to go into the water. It’s hysterical watching them.”

Taking care of birds during the winter is a longtime avocation for Ianniello, who also serves as vice president of an area Audubon Society. The more than 70 species of birds that remain in his region during the winter – and their Canadian cousins – spend a considerable amount of time looking for food and shelter during the bleakest time of year. Hospitable back yards play an important role in helping them survive.

“Making a lawn all nice and tidy in the fall is a fashion,” says Brooke Beebe, project director of the Native Plant Center in Valhalla, N.Y. “But we don’t have to do all that work and we can leave food and shelter for all the birds.”

“It’s a good idea not to cut down the cone flowers, winterberries, goldenrod, asters, hawthorns and black-eyed Susans,” Beebe says, “because all of these are good for the migrating birds and the birds that stay here all year.”

The Audubon Society sponsors an Audubon At Home program designed to encourage homeowners to make their property hospitable to birds year-round. Paul Green, the program’s director, says the society discourages homeowners from pruning bushes or cutting native grasses in preparation for winter.

“The bushes serve two roles,” he says, in many cases providing both food and shelter.

Green says when unpruned bushes are covered with snow, particularly if leaves are packed around the base, an “igloo effect” is created that helps the birds survive.

“It can be close to zero with heavy snow cover in much of the garden,” he says. “But trapped underneath the bush are pockets of air, which are kept warm by the soil. It can be 20 to 30 degrees or more difference inside. It’s a self-contained climate that provides warmth and shelter for small, ground-feeding birds.”

When there’s snow, piles of sticks or leaves in the yard also provide birds with igloo sanctuaries, and hibernating bugs can be found in these natural refrigerators.

Green also suggests homeowners resist temptation to clean their yards by raking up leaves and having them hauled away. The leaves are home to insects that birds feed on and can be used to pack around bushes for shelter.

Taking care of the birds in winter has a sober side. Birds are creatures of habit and tend to return to the same places to breed and eat.

“When the food is here the birds are here,” Ianniello says. “And when the food is gone, a lot of them just die.”