Earth Deeds: Planting Food Trees for the Birds
I have my home in the forest along with many other birds and animals and when I'm planning my landscaping I always include food trees for birds.
Cedar Wax Wings eating berries on the Mountain Ash Tree
Hear the Sounds of a Flock of Cedar Wax Wings Eating Berries of the Mountain Ash
The Mountain Ash is one of my favorite landscaping trees, beautiful around the yard and the birds love them.
We planted half a dozen of them around the house and the birds have dropped numerous berries in the bush so we now have lots of young mountain ash trees growing as part of the succession of growth of trees on our land. The older coniferous trees died off due to to much water but the mountain ash seem to be thriving in those conditions, producing more berries for the birds.
Another tree we planted and the birds have dropped many of the berries around our land producing new plants is the chokecherry. Now we have lots of berries for the birds and for us too.
The young growth bushes also provide food for the spruce grouse in the winter which feeds on the buds.
Choke Cherries
Pincherries we planted for berries for us, for jellies and for the birds.
Pincherry
Seed Head of the Lilacs which birds love!
Along with these trees we have also planted other trees and shrubs for the birds:
- Saskatoon
- Malus Crab-apple (A very hardy tree that will help pollinate our other apple trees)
- Red-osier dogwood (berries have high fat content, great food for migrating birds)
- Amur and Manitoba Maple (plenty of seeds for the birds to eat)
Some vines we planted which provide food and shelter for the birds are:
- Virginia Creeper
- Clematis
Clematis Tangutica
The blue flowers of the delphinium is full of nectar that the humming birds love!
We were fortunate to get many these berry bushes free from the PFRA (which sadly has shut down and no longer supplies trees for rehabilitating the farm lands, etc.) This gave us plenty of trees to plant for us and the birds!
I hope when you are planning your landscape that you will consider the birds and provide some food trees and shrubs.
Photos and video are my originals from my homestead in the Boreal forest of Saskatchewan, Canada.
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This is fantastic! We love the birds too!
A healthy ecosystem can and should support lots of life!
How true!
I am truly envious of your homestead and all the wonderful things you do there. Hopefully one day I will have my own land and home, and be able to create a permaculture garden. I am going to grow more in the backyard of my buddy's house next season in the mean time.
I do hope you get piece of land and can make your home there or at least find a place that you can call home that has a bit of permanency to it. I have lived on this land for over thirty years and love the freedom it provides me to live how I want and it also gives me a place where I can retreat from all the craziness of the world.
I tired to get a piece of land with a couple people, but all that did was lead me to having to probably file a civil suite for violating our notorized contract... as it stands right now I am owed thousands... quite a sad story, I will leave it there for now. Lets just say I do not know how acquiring land in the future will happen after this experience, it is quite difficult these days. I am driving on pure faith in the Earth to provide it eventually, since doing it on my own seems highly improbable.
Do you own the land you live on? I am curious what the story is of you coming to live there.
Yes we own 40 acres, mostly forest. My sister's husband had family up here so they bought land and built their home here. I use to come visit and I loved it. We bought land back when it was $800 per acre. Raised most of the money by planting trees and I also taught swimming lessons. There was a real community here and people worked together to build their houses. A lot of the building material was reclaimed building material or deals found from the local lumber companies etc. Then we got matching grants from the government for building too. It is further up north with a harsher climate. My friends from the city always said "why do you want to move up north?" We know how to prepare for winters and when it gets too cold we just stick closer to the fires. Where about's did you try to buy land?
Wow, wooded property for $800 per acre... I can only dream of such a thing, and would jump on it if I had the chance. That is really cool you used re-purposed materials for dwellings also. Props. I tried to here in Oregon, but things just went south, as I explained.
Prices have really goe up since then but there is crown land around our place and every once in awhile the government will put it up for lease or even sell some. It usually goes for cheaper prices than on the open market.
Right on, hopefully one day the right situation/price/location will arise.
this is an awesome #EarthDeed @porters. Tree planting is a noble activity that is has soo many benefits. Keep planting!
Every year I seem to be planting some type of tree or sharing young trees that have propagated themselves around our place.
Such a special bio diverse little world @porters. Some of those trees I've never even heard of. I love learning about the different nature across the ocean. Do you tap that maple? I would love to be able to get a maple here for our homestead but we barely even get the real maple syrup imported in SA (and then for ridiculous prices). Does your little forest attract many other creatures beside birds, bees and butterflies?
This is the Manitoba maple that we grow, not the sugar maple, but I have tapped it, it just takes more boiling down to get that real sweet taste. I have also tapped the birch trees to get a lovely refreshing tonic drink.
Our forest is home to bears, coyote, wolves, cougars, squirrels, weasels, fox, deer, moose, elk (love to hear them bugling in the fall. These are the more common ones.
It sounds like you have a lovely forest home! Although I'm sure also predator problems? Thank you for explaining about the maples. That's fascinating. Is it easy to tap them? I didn't realize you could tap birch. You have some special trees!
We have a big dog plus our neighbor has 2 big dogs that keeps a lot of predators away.
Yes it's very easy to tap maples. Pick one that is at least 8 inches in diameter. drill a hole with a 7/16 bit or 5/16 bit depending on the size of spile you have. Drill in about 1 1/2 - 2 inches into the sapwood. Drill at a slight angle down to make for a better flow. Place a piece of tubing (same diameter as the hole) - into the hole I put in a nail and hang my bucket to catch the sap. To get a good flow of sap you want to do it before the leaves bud out and when you have warm days and cool nights. Do you have maples there?
Oh how I'd love to see or try it! No we don't have maples here. They tap the aloe ferrox which is prolific especially in our area. Obviously because it's bitter people use it medicinally and not as enthusiastically as tapping into maples!
Is that related to the aloe vera or is it a type of tree. We use to use the juice of the aloe vera for medicinal purposes buy the juice then we just got a plant to harvest are own. Of course we have to bring it in in winter for it is not frost hardy.
It's all part of the aloe family. Not a tree but a very tall, and prickly leafed aloe. South Africa has well over 100 species of aloe. The ferrox is prolific in our area and my goats love it. This isn't the best photo to send you but if you do a search then the ferrox is probably the aloe you'll find! It's extremely hardy. Even in the drought there are very few that have died. We have frost in winter, probably not as bad as you but they still cope.
Wonderful that you have this amazing plant growing so plentifully! You should see my pathetic aloe that keeps on growing, although I tend to neglect it because it doesn't seem to need much care. So many wonderful medicinal qualities too!