[Sean Camara]

Why do birds suddenly appear?: A guide on how to attract birds and butterflies in your garden​

Why do birds suddenly appear?: A guide on how to attract birds and butterflies in your garden
​

Australia is well known as a haven for some of the world's most beautiful fauna and flora.

However, due to housing developments that replace areas of native forests and bushland, it can be a bit of a surprise when you find a small and often cute little creature hiding in your back garden, crawling around your rose bushes and amongst the shrubbery. Think of it as the ultimate outdoor compliment.

Hence, it is important for us to keep our gardens in top shape so we can provide safe habitats and potential nesting sites for some of Australia’s native birds and insects, allowing us to live harmoniously alongside them.

Our backyard can provide shelter and nesting sites to local birds and butterflies. Credit: Getty Images.​

If you’re looking to attract some of Australia’s most beautiful native birds and butterflies, here are some tips for you!

Attracting birds to your garden

Experts advised that some of the best plants to keep in your garden are those that are native to your area.

If you're new to gardening, it is best to start with native plants as they are already acclimated to the conditions in your area. Aside from that, native plants provide a source of food and shelter for your local birds.

Keeping a wide range of plants also allows your garden to be a sanctuary to a diverse species of birds:

1. Nectar-feeding birds

Honeyeaters, wattlebirds, and spinebills are some of the nectar-feeding bird species in Australia. To attract them, simply keep plants such as banksia, callistemon, grevillea, eucalyptus and correa flowers.

2. Fruit- and berry-eating birds

Keeping lilly pilly and dianella fruit can attract parrots such as rosellas and lorikeets. Plus they add colour and contrast to your backyard sanctuary.

Lilly pilly and dianella are good plants to keep for attracting fruit- and berry-eating birds. Credit: news.com.au.​

3. Seed-eating birds

Australia is blessed with a wide array of seed-eating birds, from the largest parrots down to the tiniest finches.

Australian cockatoos and parrots enjoy foraging on casuarina, acacia, banksia and hakea seeds.

Australian cockatoos and parrots enjoy foraging on casuarina, acacia, banksia and hakea seeds. Credit: news.com.au​

4. Grass-eating birds

Finches are known to forage on kangaroo grass (Themeda australis), tussock grasses (Poa spp.) and Lomandra spp.

Finches enjoy foraging on kangaroo grass. Credit: news.com.au.​

5. Insectivorous birds

If you're looking to get rid of creepy crawlies, then attracting silvereyes and fantails is an absolute must as they feast on aphids, moths and caterpillars.

Keeping mulch and leaf litter is a good idea to attract these birds as they enjoy scratching around for insects.

Other must-haves in your garden for attracting birds in your garden include keeping grasses — such as Festuca, Lomandra and Poa — as they provide nesting materials for the birds.

It is also advisable to keep different types of nesting boxes that suit different types of birds.

Additionally, adding a constant source of water for drinking and bathing in is also recommended.

Lastly, if you are a cat owner, it is recommended to supervise your cats whenever they lurk in your garden as they are one of the biggest threats to native birds.

Attracting butterflies and other pollinators

It can't be denied that watching colourful butterflies and moths fluttering around your garden is pure bliss.

If you're looking to attract these beautiful insects in your garden a range of different pollen and nectar-rich flowers is a must.

Aside from attracting adult butterflies, providing a good source of caterpillar food will also be ideal for butterflies to make your garden their nesting site.

Some of the butterfly-attracting plants include pentas, buddleja, sedum, marigolds, scabiosa, dianthus, Queen Anne’s lace, snapdragon, larkspur, ageratum, aster and echinacea.

Do you have a wide range of wildlife visiting your garden? Tell us about it and post photos on the forum! We love hearing about the great ways in which people decorate their gardens.

 

[JayKay]

Don't misunderstand me, I do love the birds in my area. Over the years, the little birds have gone.
No longer are there any Sparrows, Willie wag tails, Silvereyes, Fantails, Blue Wrens, Red Robins, Starlings.
Bigger birds have pushed them out.
We are now inundated with Indian Mynahs, Noisy Miners, Ravens, and various forms of pigeons, galahs and lorikeets.
The Australian Noisy Miners are very aggressive, attacking viciously, pulling out pedestrians' clumps of hair, clamping their claws onto shoulders, pecking ears and faces while they fly directly at your eyes. They are Native birds, so are protected.
The lorikeets have just stripped my tree of all it's nectarines.
They have even eaten the stones, leaving a mess on the ground which looks like saw dust.
I'm happy to share, but the birds obviously are not. I didn't get one!
The tree is huge, too hard for little ol' me to cover with mesh that can have holes no further apart than 5mm X 5mm, according to the new Victorian Government regulations.
I do have a water bath for my feathered friends as well as many flowers attracting butterflies and bees.

 

[Isabell]

Thanks for this inspiring piece Sean! I love seeing birds in my garden, but am only visited by a limited range. I will keep your article for planning future plantings. Also loved the photos. Birds are beautiful!

 

[Jaclynn McKenzie]

Don't misunderstand me, I do love the birds in my area. Over the years, the little birds have gone.
No longer are there any Sparrows, Willie wag tails, Silvereyes, Fantails, Blue Wrens, Red Robins, Starlings.
Bigger birds have pushed them out.
We are now inundated with Indian Mynahs, Noisy Miners, Ravens, and various forms of pigeons, galahs and lorikeets.
The Australian Noisy Miners are very aggressive, attacking viciously, pulling out pedestrians' clumps of hair, clamping their claws onto shoulders, pecking ears and faces while they fly directly at your eyes. They are Native birds, so are protected.
The lorikeets have just stripped my tree of all it's nectarines.
They have even eaten the stones, leaving a mess on the ground which looks like saw dust.
I'm happy to share, but the birds obviously are not. I didn't get one!
The tree is huge, too hard for little ol' me to cover with mesh that can have holes no further apart than 5mm X 5mm, according to the new Victorian Government regulations.
I do have a water bath for my feathered friends as well as many flowers attracting butterflies and bees.

Oh dear, you do have quite an issue don't you with the birds. Yes the bigger birds seem to push out a lot of the lovely smaller birds. We have quite a lot of noisy miners on our standard surburban block in Qld, but mostly they just come in to our permanent water bird bath for early morning and afternoon baths. I have known them in the past to swoop very close to my eyes, so I always wear sunglasses when I go outside where they are. I feel so sorry for you that your miners have become very aggressive. Does it happen only during nesting season? I've recently bought myself a new bird book that's illustrated, as my old one had photos, as sometimes it's so hard to identify them from photos. My book says that the miners nest is an untidy sparse of grasses lined with hair and fur placed in vertical forks of saplings, or horizontal forks among branches of a larger tree. Can be 1-3 eggs. They range from South East Qld to Victoria. So, it looks like they want the hair for their nests. We have Lorikeets coming to our 1 Grevillia bush early every morning for the blossoms but they don't hang around for long. Other tall shrubs we had in our front yard, that they loved for the yellow blossoms, had to be removed, so we don't see them there anymore. It must be so disappointing that you don't get to eat any of your Nectarines.

For years now we've had generations of Magpies breeding in the large tree in our front yard where we also have permanent water for them. They know us well and do not bother us, but I've noticed that they aren't hanging around as much lately. We also have Plovers in the street but I haven't noticed any eggs on the ground, and so far we haven't had any problems from them, They've been in our area for a long time. I've never seen them drinking at our water though. I guess that birds move around a bit according to conditions. We recently went to Green Island off Queensland and found that the most common bird there was the Buff-Banded Crake, that is a lot like a quail in size and shape. We previously visited the island in 2009 and it was entirely different, with no sign of the Crake then, but the island was inundated with Curlews. This time we didn't see a single one of them. We saw quite a few Curlews in Cairns though. I love watching birds but it's no fun if they misbehave.

 

[Jaclynn McKenzie]

Oh dear, you do have quite an issue don't you with the birds. Yes the bigger birds seem to push out a lot of the lovely smaller birds. We have quite a lot of noisy miners on our standard surburban block in Qld, but mostly they just come in to our permanent water bird bath for early morning and afternoon baths. I have known them in the past to swoop very close to my eyes, so I always wear sunglasses when I go outside where they are. I feel so sorry for you that your miners have become very aggressive. Does it happen only during nesting season? I've recently bought myself a new bird book that's illustrated, as my old one had photos, as sometimes it's so hard to identify them from photos. My book says that the miners nest is an untidy sparse of grasses lined with hair and fur placed in vertical forks of saplings, or horizontal forks among branches of a larger tree. Can be 1-3 eggs. They range from South East Qld to Victoria. So, it looks like they want the hair for their nests. We have Lorikeets coming to our 1 Grevillia bush early every morning for the blossoms but they don't hang around for long. Other tall shrubs we had in our front yard, that they loved for the yellow blossoms, had to be removed, so we don't see them there anymore. It must be so disappointing that you don't get to eat any of your Nectarines.

For years now we've had generations of Magpies breeding in the large tree in our front yard where we also have permanent water for them. They know us well and do not bother us, but I've noticed that they aren't hanging around as much lately. We also have Plovers in the street but I haven't noticed any eggs on the ground, and so far we haven't had any problems from them, They've been in our area for a long time. I've never seen them drinking at our water though. I guess that birds move around a bit according to conditions. We recently went to Green Island off Queensland and found that the most common bird there was the Buff-Banded Crake, that is a lot like a quail in size and shape. We previously visited the island in 2009 and it was entirely different, with no sign of the Crake then, but the island was inundated with Curlews. This time we didn't see a single one of them. We saw quite a few Curlews in Cairns though. I love watching birds but it's no fun if they misbehave.

I tried to send you a photo I took of the Crake on Green Island but the server said that my photo was too large to send unfortunately.

 

[JayKay]

The Noisy Miners are aggressive all year, and swoop close to your head all year.
From August until December, they fly directly at your face, and touch you with their beaks or feet or wings.
They click their beaks next to your ears, or screech very loudly as they flap their wings in your face.
This year, they tried to pull the little hairs/brush hairs out of the bottom of my screen door.
I covered the brush with strong plastic, but they still tried to get at the hairs....I could hear them pulling when the screen door rattled.
Cheeky varmints!

 

[Jaclynn McKenzie]

Yes I remember now that they click as they fly near your eyes. It would be so bad if they connected, a person could lose an eye.
Your noisy miners are starting to sound like something out of Hitckcocks 'The birds' movie. They sound very desperate. Just a thought,
what if you were to get a bag of hair from the sweepings of a local hairdresser. Maybe they would leave you alone? But then, that sounds
like a job for life!

 

[Liz]

I am sorry the birds annoy people. Living in suburbia in our little green oasis, I love the magpies, miky miners, rainbow lorikeets and crows. The kookaburras are a bit noisy at times but we have 3 bird baths down the back of our complex and It is lovely to just sit and watch them all talk to each other. The other birds have been a bit scare of late but we have lots of plants for them to eat. I have my balcony netted in, from my previous cats, who used to love running up and down watching the birds as I do as well. I think it is a sign of a healthy environment. Even saw a baby maggie a couple of weeks ago and spoke to him/her and it wasn't frightened by me at all. I think it is all grown now because I haven't seen it since and sincerely hope noone has taken a pot shot at it. I can understand with crops they can be annoying but I like my birds. They are a warning system for us down the back that someone is coming onto the territory who is not familar to them. I hope for as long as I am here, they will be around in this concrete jungle Brisbane has become. Of course the possums can be a bit of nuisance but you take them as part of the ecosystem.

 

[Ashmenou]

Hi. I live in Canberra in a unit. What are the best plants/flowers should I plant in a pot. My balcony faces south. Thanks

 

[Rotty]

I love photographing birds and have hundreds of photos. I make books for my own enjoyment from these pics. Its nice to look at
while having a coffee on the balcony and remembering where I took those photo's. Cheap to have put into nice hardback and shiny page books online.
I use Snapfish for most of my books, calendars for friends, and cards for all occasions.

 

[Jaclynn McKenzie]

I love photographing birds and have hundreds of photos. I make books for my own enjoyment from these pics. Its nice to look at
while having a coffee on the balcony and remembering where I took those photo's. Cheap to have put into nice hardback and shiny page books online.
I use Snapfish for most of my books, calendars for friends, and cards for all occasions.

I love photography also and want to have some of my photos put into a photo book but I haven't sorted out the ones to put into books yet. I've used Snapfish before to have calendars of my photos of my travels printed for friends at the end of the year though. I think I'll go to the local Office Works to have the books done.

 

[Jaclynn McKenzie]

Hi. I live in Canberra in a unit. What are the best plants/flowers should I plant in a pot. My balcony faces south. Thanks

I'm in Qld and Canberra gets so cold in winter and warm in summer. Perhaps you might be able to go to your local nursery to get their advice.