Attract birds into your garden

STEPHANIE Davidson from Gardens For Wildlife Ballarat will be sharing how to attract small birds into gardens at Ballarat Green Drinks this month.

Ballarat Green Drinks is an event held the third Thursday of every month from 6.30pm at Bunch of Grapes Hotel.

Run by BREAZE, each evening involves sharing dinner and listening to a talk from an expert about the environment.

Ms Davidson’s session on Thursday 17 August will look at how to create a garden haven for little birds.

“I’ve always been quite interested in plants, the bush and environmental things,” she said. “I joined a Landcare group about 20 years ago and I loved it a lot more than I thought I would.

“Gardens For Wildlife was an extension of those interests.”

Previous talks by Gardens For Wildlife have been more broad, however, this talk will have a focus on attracting small birds into gardens.

“Through doing our garden visits a common response is ‘I want a lot more little birds in my garden’,” said Ms Davidson.

The common methods people may try to attract smaller birds often do not have the desired effect.

“People often when trying to attract wildlife plant things with big showy flowers because they know instructively native plants are good,” said Ms Davidson.

“Inadvertently that attracts bigger birds like magpies and kookaburras so if you want little birds in your garden there are different sorts of plants you should plant and I will be talking about that.”

It is hoped the session will lead to more safe areas for little birds to live in an increasingly urbanised environment.

“A lot of Australian native birds are declining in numbers across the whole country,” said Ms Davidson.

“If we continue to develop land we’re just sort of gradually losing more and more of the resources that small birds need.”

To book this session visit trybooking.com/events/landing/1000430.