Go beyond bird feeders! Learn how to create outstanding bird habitats in your own yard with native plants that offer food, cover, and nesting sites for birds. This guide is packed with color photographs, sage advice, detailed instructions, and garden plans. It features nine different habitat gardens for hummingbirds, bluebirds, wintering birds, migrant birds, and birds that frequent prairies, wetlands, lakes, shrublands, and woodlands, along with advice about maintaining your plantings and augmenting them with nest boxes, birdbaths, misters, and perches. The information on recommended plant species includes their native ranges in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin; the birds they attract; their visual characteristics; and their cultivation. Mariette Nowak also describes how gardeners featured in this book have gone beyond their own garden gates to work for the protection and restoration of bird habitat in their neighborhoods and communities. Birdscaping in the Midwest provides many sources of further information, including publications, websites, organizations, and native plant nurseries.
ISBN-13: 9780299291549
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Publication Date: 09-04-2012
Pages: 352
Product Dimensions: 10.10(w) x 6.70(h) x 0.60(d)
Mariette Nowak is an active leader and volunteer for Wild Ones: Native Plants, Natural Landscapes and Lakeland Audubon Society. She is also a public speaker on landscaping, native plants, and birding. Before her retirement, she was director of the Wehr Nature Center, a unit of the Milwaukee County Parks in Wisconsin.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Part 1 Birds & Plants
1 An Ancient Collaboration
2 Going Native
3 The Case against Exotics
Part 2 Gallery of Bird Habitat Gardens
4 The Gardens & Gardeners
Part 3 Native Habitats for Birds: The Basics
5 Getting Started
6 Planning & Design
7 Site Preparation & Planting
Part 4 Bird Habitat Gardens for Specific Birds
8 The Hummingbird Garden
9 The Prairie Bird Garden
10 The Bluebird Savanna Garden
11 The Woodland Bird Garden
12 The Wetland Bird Garden
13 The Migratory Bird Garden
14 The Shrubland Bird Garden
15 The Winter Bird Garden
16 Bird Baths & Water Gardens
Part 5 Midwestern Plants That Attract Birds
17 Trees, Shrubs & Vines
18 Wildflowers, Grasses & Sedges
Part 6 Maintaining & Enhancing Your Bird Habitat Garden
19 Garden Habitat Maintenance
20 Supplemental Housing
21 Supplemental Feeding
22 Problems in Bird Habitat Gardens
Conclusion
Gardeners' Resources
Birding Organizations & Websites
Native Plant & Habitat Enhancement Organizations
Midwestern Native Plant Nurseries & Consultants
Index
About the Author
Photo Credits
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