Bird-Friendly Plants for Winter Forage

Bird-Friendly Plants for Winter Forage

Birdy, It’s Cold Outside

Most native plant fans get a big charge out of seeing creatures provision themselves with the plants in our gardens. This time of year, as the landscape edges toward dormancy, birds top the list. Migratory species need to build up energy reserves to sustain them through their long journeys. The year-round residents are fattening up to be in good physical condition for winter and will need support throughout. At the end of the winter, food for early returning migrants will be critical. Fully supporting our avian friends means having a variety of plants that provide food during fall and winter.

Not surprisingly, many of the most common and beloved native plants are up to the task with seeds or berries that ripen late in the season and persist into winter. Coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, sunflowers, hollies, dogwoods, and more, all provide opportunities to feed the birds when it’s cold outside.

Right Bird, Right Plant

Because they are so interconnected, you can attract specific birds by growing specific plants. Audubon and other bird-friendly organizations provide great guidance, and here are a few suggestions for cold-weather sustenance for particular groups of birds:

Sparrows love tall grasses and thickets, so plant bluestems, gramas, switchgrasses, and prairie grasses. Audubon suggests pairing grasses with blackberries, creating a favored habitat for these small birds. Sparrows also forage on seeds of black-eyed Susans.

Cardinals, grosbeaks, and tanagers feast on sunflowers and the highly nutritious fruit of dogwoods. Northern cardinals will seek out seeds of coneflowers and black-eyed Susans in winter when other food sources are limited.

Finches are partial to the small seeds of asters, sunflowers, coneflowers, blazing stars, and goldenrods. Conifers like eastern red cedar provide berries and shelter in winter, and the finches use the needles for nest building in the summer.

Chickadees and titmice, like many other birds, are drawn to the composite flowers of black-eyed Susans, asters, and blazing stars. The carb-rich fruits of dogwoods provide them with much-needed energy.

The Bigger Bird Picture

These plants offer more than just food. Shrubs with sturdy habits give nesting sites for birds like robins, waxwings, and cardinals. Nectar-producing flowers and munchable foliage attract insects that are an important part of many birds’ diets. Warm-season bunch grasses provide shelter and protection from predators for ground-nesting birds in grassland habitats. Ground dwellers like bobwhite and meadowlarks need escape routes, and they only nest among grasses that provide room to maneuver. To ensure you’re providing important cover for these and other species, leave grasses standing through winter. It’s all intertwined, and every plant has multiple roles to play.

To serve a range of bird species, it’s best to have plants of different heights and sizes in multiple layers. In The Living Landscape, Doug Tallamy discusses “habitat heterogeneity,” referring to the variation in the physical structure of a landscape. The more variation, both vertically and horizontally, the more niches that are available to be filled. He notes that birds illustrate this principle perfectly—they’re found in every layer. Some specialize and stick to a single layer, while others use several, like bluebirds who nest in one layer and forage in another. A species’ layer specificity may vary with the season, as when Hermit Thrushes eschew their usual ground foraging for worms and arthropods and venture into the middle layer in winter. There, they subsist mainly on the nutrient-dense berries of shrubs like winterberry holly and flowering dogwood.

Including a diverse selection of plants that vary in physical structure, in the food they provide, and the time of year they flower will increase the number of bird species your landscape will attract. That strategy offers multiple ways to fulfill birds’ basic requirements for food and shelter. Add in water sources, and you’ve got them covered. If providing habitat is one of the main reasons you choose native plants, provisioning your feathery friends during their time of greatest need is a charge you can embrace.

References:

• Audubon
• Cornell Lab of Ornithology 
• The Living Landscape by Rick Darke and Doug Tallamy
• Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

All images are © Izel Native Plants, unless indicated otherwise.
Opening image: White-crowned Sparrow, Jefferson Shank via The Cornell Lab

Shannon Currey is a horticultural educator with Izel Native Plants. She’s worked in the nursery trade since 2006, and has established herself as an expert on graminoids, including native grasses and sedges. She serves on the North Carolina Plant Conservation Program Scientific Committee and the board of the Perennial Plant Association. In 2022 she joined our team to expand our outreach efforts. Shannon lives in Durham, North Carolina and loves exploring the incredible plant diversity around her.