Developing a Habitat: Food Sources

Over the next several days I would like to talk about what goes in to a successful habitat and what I have personally developed for our own.

The NWF (National Wildlife Fed.) has thirteen different items listed as acceptable options for providing food for wildlife.  Eight are plant foods (seeds, berries, nectar, foliage/twigs, nuts, fruits, sap and pollen) and five are 'supplemental feeders' - seed, squirrel, hummingbird, suet and butterfly.

As you can tell, a goal should be to provide as many natural options as you can.  It is not very difficult if you pay attention to what you are planting.  For example, one of my favorite flowers is purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and this plant alone provides four of the plant foods by itself.  The flowers provide pollen and nectar.  The seeds, once the blooms are spent, are eaten by finches.  Finally, you'll notice that the leaves (foliage) are eaten by some insects to a slight degree.

Beyond this, many native shrubs and trees will not only flower but provide berries and fruit.  This is true of viburnums, dogwoods and elder to name just a few.

With our habitat, we maintain as many as four feeding stations.  They are black oil sunflower, suet, nyjer and peanuts in the shell.  In addition we have many pollen and nectar producing flowers, as well as blueberry (Vaccinum corymbosum), American elder (Sambucus canadensis) and a few other plants to provide natural food sources.

Variety is key.

(The image above is a male American goldfinch (Carduelis tristis) feeding at the nyjer feeder).