Birds need bugs

There are lots of positive things we can do to support our garden birds. High on the list is ensuring a rich supply of natural food, including insects.

If you love the garden birds you need to love insects too because without insects our birds (and many other creatures would die). We need insects and invertebrates in our gardens to keep our soil healthy and help break down our garden waste. Without insects our compost systems would not work, we would be knee deep in dead creatures and many, many of our favourite creatures, especially the birds, would starve to death.

But the latest news on insect decline is extremely worrying. We have lost around 60% of insects in the last 20 years. That means our insect eating friends like some of our garden birds have to work much harder to find food. Imagine what the equivalent loss of our own food-stuff would look like. Bare shelves in the supermarket are not distant memory for us. And in nature birds and other insect eating creatures are in decline too, partly because without enough bugs, the chicks do not survive.

Nesting birds

Right now, the birds are starting to nest in and around our gardens. Some will nest in the little wooden houses that we put up around our gardens. Others nest in the hedges and shrubs and trees.

It’s so uplifting to hear their song and watch their activity in the garden. We can, of course, supplement their diet with bird feeders containing quality bird food. But we need to remember that different birds have different diets. It’s vital keep feeders, bird tables and bird baths clean, to prevent the spread of disease. Choose top quality, low-mess bird food; it prevents a build-up of debris beneath the feeders that attracts rodents and spreads disease. Cheap bird food is full of fillers and causes all sorts of problems,  it is not a cost-effective choice. Present a peanut feeder of fresh bird peanuts and a seed feeder filled with quality bird seed.

But remember that the birds need natural food too. This includes seeds, fruits, berries and nuts, but at this time of year there is little of this in our gardens. Instead, many of the birds rely on insects to supplement their diet as they prepare to nest and raise their chicks. They shuffle and scuffle through the leaves, if we haven’t raked them up, looking for bugs. They forage on loose soil digging for worms. They feast on overwintering insects hunkered down in cracks and crevices around the garden, in the tree bark and in hollow garden stems. Garden birds are free pest control for gardeners.

As spring starts to warm the soil and new plant shoots appear through the soil, many sap sucking creatures and leaf munching invertebrates start to appear. To the gardener these may be regarded as foes, but honestly, we need to rethink our stance and remember that these creatures are natural bird food. These bugs are multiplying just when our nesting birds need more food to sustain them. It’s nature working at its best, coordinating the timing of food when and where it is most needed. If we reach for a pesticide to spray these insects and remove them from our gardens, we starve the birds and other wildlife that we love too. Not to mention the elephant in the garden? Why oh why do we think it’s OK to douse our plants and gardens with poison. Sometimes we spray edible plants too that we will feed to our family and eat ourselves? Utter madness, especially when we have free pest control in our gardens.

Baby food

Once the little bird eggs have hatched their attentive parents are frantic searching for things to feed them. Baby birds can’t eat seeds and nuts, they need protein rich caterpillars and other insects to grow and thrive. Those wriggly caterpillars feeding on the plants are food for chicks. One nest of ten blue tit chicks needs one thousand caterpillars a day to keep them alive. But it you’ve sprayed the caterpillars with insectides to kill them, then what will the chicks eat. Caterpillars, aphids, and other garden insects are baby food for birds. And in many instances our plants are baby food for the caterpillars before they transform into the butterflies and moths that we love. Plants are the bottom layer of the food chain and food for caterpillars, aphids and other leaf munching creatures like slugs and snails. If we start to understand the balance of nature and allow the natural balance to restore, we won’t need pesticides and can harness the power of free-pest control and ensure that birds and other creatures have plenty of food too.

Free pest-control

There are so many precious creatures in our gardens and beyond, which are predators too. They eat other creatures but may also be pollinators. Sometimes it’s the larvae that actively seek out and eat aphids and other garden bugs. Ladybird larvae and hoverfly larvae have a voracious appetite for greenfly and blackfly and will decimate a spring population of aphids very quickly. You don’t need to buy pesticides; there’s a bug-eat-bug hierarchy in nature that does it for you. For free! Adult hoverflies and ladybirds are pollinators too, so every life-stage of these garden insects are important.

What do wasps do?

Even the vastly misunderstood wasps have a vital role to play in nature. The social wasps (the ones that annoy us in mid-summer) have a lifecycle very similar to the bumblebees, with the Queen wasps emerging in March and April to start nest building. The first generation are female workers that visit flowers for energy rich nectar. These workers, along with the Queen are important pollinators. But unlike bees, that feed their babies protein rich pollen, the wasps gather protein rich insects to feed to their larvae. And it’s not just the social wasps that do that. We have around 7000 species other wasps in the UK, the majority of these are solitary wasps (they don’t sting) and they are also doing a free pest-control service in an around your garden. It’s another good reason to live and let live and appreciate the little things that really do make the world go round. So, if you want to keep seeing the garden birds, you need to make sure that you have a healthy insect population in your garden. Simple actions can make a huge difference.

• Make your own garden compost – many mini-beasts are part of the composting system.
• Feed the soil with your garden compost – it will feed all the lower levels of the food chain, improve your soil and feed your plants – for free.
• Reduce digging over the soil – leave the soil structure to remain undisturbed so that soil creatures can do their stuff.
• Stop using chemicals in your garden – save money and help the planet.
• Allow some woody stems and dry wood to break down naturally – it’s good for beetles and other pest eating creatures.
• Leave the leaves under the hedge – they protect many overwintering creatures.
• Leave a wild patch somewhere in the garden – it’s a safe haven for mini-beasts and wildlife.
• Embrace the weeds where you can – they are native wild flowers that feed the pollinators.
• Learn to recognise insects and appreciate their role – some of them are very cute.
• Remember that most insects don’t sting, bite or eat your plants – don’t believe the scare stories in the tabloids.