Introduction

This book is about the many birds that visit my backyard year around. I have taken my skills in photography to capture remarkable, colorful birds in their everyday habit and to share with you, the readers of this book, pictures and information about birds that may have visited your backyard.

At any time of year, you can look around in your backyard and a colorful little bird will catch your eye. After watching the birds in my backyard for a few months, I decided to intentionally attract them to the backyard more often. I went to the local library and began a research on birds. I discovered that children and adults are fascinated by birds and that millions of people in the United States participate in feeding wild birds. This trend is rapidly growing today.

Bird Needs and Behavior

In my research I found that birds require four basic things to survive in the wild: food, water, protection from danger, and a place to raise their young safety. In nature birds fulfill these needs in a variety of ways. Birds choose their menu from the wide variety of resources that nature provides. Foods they eat include insects, spiders, grubs and worms, nuts and seeds, soft fruits and berries, tree sap, flower nectar, the tender young leaves and buds of grass trees, and shrubs.

Birds can be resourceful in finding water: a birdbath, rain puddles, garden hoses and streams. Birds protect their young from cats and squirrels by building nesting holes in tree trunks. They build a nest in the crotch of tree limbs or shrub branches with sticks and twigs, grass, leaves and strips of bark, string, yarn and tissue.

Bird Facts

Birds have been around at least 140 million years. 8,650 species of birds have been identified in the world today.