How to Help: Keep your cat indoors, and take steps to discourage feral cats from visiting your yard. If your cat enjoys time outside, provide vigilant supervision or consider building a catio or other enclosure your pet can enjoy without threatening birds. How to Help: Minimize chemical use in your yard, and when you must use chemicals, read application instructions carefully and follow all recommended use guidelines. Better still, eliminate chemicals and let birds be your natural pest control and weed-eaters. How to Help: Avoid using these traps in your yard. If you have no other options, be sure the traps are positioned appropriately so they are not accessible to other wildlife that may become stuck. How to Help: Don’t feed birds bread, or only offer it as a very rare, extremely limited treat. Consider choosing better bread for birds and making a more nutritious sandwich with a suet or peanut butter and seed filling. How to Help: Use a deep, thick layer of mulch to reduce weeds instead of barrier fabric. If you do want a barrier beneath the mulch, opt for newspaper or cardboard that will naturally degrade and enrich the soil without posing a threat to backyard birds. How to Help: Choose only native plants for your yard, selecting the best regional plants to nurture birds, bees, butterflies, and other local wildlife. If you do want some non-native specimens, opt for varieties that are easily controlled or restrict them to containers. How to Help: Never give birds dryer lint, and instead provide a variety of natural nesting materials such as grass clippings, mud, twigs, pine needles, and plant down. Dryer lint can be reused in a number of ways: as kindling, used for crafts, or composted. How to Help: Clean and sterilize bird feeders regularly using a weak bleach solution that will kill unwanted bacteria and eliminate odors. Don’t forget to wipe down perches, poles, baffles, and nearby surfaces that may also be contaminated, as well as clean under the bird feeder. How to Help: Keep your bird bath cleaned and rinse it out thoroughly with every refill. Bird bath fountains will minimize stagnant water that breeds insects, or consider using a copper bird bath that will stay naturally cleaner. How to Help: Keep feeders and baths properly filled. Smaller feeders may need more frequent refills, but there will be less chance for seed to spoil before it is eaten. Bird baths can be positioned so they are automatically refilled by sprinklers, drips systems, downspouts, or other means. How to Help: Take steps to keep birdhouses safe, including using the proper entrance size and safeguarding birdhouses from predators. Proper mounting will also keep predators from accessing the house, and houses should be cleaned after the nesting season to eliminate mites and bacteria. How to Help: Supervise your dog when it is outside, and train it to stay away from all wildlife, including bird feeding areas or bird baths. Provide a safe, secure kennel or run for your dog to enjoy being outside without being a threat to birds.
