Risks to Backyard Birds

Keeping your avian visitors safe

Although your backyard may seem to be a safe haven for children and pets, for wild animals, it's another part of their habitat and comes with the same risk of predation and disease. Living and feeding in a garden also poses new risks that come with living so close to humans. Luckily, you can help the birds in your area out by knowing the risks that come with feeding and doing your best to fix or prevent them.

Window collisions are a heartbreaking part of having backyard birds. Birds are often stunned or killed by smacking into a reflective window and it's a big risk for little birds that can't tell the difference between a fly-through zone and a sheet of plate glass. Luckily, you can prevent this by following a few tips to break up reflections on your window and keep your avian dinner guests safe from harm. It'll also help you and your injured bird out if you know how to perform emergency bird care in case of a collision.

There's a theory that backyard birds are more at risk for predation because they aren't as focused when they're feeding from bird feeders, but that hasn't been proven. However, birds are at risk from several different predators in your backyard and where you place your feeder or bird house may have something to do with the amount of predation that happens on your lawn. Birds are at risk from wild and domestic species in urban areas. If you don't like seeing birds being decapitated by domestic animals like cats or snapped up by native wild animals like birds of prey, then you can learn where to place your bird attractants so that they won't be in the line of fire.

Raccoons are known to eat eggs and small birds when the fancy takes them, so your nesting boxes should prevent these night marauders from raiding your backyard birds' nests. By protecting the bird houses and nesting boxes, you can be sure that the clutches of eggs that birds work so hard to raise will live to delight you for many seasons to come.

Helping to protect backyard birds from predators and backyard risks will ensure that you'll see more of them because you've created a safe habitat. It's all about balance, and it's certainly easier for birds to relax and be themselves when they don't have to constantly be on the watch.