Turning Your Backyard into Wild Bird Habitat:
Fall Clean-up Do's & Don'ts

It’s autumn; the temperature and humidity are dropping. Are you getting antsy? Do you feel like getting into the yard to rake up leaves and snip off dried-up flower heads? Stop...don’t do it!
Go ahead and rake the leaves off your grass but allow some build-up to remain in your beds and around your shrubs. Insects can winter over in leaf litter and will provide a good source of protein for foraging birds in cold weather.
The dried heads of black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, zinnias and many other flowers offer seeds for hungry birds through fall and early winter. If there are some weeds in the garden at the end of the season, leave them be; the birds will appreciate the seeds they provide and the freeze that arrives with the winter will kill off most of the weeds before next spring’s planting season begins.
Pruning evergreen bushes is another chore that can wait until spring: the denser the shrub, the better cover it will provide our backyard feathered friends on a cold winter’s night. If fall pruning is a must for some of your landscape bushes, use the clippings to build a brush pile around your birdfeeding station. Brush piles provide the birds with shelter from the weather and cover from predators. And during storms this winter, the birds will have easy access to birdseed under the pile even when feeders are covered with snow!
If you’ve been waiting until fall to cut down that dead tree on the edge of your property…wait! Snags (dead trees) provide wild birds with insects and shelter. Unless the snag is a hazard to life or property, let it stand.
So, now that you really don’t have anything to do this fall: get the birdfeeding station ready for the winter; put on a light jacket; settle down in a comfy lawn chair; and just watch the birds!