Show Us Your Garden: Bedford haven beckons to birds

Kelley McAnally holds her smartphone toward the crown of the live oak fronting her Bedford home.

Soon, a series of birdsongs erupts from it — first, a long, soft whinny; then, a sustained, muted, monotone trill. Moments later, a furry, gray-brown face with huge yellow orbs for eyes stares from the opening of a box mounted in the tree’s canopy. The three-year resident eastern screech owl is wondering what other owl dares to announce its presence during daylight hours.

McAnally is new to gardening, but her efforts are already being rewarded. “My interest in gardening started out as my interest in birds, primarily because I don’t want them to go to your yard — I want them to come to mine!” she says.

Research introduced McAnally to the three main requirements for attracting birds to one’s garden: food, water and shelter. Food is largely taken care of by eight feeders in the front yard and five or six more in the back, but McAnally wanted to learn which plants tempt birds to hang around. Some plants provide food, others shelter.

Birds prefer a landscape rich in trees and shrubs. While a live oak and a post oak already graced her front yard, she has added yaupons, a Chinese Golden raintree, a vitex and several bottlebrush trees. One of her avian friends helpfully “planted” the blackjack oak that now stands a good 7 feet.

Among the shrubs, barberries and Japanese yews provide spring nesting sites and winter shelter, while coralberries and American beautyberries provide food particularly tasty to robins, cardinals, mockingbirds, bobwhites and cedar waxwings.

Indeed, this afternoon, a flock of cedar waxwings — distinctive with their yellow-barred tails and “sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet” trilling — flits around the garden.

McAnally’s garden also relies on several varieties of switchgrass and muhly grasses, not only because McAnally loves the movement and texture of them, but also because their seed heads feed many local songbirds.

“I want to look out my window and go, ‘Hey, there’s something living out there! I better stop and look at it!’ It deserves to be looked at. How did Audubon and [Roger] Tory Peterson discover birds if they didn’t stop and look at it?” McAnally reflects.

Filling in between bushes are flowering plants that provide color. Most of them are drought-tolerant, native to Texas or Texas-adaptive, so they supply nectar for native butterflies and bees. Rock rose, blackfoot daisies, Spanish lavender, Mexican hat, gaura, yarrow, columbine and a variety of sedums populate the garden.

McAnally says the most desired plant in her garden is Gregg’s mist flower. Last October, McAnally says, she was astonished when hundreds of monarchs descended upon them for nourishment and rest on their long migratory journey south.

Pieces of a felled mulberry tree’s trunk look quite natural placed among the blooms, and, McAnally notes, will decay and enrich the garden soil.

Explaining her motivation, McAnally says, “I wanted to create a landing pad for wildlife as they fly from South America to Canada and back. They are flying across a desert based on what we plant.” Typical landscape plants, like boxwood, don’t offer the resources native wildlife needs.

As a result of her careful selections, McAnally’s garden has received certification from the National Wildlife Federation and the Best of Texas Backyard Habitats Program. Certification requires a submission of a schematic of the garden and such features as xeriscape plantings, rainwater capture and year-round food availability.

Out back near a patch of salvia greggii, a male and female bluebird perch on a branch of a second live oak. The male feeds the female a mealy worm plucked from a feeder. Pale blue eggs rest in the nest in the bird box.

“When I pull up to my house, I think, ‘I’m glad I’m home,’ ” McAnally says with pride.

Apparently, the birds think so, too.

This story was originally published April 7, 2016 at 1:11 PM with the headline "Show Us Your Garden: Bedford haven beckons to birds."