How to Attract Birds and Butterflies to Your Texas Yard

One of the most amazing things about a landscape is that it’s truly alive. A great way to make your Texas yard look more vibrant and alive than ever is to have birds, butterflies, and any other sort of lively creature in the area. However, most people can’t just have some grass and expect wildlife to flock. If you’d like to attract birds and butterflies, you need to go out of your way to create the right environment for them. Here are our 5 tips on how to attract birds and butterflies to your front Texas yard.

Planting the Right Flowers

Make sure you plant flowers that are rich in pollen so birds, butterflies, and bees will have reason to be there. Even if you have a small space or live in a city, you can still attract wildlife if you have the right kinds of flowers.

Here are flowers we recommend:

• Phlox
• Coneflower
• Wildflowers
• Dill
• Fennel
• Milkweed
• Blazing Star Flowers
• Marigolds
• Bluestar
• Anything else pollen-rich!

Having Water

One great way to attract all kinds of birds is to have a place they can get water from. One of the most popular and beautiful ways to do this is to get a bird bath. This way, you can attract birds to a specific area of your yard. There are a wide variety of bird bath designs to choose from that can accent any type of home.

Make sure to clean your bird bath often. This is what will make your water supply stand out from other water supplies near by for the birds.

Providing Shelter

Birds and butterflies need places to hide from prey and in bad weather. For birds, you can get a birdhouse or tall, bushy trees. For butterflies, having grass cuttings or some type of log or hedge are great ideas. Think something high up for birds, and something close to the ground for butterflies and other creatures.

If you don’t have any sort of garden where you’re comfortable having shrubs and logs on the ground for butterflies, you can also use hanging plants and boxes for them to find.

Don’t Put Chemicals on Food

Be careful not to use any pesticides on the flowers that attract butterflies and birds, as this will drive them away.

Research What to Get for Your Area & Desired Animals

One type of method doesn’t fit all! For example, if you’d like to specifically attract hummingbirds, getting a hummingbird feeder with hummingbird nectar is a necessity.

If you’re located in central Texas, here are some of our specific recommendations for the area.

Striped sunflower: attracts Northern Cardinal, Carolina Chickadee, American Goldfinch, Mourning Dove, House Finch, Blue Jay, Tuft Titmouse, Downy Woodpecker

Black Oil Sunflower: attracts Northern Cardinal, Carolina Chickadee, American Goldfinch, Mourning Dove, House Finch, Blue Jay, Tuft Titmouse, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Mockingbird

Safflower: attracts Northern Cardinal, Carolina Chickadee, Mourning Dove, Blue Jay, Tuft Titmouse

Milo: attracts American Goldfinch, Mourning Dove, House Finch, Blue Jay, Northern Mockingbird, Dark-eyed Junco

Nyjer Seed: attracts American Goldfinch, Mourning Dove, House Finch, Dark-eyed Junco

White Millet: attracts Mourning Dove, House Finch, Dark-eyed Junco

Cracked Corn: attracts Mourning Dove, Blue Jay, Dark-eyed Junco

The key is to blend these seeds to get a wide variety of birds in your Texas yard.

If you’re looking for some renovations to your Texas yard and would like to find a high-quality landscaping service, contact B&B Landscaping and Masonry today here.