Attracting Garden Birds: Choosing the Perfect Indigenous Plants for Your Feathered Friends

 What to feed garden birds?

Click here to read this fascinating article on the Kloof Conservancy website.

Here is an extract from the article on the many options for gardeners when selecting indigenous plants to attract birds.

For fruit-eating birds, the wild figs, Ficus species, are hard to beat. Other excellent options are Wild Peach Kiggelaria africana, Pigeonwood Trema orientalis, Lyceum species and the various Searsia species (previously known as Rhus).

When it comes to nectar-eaters, there is nothing better than our wide range of Aloe species. You will get good results from the various species of Erythrina, Leonotis and Schotia. Cape Honeysuckle Tecomaria capensis is also excellent, although birds have a definite preference for the red and orange flowers rather than the horticulturally created yellow. Some birds will even devour the flower petals!

Don’t leave out the seedeaters, where species of Panicum and Setaria grass have been recorded to feed the widest variety of birds. Other grass genera to nourish a large number of different birds are Stipagrostis and Melinis.