Backyard Chirper

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Participate in this year’s National Bird-Feeding Month

For anyone who has been thinking about getting a backyard bird feeder, let the month of February be your motivation and excuse for getting started.

February is National Bird-Feeding Month, which encourages everyone to bask in the entertaining, inexpensive and educational pasttime of feeding wild birds.

With the extremely harsh weather pelting the nation this winter, many people are viewing National Bird-Feeding Month with additional importance because it helps the birds survive when food and water are scarce.

Participating in National Bird-Feeding Month can be as simple as buying a bird feeder for your backyard and filling it with some wild bird food. While this is the basic contribution, Congressman John Porter’s intention of starting the annual month in 1994 was to encourage people to also provide water and shelter.

So use this as an opportunity to decorate your backyard with bird baths and bird houses that will not only give your backyard some life, but will also fill it with attractive and colorful birds.

Finally, each year, the National Bird-Feeding Society introduces a new theme for the month. This year’s theme is America’s Top Ten Backyard Birds, which include the American Goldfinch, Chickadee, Northern Cardinal and more. See if you can spot any of these birds in your backyard, or if you want to know how to get them into your yard, the NBFS has some tips.

With National Bird-Feeding Month and the Great Backyard Bird Count, which we posted about last week, taking place this coming weekend, there should be no shortage of encouragement for getting more involved in the fun and educational world of birding.

Timothy Martinez Jr. is a writer and freelance journalist. His work has been published in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, Remapping Debate in New York City and other publications. He’s been a bird lover since he was young and currently lives in New Orleans, L.A.