Window and Balcony Bird Habitat
Attracting Birds When You Have No Yard or Garden
Birders who have only a window or a small apartment balcony may still be able to attract a few birds to their tiny habitat.
If you like birds but have no property to build backyard bird habitat, you just might be able to enjoy a few birds from your window or apartment balcony. Every situation is different—think about what you can do with yours.
Attracting birds to windows
If all you have is a window at ground level or even a few stories up, you may be able to attract birds if you can either open the window or access it from outside safely and easily. Here are some things you might do:
- Buy a birdfeeder with suction cup attachments that can be stuck right on the glass. These usually come as a screw-on seed tray and suction cups that can be attached to a two litre pop bottle. You fill the bottle with seed, screw on the seed tray instead of a bottle cap, attach the suction cups, turn the whole thing upside down and stick it on the window. These feeders do sometimes fall off, so don’t hang one if it’s likely to hit a person or fragile objects if it falls!
- Birds will often visit a feeding tray attached to an exterior windowsill. If you can open the window, it’s easy to put food on the tray. To avoid frightening birds away, let them get used to your presence slowly. Keep drapes closed at first and gradually open them and allow the birds to see more and more of you. At times, they may not be able to see you at all if the window is reflecting the outside scenery, including themselves, back at them—in this situation you may have to take precautions if birds are hitting or attacking your window.
- If there are wooden structures outside the window that you can screw things into, you might hang a bird feeder, birdbath, nesting box, nesting shelf, hanging flower basket or window box. Window boxes and flowerpots can be planted with fflowers attractive to hummingbirds, but birds have also been known to nest in the tops of these miniature gardens. Again, be sure anything you hang is secure so it won’t fall, and if you’re lucky enough to have breeding birds move in, be careful when you water the plants!
- A wide windowsill, particularly a protected one such as a window guarded by security bars, sometimes attracts nesting birds. Robins, phoebes, pigeons, swallows, and other birds may nest in a window recess. If you think your windowsill is a good one for this, try leaving some nesting materials outside the window to attract nesting birds.
- Even in big cities, wide ledges high up on buildings sometimes attract nesting falcons in the early spring, and other birds such as gulls, starlings, blackbirds and many others will nest on rooftops. Other birds roost on rooftops and high in trees: if you’re living high above the ground, take a close look at the buildings and rooftops in your vicinity—you might be surprised by the bird life there.
Balcony Bird Habitat
An apartment balcony is much more versatile than a window, and all the suggestions for windows will work for balconies as well depending on your situation. Here, there may be special opportunities for attracting nesting birds because balconies are usually more sheltered and there are more locations to hang and attach things. As with windows, be sure not to hang anything that might fall on someone or something below you.
