Bill Oddie on the joy of bird-watching – and how you can attract them to your garden

Think like a bird. That’s my advice if you want to attract the little feathered blighters to your patch of paradise. 

Some birds can be wily or aggressive, but all of them are entertaining. 

There are few greater pleasures than peeping out of the window and observing the terrific variety of British birdlife in your own private nature reserve. 

A bird-friendly garden can be exactly that.

When you master the art of thinking like a bird, you learn what food they like and where they like to eat it. You work out what to plant and when to prune. 

You figure out which species sing which songs. Before you know it, you’re a fully fledged birdbrain. 

Well, not quite, because there’s always something new to learn.

You will soon realise that birds are not stupid. In fact, they’re far more intelligent than seems possible, given their tiny skulls in relation to ours. 

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly birds pass on information. By some means or other, they are in constant communication.

When one or two birds find a good spot for food, they will quickly be joined by others – and they won’t all be of one species. 

When a sparrow notices a new bird feeder, there will soon be tits, robins and blackbirds coming round to investigate.

Either they’re all following each other in blind hope, which I don’t regard as very likely, or they’re communicating.

The most obvious solution is that something is encoded in their calls – scientists haven’t identified exactly what. 

Perhaps it’s just a single note, one high-pitched peep… over in a split-second, but enough to announce that food has been found.

What’s always been intriguing to me is the idea that birds seem able to translate each other’s languages. 

When a sparrow tweets, ‘Come and get it, boys!’, a wren or a long-tailed tit might hear the message and head straight over. 

On the other hand, they might decide to stay away, until they can be certain it’s safe. 

Birds have evolved to be cautious, because the careful approach is their best chance of survival. 

Bear that in mind and be patient when you first start trying to attract them to feeders, baths and nest boxes. Remember, you’re supposed to be thinking like a bird. Usually a hungry bird!

Some birds, I suspect, are smarter than I am. I haven’t yet figured out a foolproof way to outwit magpies and jays. 

They are prone to raiding my feeders and gobbling every last mealworm. I can’t blame them. 

But I don’t want to fatten them up to the exclusion of all the others, so I put seeds in wire feeders – which also keep out squirrels. 

Smaller species can peck through the mesh to reach their dinner, but the bigger corvids can’t, though it can be fun watching them try.

Eventually, though, the magpies find a way around all my deterrents. 

I think they enjoy our battle of wits – they like a challenge. 

Magpies used to be accused of stealing anything shiny, from bottle tops to gold rings. If I could truly think like a magpie, I might have been a master criminal.

Gardeners with fishponds are sometimes told to install plastic herons, meant to deter other birds. 

I’m not sure this works – if anything, the decoy acts as an advert that says, ‘This garden is heron-friendly.’ I think they’re marvellous birds, but I don’t have any priceless koi carp.

Many people try to keep the starlings off too. I don’t understand why. It’s true this sleek bird with its iridescent plumage can clean out a table of food in a matter of minutes. 

But I adore them. 

There are few more beautiful sights than a murmuration or vast flock of starlings at sunset. They’re bloomin’ noisy, though.

Then there are the sparrows. 

Though they suffered an alarming dip in numbers a few years ago, this unrepentant townie of the bird world seems to be back on the increase. 

Cheerful and gregarious, sparrows aren’t above a bit of rough and tumble. It’s like watching a pack of playful children.

When it comes to attracting a wide variety of birds, I recommend trial and error. 

When I see something is working, I think, ‘Well done, Bill. Keep doing that!’ And one thing that definitely works is letting my garden grow slightly wild. The birds love it, and so do I.

One of my favourites is the pugnacious little robin. 

No garden bird enjoys a punch-up more. I have four or five in my garden, and they posture and peck at each other as a kind of greeting. 

They have a bright warbling song, which frequently dominates the dawn chorus, and of course with their red breasts they are completely distinctive. I love them.

There’s no question about it, our gardens are an incredibly important habitat these days. 

If you lump them all together, they constitute the biggest, safest environment in the whole country – a place where birds are welcome, where they can nest and feed, mate and go about their business without the risk of being swallowed up by agricultural machinery. 

Though there is always the danger of being swallowed up by a cat!

When I first became a bird-lover we didn’t have a garden. 

Until I was about seven we lived in Rochdale, in a back-to-back terraced cottage with a yard for the washing line. 

There were no trees or bushes, and no blackbirds on the windowsill. It was a solitary life for a little boy. My father was always at work. 

My mother was in an asylum, with serious mental illnesses. 

My grandmother, frankly, was a bit of a harridan and best avoided. So whenever I could I used to cycle off to the nearest patch of countryside and stay out as long as I could.

One favourite spot was the gorseland at the edge of the local golf course. 

That became my back garden. 

I would probably have been in trouble with the golfers if I hadn’t been so adept at hiding in the rough – which was where the birds were anyway. 

There were plenty to see, such as warblers, linnets and yellowhammers – all common back then, though they’re scarcer now.

A lot of my schoolfriends collected eggs, as children of my generation often did, and I started to do this too – though the thought horrifies me now. 

Quite rightly it is now illegal, but I can’t deny that it gave me training as a bird-watcher. 

Pretty soon my life revolved around the birds I saw and heard, and the nests I found.

I remember playing cricket with friends soon after we moved to Birmingham, when I was about eight. 

We had an upturned milk crate for a wicket, I was fielding, and the batsman thwacked the ball into the neighbouring field. 

As it landed, a skylark shot up, like a cork from a popgun, and kept rocketing upwards until suddenly it burst into song. I was mesmerised. 

As the bird plummeted down I kept my eye on where it landed. I tiptoed over, confident I would be led to the nest. 

However, when I reached the place where the bird had landed, nothing flew up. I searched the nearby grass. Nothing. At this point, I was being called back to the wicket. 

My first shot flew back over the bowler’s head and landed in the long grass. 

I hurried over to where it had landed but, instead of finding the ball, I found the skylark! It shot out of the grass, climbed to a great height and began singing. 

At which point I realised I was almost standing on the nest. In it were four brown speckled eggs that could easily have been smashed. 

Thus it was I learned a lesson – skylarks land some distance from their nest, and walk to it.

My family still didn’t have much of a garden. 

But my new school was next to another golf course, and next to that was a nature reserve, with woodland, a swamp and a lake. 

As secretary of the school’s natural history society, I helped to set up a ‘ringing station’ for putting identification rings on the birds’ legs.

It was a popular club, though I’m sure for some of my schoolmates the main attraction was that the route to the reserve took us straight past the girls’ school. 

For me, it was a joy to have my very own ‘local patch’ which boasted a large lake and lots of wildfowl – but never enough! After passing my driving test, weekends and school holidays were spent exploring the reservoirs of the West Midlands.

When I moved to London in the mid-60s, I became a regular watcher at Brent Reservoir, which is almost on the constantly hectic North Circular road. 

In wondrously peaceful contrast, the reservoir has hides, paths, nesting platforms and a huge bird list. 

I became a regular and, one afternoon, I began chatting to a fellow birder, who asked almost challengingly, ‘Why do you come here? Why don’t you do Hampstead Heath?’

The truth was, I’d never considered the heath seriously as a place for birds. 

It’s so popular with dog-walkers and their like, I couldn’t see past all the people. But there are all sorts of wonderful birds, if you keep your binoculars handy. 

One morning, we had a passage of at least 10,000 redwings – one of my favourite migrants – and on another day in September, 10,000 swallows in the sky.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that your garden is wherever you choose to make it. 

You might live in a high-rise flat, without even the possibility of a window box, but you still have a ‘garden in the air’. 

You’re up in the sky with the birds, able to look out on them as they fly past.

And you’ll see a much greater variety of birds in the air than you ever will in a terrestrial garden. 

Over the years in north London, I’ve looked up and seen an osprey at least four times. 

You might suppose that you have to spend a month in a Scottish hide to stand any chance of spotting an osprey, but it’s perfectly possible to see one from the 23rd floor of a block of flats.

If you’re wondering what such a rare bird is doing on a flight path above the North Circular road, I’ll tell you in one word: migrating. 

It spent its winter in Africa, and now it’s returning to its old haunts in the UK. 

It never ceases to amaze me that birds will travel thousands of miles, obeying an internal urge and navigating with computer-like accuracy. 

They are truly miracles of evolution.

Speaking of raptors, or birds of prey, one of the most breathtaking but also upsetting sights for the garden bird-watcher is the lethal sparrowhawk. 

When I was a boy they were rare, but now it’s not unusual to find their calling card… a scattering of feathers from a kill. 

When I see one strike, my emotions are torn: part of me is lost in admiration for their grace and speed, and another part is thinking, ‘Oh! That poor blackbird.’

Many birds you see in summer are merely visitors. 

Swallows are the most famous, though there are worryingly few this year. 

But other migrants you might see in your garden are willow warblers, chiffchaffs and blackcaps (never was a bird more aptly named: the male looks like it’s wearing a skullcap; the female, though, ought to be called a browncap).

Summer migrants have fascinated me ever since I was a student at Cambridge. 

One night in 1961, I was making my way back to my rooms when I realised the air was alive with bird calls. 

I stared up and realised that the sky over my head was full of the calls of Scandinavian migrants – redwings, golden plovers, lapwings, snow buntings and many more – arriving on an easterly airstream. I was transfixed for at least two hours.

A few years later, in New York, another mass migration took my breath away. 

I was walking back to my hotel at night, past the Empire State Building, which was lit up like a movie set. 

In these powerful beams I thought I could see clouds of moths – and then I realised they were birds, mostly warblers… tens of thousands of them, attracted by the light.

I could hardly sleep for excitement, and the next morning I dashed to Central Park at dawn, ignoring the warnings of friends who said I’d be mugged. 

In fact, the only people I met were other bird-watchers. I’ve never felt so safe in New York.

Memories like these make me especially pleased to see summer visitors to my garden. 

What the average bird is thinking at this time of year, is, ‘Blimey, I’ve got hungry beaks to feed back at the nest. I’d better find them a meal.’ 

That’s why it is especially important to put out food. 

Experiment with what is most effective, and don’t spend a fortune. The cheapest option is usually to buy online from a supplier such as Haith’s. 

Mind you, I tell the neighbours we have ours delivered from Harrods – one has standards to maintain.

Apart from that, encouraging the birds is largely about what you don’t do. 

Don’t cover every inch with decking. 

Don’t hack back the foliage – it provides a refuge for little birds that prefer not to be seen, such as wrens and dunnocks. 

Don’t put down slug pellets because these kill slugs, and slugs make good eating, for birds.

In fact, be lazy. 

Put your trowel down, go and make yourself a cup of tea, and then simply sit for an hour and see how many birds you can see. 

The ones flying overhead count too.

 Let the ivy grow, and the trees. If you’re feeling energetic, maybe go and place an old tin kettle under a hedge: it’ll make a smashing nesting place for a pair of robins.

In other words, stop what you were doing – and think like a bird. 

5 OF THE BEST… BIRD BOXES 

Provide the perfect home for a feathered friend