Arizona is rightly recognized as one of the prime bird watching spots in America. You may wonder how to attract birds to your yard so that you can enjoy the company of our humble house finch or more exotic feathered friends like Gila Woodpeckers. The secret of how to attract birds to your yard is to provide variety, ample cover, and water.

Variety

With the wide array of Arizona birds searching for their next meal, finding out how to attract birds to your yard means giving them a buffet of favorite seeds:

• Ground feeders – beloved by doves, juncos, towhees and goldfinches, these screened trays sit a few inches off the desert floor
• Sunflower-seed tube feeders – installed at least five feet above ground level, these attract chickadees, house finches, nuthatches, siskins and titmice
• Suet feeders – best for Tucson’s chillier weather (when insect populations drop), suet gets rancid above 80 degrees, but is enjoyed by chickadees, nuthatches, titmice and woodpeckers
• Hopper feeders – larger birds with big appetites go for high feeders loaded with mixed seed for cardinals, grackles and the red-winged blackbird
• Nyjer feeders – thistle seed is dispensed from the very tiny holes of nyjer seed feeders to small-beaked birds (goldfinches, pine siskins, redpolls).

Location of your feeders is important. Birds get skittish and will bypass your feeders if they have to fly through too large an open area to get to food.

Spread your feeders out across your yard, too, so that no one feeder gets crowded. This also simplifies your bird watching, making the comings and goings of these feathered friends more enjoyable.

Ample Cover

Cover for birds means places they can alight, check out the safety of the space ahead, and then fly in for a meal. They need foliage from ground to tree height.

Cover is important too, to prevent predators from selecting your yard as their prime hunting grounds. Bird feeders attract unwanted attention from disease-bearing omnivores.

Maintenance

After you know how to attract birds to your yard, you must learn to prevent these pests and predators:

• javelinas
• wood rats
• mice
• insects

For more on this, check out our article: 7 Tips for Natural Garden Insect Control

Birds are messy eaters. Keeping your lawn or desert floor tidy will be a challenge, and scavengers such as mice will take advantage of the birds’ sloppy habits, especially if you buy cheap bird seed. Mice and rats will eat anything, so millet in cheap seed becomes their mainstay.

Wash and clean feeders twice a month. This not only discourages pests, but prevents bird diseases from spreading. Water pans and birdbaths should be dumped daily.

Water

You do not have breakfast, lunch or dinner without a beverage, and neither should your birds. Provide bird baths and water pans at various heights so they can groom and drink. Disinfect pans and baths with a solution of 10 percent bleach to 90 percent water, scrub the pans, and rinse thoroughly.

Layering

Certain birds prefer certain altitudes, so provide variety in both feeders and water sources:

• Ground: many birds only eat when on the desert floor or on your lawn
• Low: from about a foot above the lawn to about three feet
• High: from about four feet up and higher

Challenges

You can balance a clean, tidy yard with bird feeding:

• Careful maintenance: daily water source cleaning gives you an opportunity to monitor the bird feeding area
• Resilient landscaping: plant species that attract birds and can hide the buildup of seed litter easily. If you prefer a lawn, keep grass cut very short near the bird feeding areas to make cleanup of the seed casings easy (this also reduces rodent issues).

Once you know how to attract birds to your yard, you are taking the first steps to a delightful hobby.

Evergreen Turf is your source for the highest quality sod in Arizona. Our friendly, knowledgeable people are committed to answering all of your questions to ensure a stress-free experience with your new Arizona sod lawn. Whether you wish to sod a small play area for the family or an entire golf course, Evergreen Turf can help you make it happen.

Our team serves customers throughout Arizona, including Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe and Tucson. Browse our website for information and tips on how to create and maintain a beautiful lawn, or give us a call and talk to one of our sod specialists at 602-626-9959 if you don’t find what you are looking for. Better yet, stop by and meet the team at our convenient Chandler location.

If you live in the Tucson area, you are familiar with the Arizona desert wildlife that roams the area. For homeowners, these animals can cause devastating damage to your Tucson sod lawn if you do not have fencing around your property. Here’s a look at the most common animals that may visit your Tucson yard and tips on how to keep the animals and your yard safe.

Wild Boars

Wild boars, also known as wild hogs, often dig and root holes in Tucson sod lawns and gardens looking for food. These animals feed on roots and small insects like grubs and worms, making your yard the perfect area to search for their next meal.

These animals are dangerous, can bite and carry diseases. It’s best to make sure they do not come into your yard by securing your property with a sturdy fence or wall. If they do enter your yard, it’s best to call in an animal removal team to help take care of the problem.

Skunks

All skunks are omnivores, and will feed on almost anything, including small rodents, worms, insects, grubs, carrion, fruit, garbage, and pet food left outdoors. They love to live under human structures such as sheds, decks, or crawl spaces.

These animals often have rabies and spray their foul odor to protect themselves from predators. They can spray their scent on unknowing children and dogs, and removing the stench takes a lot of time and patience. The best way to get rid of skunks and ensure they don’t damage your Tucson sod lawn is to trap and remove them, then prevent further infestations by installing exclusion barriers around your property.

Snakes

Snakes can be attracted to your property for many reasons. If your lawn has a lot of debris and thick plantlife, it will attract snakes. Snakes especially like things they can hide under, such as plywood boards, gaps under concrete, etc. Clean up the clutter around your Tucson sod lawn and trim back any weeds that snakes could use for shelter. If you already have snakes inhabiting your yard, you may need to call a professional to remove them safely, especially if they are venomous.

For more answers to your lawn care questions, check out our FAQ’s page or contact one of our Tucson sod specialists today.

Select the perfect turf using our lawn selector. Once you’ve found the perfect type of grass, you can order online or by phone. Learn how to measure your lawn and how to install your new lawn with our helpful online guides.

Evergreen Turf, your Arizona sod producer, is proud to be the premier supplier of MiniVerde Ultradwarf Bermudagrass in Arizona and California. MiniVerde Bermudagrass was designed specifically for high-stress golf course greens and has received praise from golf course superintendents and golfers alike.

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According to University of Arizona (UA) researchers, mosquitoes can breed in a pool of water as small as a paper cup. In order to avoid an infestation of mosquitoes or other insects on and around your property this summer, make sure not to over-water your lawn.

“The mosquito operates at the paper cup level,” said Paul Robbins, who is heading up the UA study, which is focused on West Nile virus and Dengue fever.

“How can we predict where the paper cups are going to be? Where is that micro-habitat that the bug favors or doesn’t favor distributed in a complex place like a city that has culverts, drains, parks, and people who are watering their lawns, like in Phoenix,” asked Robbins?

We may not be able to eliminate every breeding ground for mosquitoes, but we can take action to limit the amount of standing water on our own property.

Although it’s hotter and drier during the summer – with the exception of monsoon season – than any other time of the year in Arizona, you don’t actually need to water your lawn more than usual. In fact, it promotes better root growth and drought tolerance to water well-established lawns only two to three times a week.

Now that it’s consistently above 80 degrees during the day and night, over-watering can leave those small, paper cup sized pools of water around long enough to allow mosquitoes to successfully breed.

“In southern Arizona, what you’re seeing under some scenarios of warming is an increased length of the mosquito season,” said Robbins. “Generally you worry about them in the rainy season, but we’re seeing that expand out to fall and spring, and that makes a big difference because it provides a much longer breeding season and a longer presence for bugs to transfer disease.”

In addition to limiting the number of breeding spots for mosquitoes, setting an appropriate watering schedule for your lawn will conserve water.

For more tips on lawn maintenance during the summer months, visit our Summer Health, Lawn Care maintenance page.

Spring has officially arrived, which means it’s time to start preparing for new landscaping projects and seasonal lawn maintenance. Every year, lawns, no matter how big or small, go through similar seeding and fertilization cycles and spring is the time when grass starts growing again. If you want to ensure a healthy lawn, take note of these tips.

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Now that you’ve discovered where to buy sod in Arizona, your new lawn from Evergreen Turf may have inspired you to create a landscape that attracts wildlife. Creating a wildlife habitat in your backyard that attracts hummingbirds, chipmunks and other creatures is pretty simple. A wildlife habitat consists of five primary elements. (more…)