The entwined landscape and habitat found on the Western Slope is a dazzling destination for bird enthusiasts. Year-round sightings of over 200 unique species is not uncommon. How many birds have you seen lately? If you sit to think, it may be no more than 10!

Like all wildlife, birds need three things to survive: cover, food and water. From a simple potted flower to draw in hummingbirds to plotting where to put a birdhouse, this article serves as an introductory course on attracting birds to your back yard.

Create cover

If you’re living in an apartment or condo, creating cover is sometimes hard or impossible to do. However, if you do have a yard, liven it up by planting trees, grasses and other native plants. Juniper trees and shrubs with berries are the best for birds as they provide a tasty buffet and protection. Grasses will encourage ducks, wrens and other birds to lay nests and reproduce. Trees, dead and alive, will provide cover and food for many different species. Sleeping birds especially love to snooze in juniper, cottonwood, hemlock and evergreen trees.

These trees also offer protection from cold winter winds.

Provide food and water

Most bird enthusiasts have at least one birdfeeder to attract birds. Hanging birdfeeders are cleaner than feeding birds from the ground but carefully scattered corn or sunflower seeds in the winter months is a great way to attract many species of hungry birds. Hummingbirds are attracted to bright colors and sugar water, and can drink water from a misty spray bottle or hose as they fly.

“Adding a birdbath or water feature to your back yard will not only provide a place for birds to drink, but will also attract birds to your yard to bathe, even if they’re not seed-eating birds,” said Larry Collins, owner of Wild Birds Unlimited, a retail and bird-feeding supply store in Grand Junction.

If backyard feeding is not an option, attach a suet block or birdfeeder to your window for up-close bird encounters, or make a fun orange treat basket.

Flowers such as trumpet honeysuckle, scarlet and pineapple sage, apple-scented geraniums and spotted bee balm makes a hummingbird’s heart beat faster. They favor flowers with tubular structures that they “hum” on. Other bird cafés that can be potted in containers big and small include zinnias, cosmos, love-lies-bleeding and bachelor button flowers. When they go to seed in the late summer or fall, they burst with food. Finches, sparrows and juncos jump to their nutritious seeds.

Planting fruit trees will also eventually attract fruit-eating birds to your yard, Collins added.

Other things you can do to improve bird sightings include removing cheatgrass and any unused fences (a killer for owls and many predatory birds), planting native bunchgrasses, maintaining prairie dog towns, booking tree-falling projects to winter and fall months when the birds aren’t nesting, avoiding using pesticides and checking for nests before doing any work in the area.

If you’re looking for a landscaping project that will attract birds to your yard, plan variation among plant heights to service a variety of species’ needs. Since no two are alike, birds benefit from a landscape where there is a lot of variation in height and thickness among plant life. Don’t knock the dead tree down if you don’t have to; woodpeckers need dead trees to forage for grubby nutrients. If you live in an area native to Colorado’s beautiful grouse species, a mixture of tall sagebrush and native legumes free of fencing is best.

Diversifying and improving conditions for birds on the lookout for flying insects, spiders and other tasty things to eat in your neighborhood can be a rewarding project to do yourself or with others in your area. Before you know it, new birds will be introducing themselves with their peculiar tweet-twe-tweet!