By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

I wrote about the combination watering hole/bird bath Cindy McNatt (of the garden blog Dirt Du Jour) created in her own yard and about what a successful bird magnet it turned out to be in my last post.

Here's another way to achieve the same thing.

This fountain is outside my home office window.  Water comes up through the center of the urn and spills back into the basin below.  The urn is filled up to the top with river rocks so birds can land on the top for a drink or to take a bath, and they do both. 

Like Cindy McNatt's ground-level fountain, mine was a success, too, from the day the reservoir was filled and the water started circulating.  Hummingbirds were the first to show up, followed shortly thereafter  by sparrows and finches. 

As Cindy mentioned, the big payoff, though, is migration periods.  To see something like a Western tanager land on that rim, so close to my window, will, I hope, never fail to excite me.

Hot Santa Ana days, though, can be almost as thrilling.  The urn isn't big enough for crows to land there comfortably normally, but when they're thirsty, the wily creatures manage it, though awkwardly.  And hawks drop in sometimes, too.  Now that's a sight that will make your heart stop.

Really and truly, if you want more birds in your yard, forget food.  Give them fresh water.  They'll come.

P.S.  Remembering crows reminded me of Jim's post about crows and math, still one of my favorites of his.  Check it out.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

photo by Cindy McNatt

Bird feeders will attract avian visitors to your garden, for sure.  But providing a constant supply of fresh water works even better, as garden blogger Cindy McNatt (Dirt Du Jour) will attest.

Above is a water park for birds McNatt created at her home in Tustin, California.  When she moved in this highly visible spot was filled with a mound of dirt composed of the decomposing roots of a recently removed monster ficus tree.  Cindy hauled away tons of dirt and created this bird fountain.

Three vintage stepping stones found buried on her property form the heart of it. They rest on cinder blocks. Below is a reservoir contained by a pool liner and a pump in a low hole filled with gravel.  The pump runs constantly to keep water fresh the way birds like it.  (Keeps mosquitoes from breeeding, too.)  The reservoir is topped off daily with water from the sprinkler set-up.

The combination fountain/bird bath works even better than Cindy hoped.  Hummingbirds, sparrows, and other regulars show up daily.  But migration seasons are when the fountain really proves its worth.  "Cedar waxwings, warblers, tanagers, vireos, grosbeaks, lazuli buntings, and other migrating birds show up and hang around for a week or more," she says.  "It's thrilling to look out and catch those flashes of color."

See this previous post for another glimpse of Cindy's garden

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

When gardeners have asked me about deer control, I've always responded that a tall fence is the only sure thing. It still is, but a new repellent comes close in effectiveness. Called Bobbex, it was shown to be more effective than nine other commercial repellents (including coyote urine) in tests run by the University of Connecticut last year.

Made from a combination of ingredients that blends the scents of rotten eggs, garlic, fish, clove oil, and vinegar (among other things), it works by mimicking predator scents, so it is classed as a fear repellent. It also tastes awful, so deer have at least two reasons to stay clear of it. You'll want to bring cut flowers in from the garden immediately before you spray, or at least a day later, after the odor has had time to dissipate.

Bobbex requires reapplication every couple of weeks. Following a slightly less frequent application regimen, the University of Connecticut gave it a 93 percent protection index (with a fence at 100 percent, and the control—no protection at all—at 49 percent). Other repellents scored across a range that ran from 50 percent to 83 percent. Coyote urine earned only a 53 percent protection index (and how would you harvest it anyway?).

The repellent trials were done by measuring damage done by white-tail deer browsing Japanese yew (Taxus cuspidata). West of the Cascades and Sierra, most deer in the West (like the one pictured above) are blacktails, but the difference between them and their eastern cousins should be negligible, at least in dietary issues.

You can buy Bobbex from local retailers (but not big box stores) and such online sources as Amazon.com.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

I once took a wine-tasting class at the Vintner's Club in San Francisco, where a room full of people, me included, mapped their palates. It worked like this: All of us had five glasses of the same wine in front of us, but each glass had a different level of, say, sulfur, from near zero to near toxic. As we tasted the wines in sequence, each of us noted the first glass that had a discernable sulfur taste, then noted the glass that had too much to be enjoyable. Then we repeated the same test for sugar, tanins, and so forth, until we fully understood our sensitivities to the different flavor componenst of wine.

The really surprising thing was how varied our responses were. Some couldn't even discern sulfur at levels that made the wine taste like rotten eggs to the rest of us. And a few of us would pucker at levels of tannins that went unnoticed by others.

The primary message was that we all have very different taste thresholds, so the same wines actually taste very differently to different people. The secondary message occurred to me much later: the same must true of deer. That's why the astilbe that one deer shuns is a perfectly acceptable munchie to another.

For this reason, experienced gardeners tend to be skeptical about lists of deerproof plants. But such lists are not without value. Given the choice, deer will always take roses over rhododendrons, for example, and apple leaves over ferns.

If you want a good starter list, pick up a copy of 50 Beautiful Deer-Resistant Plants by Ruth Clausen, with photography by Alan L. Detrick (Timber Press, Portland, OR, 2011; $19.95). Even apart from its gorgeous photography, which will make you want to eat the plants, the book has much to offer. Instead of just presenting plants as being deerproof, Clausen rates them on a 1–10 scale, and gives examples of when they might be most at risk.

Because the book was written from an east-coast perspective, Clausen's experience is with white-tail deer. In the far West, we have mostly blacktail deer and closely related mule deer. But still Clausen's list rings true to me, and the book can give any gardener an advantage against our most common large plant pest (with the exception of elk and moose, as our Alaskan and rural Northwestern friends are sure to point out).

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Birds are smart enough to know that strawberries aren't ripe until they're red. So a friend of mine paints strawberry-size rocks red and puts them in the strawberry bed before the crop ripens (pictured above).Because strawberries grow together, he puts most of them in the bare spots around the garden's edges so the birds can see them.

The gardener who taught him this says that birds will swoop in, take a couple of pecks, and "learn" that these strawberries aren't the edible kind, thereafter avoiding the patch altogether.

Ingenious? For sure. Worth a try? Definitely. Effective? We'll find out when the crop comes in. I'll let you know.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Photos © Andy & Michelle Tullis

One of the chicken coops on last weekend's Bend, OR, tour had the look of a model-home type coop: chickens couldn't be living in anything this clean, could they? As a matter of fact, answers owner Michelle Tullis, yes, chickens live here. She is champion of the notion that clean coops are better for the chickens, better for the people who tend them, and definitely better for neighbor children who play with the hens. But how does she get "clean" and "chickens" in the same coop?

The manure hammock

When chickens roost at night, sleep isn't all they do. So Michelle stretched a hammock under the roosts so that when unmentionables fall, they are caught before they hit the floor. Since birds excrete everything together (no separate plumbing for feces and urine), normal droppings would tend to saturate the hammock. But Michelle feeds her birds Forage Cakes and Ultra Kibble that are excreted in drier, less-smelly, walnut-size droppings. When the hammock is ready to empty, as Michelle demonstrates at right, the manure separates easily from the fabric.

Michelle learned about this optimized food from a thread on a backyard chickens forum (she has no connection with the company, nor do I).

Clean floors

Living in Bend, Michelle has plenty of fallen pine needles around. She spreads them over the coop floor to give the chickens (and herself) something light, dry, and airy to walk on — something that can be raked up and thrown out whenever it becomes a little too organic.  

Step-up feed and water stations

Elevated feeding and watering stations keep birds from fouling the water supply with feathers, feather dander, and droppings. It's simple, effective, and more important than it might seem.

Michelle is such an enthusiastic advocate of pristine chicken houses that she's offered to field questions from Fresh Dirt readers. You can post comments here, reach her at http://bendhens.tumblr.com/, or email her directly at bendhens@gmail.com.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Apple blossoms are still weeks away, but when they come, they must be pollinated or you'll get no fruit. With honey bee populations in decline from Colony Collapse Disorder and other things, native mason bees are more important than ever.

You can help them most by supplying housing. They emerge about now, breed, then nest in holes whose entrances they seal with mud. Two housing systems work especially well. Both are pictured above under the south-facing eaves of Franki Baccellieri's house, where they get a little extra warmth and shelter from the rain. That's Franki at right, nibbling on petals of pineapple guava. She's so successful at multiplying mason bees that she has become one of the Home Orchard Society's mason bee propagators—which is to say that she puts out tubes in her fruit- and flower-filled garden, the mason bees fill them, and the Home Orchard Society sells them (they're sold out this year).

The horizontal bucket above is full of these 5/16-in.-diameter tubes, bent in half and thus doubled. The ones whose ends have been sealed with mud have mason bees inside. You can order the empty tubes from the Home Orchard Society for $6 per bundle of 27 tubes, or from the Kinsman Company for about $15 per 100.

You can also use wooden blocks like the one in the top right corner of the picture above. They are easy to make just by drilling an untreated 4 by 4 with 5/16-in. holes, or order one from a company like Planet Natural.

You can learn more about mason bees (plus grafting, fruit growing, and lots of other great garden stuff!) at the Home Orchard Society's annual Fruit Propagation Fair on Saturday March 19, 2011. Hours are 11 to 5 at Canby Fairgrounds, about 40 minutes south of Portland, OR.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Here's a garden tour I wish I could squeeze into my schedule.

Greg Corman of Gardening Insights and Scott Calhoun of Zona Gardens are hosting a tour at Tohono Chul Park in Tucson on Saturday, March 5th called The Secret Junque (Yard) Garden. 

It starts with a Continental breakfast and slide show showing how you can turn junk and salvage yard finds into works of art like the one Corman has assembled here.

A tour of private gardens that have put "junque" to inspired use -- see the example below -- follows.

Next lunch at Maynard's Market & Kitchen in the historic Southern Pacific train depot.  Nice spot, I've been there.

Then the highlight -- a tour of Greg & Scott's favorite salvage and junk yards.

Sounds like a great day.  Wonder if I can still book a flight to Tucson?

Cost $125, for Park members; $150 for general public, includes transportation and lunch

Registration required.  520/742-6455, ext. 0

The below Tucson garden, Val Little's, is an example of just how creative you can get with recycling.  Little's garden, features a ramada made of augers and bedsprings and a patio made from water meter lids.  There's a good likelihood you'd see it on Junque tour.

photo by Scott Calhoun

***

Here's two more examples of artistic use of salvage -- Greg Corman's sculptures that double as habitats for solitary bees.  Read more about them at our previous post.

You can also see Corman's bee habitat sculpture up close as well as some of his other recycled pieces at the Practical Art gallery in Phoenix. 

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

There's much to be said for citizen science, in which swarms of people gather data that scientists can use—and would never have the resources to gather themselves. Audubon's annual Christmas bird count is one of the best examples of that, and it starts tomorrow. Anybody can participate.

I've been on several of these myself, and they're unfailingly rewarding. For starters, they give you an excellent reason to be outdoors with binoculars, friends, and hot coffee, finding and recording every bird you can see. If you're housebound, you can do a count at your bird feeder.

You'll almost certainly see more than you expected. I found this bald eagle breakfasting on a glaucous-winged gull at a beach two miles from my front door.  And the pileated woodpecker (the model for Woody Woodpecker) at left was deconstructing a Douglas fir 100 yards behind my back door. Wood ducks like the pair pictured below live year-round at a lake about 30 minutes away, and lots of siskins, grosbeaks, chickadees, and finches work the feeder just outside my dining room window every daylight hour.

The count starts tomorrow, December 14, and runs through January 5. Each local Audubon chapter picks one day for its count, totting up every bird their participants see. Click here to get information about counts near you.

By Julie Chai, Sunset associate garden editor

How cute is this?? Even if you're not a devoted birder, it's hard not to love these eco-friendly bird houses—made of untreated red cedar or recycled wood, coated with no-VOC paint, and topped with living roofs—that come in several styles and can also be custom designed by Sustainable Pet Design. (The one shown is for bluebirds.) They're perfect for bird lovers, but they'll also appeal to anyone who loves well-designed garden art.