©Janet AllenHummer getting nectar from cardinal flower lobelia Nectar is bird food mainly for hummingbirds, though orioles also like nectar. Orioles visit our yard generally only one or two days a year, though. Even though I put out orange halves and grape jelly, they just didn't stay around, so I don't do anything special to attract them anymore.
Sap could also fall into this category, but I haven't noticed birds, such as the yellow-bellied sapsucker, in my yard.
Sorry, birders: I must now hit this nerve. The fact that a plant feeds birds does not vindicate its use. It is true that without the northward spread of multiflora roses, we Yankees would not enjoy the song of mockingbirds on moonlit nights. But if those rose hips enable one bird to make it through our northern winters, the meadows that might otherwise flourish where multifloras have invaded would support many more bird species on the myriad insects they provide in spring and summer, the variety of the grains and flower seeds they offer in the winter, and the rodent diet they serve up throughout the year. One slaps the label "weed" on a species, not because it is without virtue, but because whatever virtues that plant may have cannot outweigh the countless virtues of the entire habitat it displaces.
~ Sara Stein,
Planting Noah's Garden, pp. 172-173
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
~ Joseph Addison
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