Gardeners pursue gardening activities for a variety of reasons.

Some enjoy the beauty of colorful flowers, shrubs and trees. Many want to experience the taste of herbs and vegetables fresh from their garden. Others want the solitude, tranquility and sense of accomplishment they find outdoors.

A significant group of gardeners, including Melitta Mathis, appreciate the sight and sound of birds in their garden and gear their efforts to create an inviting habitat for them.

Vicksburg is a new location for Mathis, who spent the last decade living and gardening in Georgia. There she worked with a wholesale grower who supplied plants to some of the larger mass retailers and learned a lot about various plants, shrubs and trees. She had a large garden, which included some of the old standbys and many of the newer introductions she dealt with in her work environment. She had several birdhouses, feeders and baths and became quite enamored with the beauty and antics of the birds that visited her garden there.

Six months ago she moved in with her daughter and partner who have lived in their Fairways home for several years. They are also bird enthusiasts and have worked to attract birds to their garden.

Their patio overlooks the lake and is a favorite spot from which to enjoy morning coffee and watch the birds. Attractive beds and pots filled with bright flowering petunias, angelonia, mandevillas, sweet potato vine, coleus, verbena plus other annuals and perennials occupy the patio area. A rosy pink-flowered oleander and several small trees offer shade, height and cover in the backyard area.

One side of the house was converted into a suite for Mathis’ use. Her rooms open out onto a large side yard where she is establishing new beds for plants which she brought in her move to Mississippi. The house sits on an unusual shaped lot and this side yard is quite a large area with lots of potential.

Food, water, shelter and space are key components for a bird-friendly habitat according to the Audubon Society. Mathis said she spends almost as much money buying birdseed as she does buying people food for their household. Sunflower seeds, peanuts, safflower, thistle and even mealy worms for the bluebirds are on her shopping list for the birds. She often refills feeders several times a day.

Bird-friendly plantings which produce seed and berries are important to include in a landscape such as coneflowers, coreopsis, zinnias, sunflowers, monad, ornamental grasses, winterberry and cotoneaster, plants the birds found particularly attractive in her previous garden.

Shallow birdbaths are stationed in various spots in the back and side yards. Birds are attracted to the sound of trickling water and a three-tiered fountain surrounded by brightly colored annuals is located on the patio; however, fountains are generally difficult for birds to use for baths or drinking so birdbaths are still necessary to fill their need for water.

Eight birdhouses in addition to many large well-established shrubs and small trees such as elaeagnus, forsythia, viburnum, ligustrum, crepe myrtle and spiraea offer tempting nesting sites for the birds which frequent the feeders.

Mathis read that gardeners who wanted to prevent sparrows from taking over their birdhouses should drill several small holes in the roof or upper areas of their houses. Sparrows don’t like too much light and will choose other locations. She pried up one side of a house where sparrows had come in and driven away a pair of bluebirds who were building a nest there. She tried this trick and low and behold it worked. Sparrows have not returned to that house.

“The more different foods that you have available to them, the more types of birds that will be attracted to your garden” Mathis said.

She keeps binoculars handy throughout the day and has watched bluebirds, cardinals, thrashers, wrens and sparrows raise families this spring.

Grape jelly goes on a special feeder which attracts orchard orioles. Tufted titmice and black-capped chickadees are also frequent visitors at their feeders.

AudubonWorkshop.com is dedicated to all kinds of supplies necessary to develop a bird-friendly garden including plants, according to Mathis, and wild-bird-watching.com is another source of information.

She recommends residents provide the right environment and then sit back and enjoy the show.