Native Songbird Care & Conservation (2024)

Light pollution is harmful to migratory songbirds. Songbirds that migrate at night use a variety of tools to navigate their journey, including moonlight and the stars. Artificial light interferes with those navigational tools and causes birds to wander off course and toward dangerous nighttime landscapes of cities. Every year millions of birds in the US die as they’re drawn into these nocturnal landscapes, become disoriented and collide with needlessly illuminated buildings and towers.

Migratory birds also depend on cues from properly timed seasonal schedules. Artificial lights can cause them to migrate too early or too late and miss ideal climate conditions for nesting, foraging and other behaviors. Artificial light also kills the food they need most - insects! Light pollution is a significant contributing factor in the global decline of insects.

The negative impacts of light pollution affect almost every ecosystem on Earth, including fish, nesting sea turtles, coral reefs, bats, plants, insects, and even humans. Here’s the good news: Light pollution is completely reversible. Learn how you can reduce light pollution at home and in your community!

There are risks and rewards when using birdfeeders to attract songbirds your backyard. Watching birds at the feeders can provide hours of enjoyment, but it feeding birds comes with responsibility. For the birds, a convenient meal at the feeder comes with significant risk.

Dirty unmaintained feeders can spread diseases, such as avian pox and salmonellosis, among youravian neighbors if you're not careful. Wet seed in thefeedercan growmold and dangerous bacteria that make birds sick. Feeders and spilled seed on the ground attracts rats and other nuisance wildlife, such as raccoons. Both species predate songbird nests during the breeding season.

Birdfeeders cause an unnatural number of birds to congegrate, which can lead to unnatural predation of songbirds by non-native predators, such as free-roaming cats, as well as native predators, such as hawks. If your birdfeeder is attracting the attention of predators, please remove the feeder. It is unfair to lure songbirds into an artificial feeding situation that puts their lives at risk.

We highly recommend planting native plants to attract and sustain native songbirds. If you're committed to using a birdfeeder, please see our Songbird Safe Bird-feeding Guidelines.

Please don't use sticky traps to control fly and rodent problems. When placed outdoors, these cruel devices can and do entrap songbirds, often resulting in death. Songbirds, especially parent birds working extra hard to find a meal during the breeding season, are attracted to the insects that accumulate on sticky fly traps and seeds used to bait sticky rat traps.

We understand flies can be vectors of disease and a serious problem for farm animals. If sticky fly traps are part of your barn's fly management plan, please safely contain the trap in a cylindrical cage made of 1/2-3/4" aviary or poultry wire. Suspend the trap in the center of the cage and close the top and bottom of the cage (like the top of a milk carton) to prevent birds from entering the wire cage. Hang the cage and trap as per usual using wire or baling twine. The flies will have no problem accessing the trap and the cage will keep the birds out.

See our Songbird-safe Rodent Control information for ways to manage rodent problems safely. If you're contemplating using snap traps, please NEVER place snap traps outdoors! Only use snap traps indoors where songbirds cannot access them.

Nesting season for songbirds in California begins February 15 and ends mid-September. Songbirds expend a tremendous amount of energy during the breeding season. They have to secure territory, attract a mate, find a place to nest, build the nest, lay and incubate the eggs, and then spend weeks feeding and caring for their young. They are masters at camouflaging their nests, making them very difficult to spot. Please don't risk displacing a nest of baby birds by accidentally trimming away branches that could be holding or concealing their home.

Our native songbirds, their active nests (containing eggs or chicks) and their young are protected by state and federal law. Please save trimming trees, intense pruning, and clearing brush for fall and winter when there is no risk of destroying an active nest. Review our Nesting Season page to learn more.

If emergency tree work is necessary during the nesting season, please work with your arborist and review these guidelines from our colleagues at Cavity Conservation Initiative.

All of our native birds are protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act and California Fish andGame code, sections 3503 and 3503.5. These lawsmake it illegal to possess, kill or harm native birds; or disturb their active nests.

Without professional training and permits from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and US Fish and Wildlife Service, it is unlawful to possess a native bird, even if you intend to return it to the wild. If you find an injured, orphaned or ill songbird, please contact us or a permitted wildlife facility near you ASAP to ensure the animal receives proper medical care by a trained professional in a legally permitted facility.

Over recent decades, most of the shade-grown coffee in Latin America has been converted to intensively managed row monocultures devoid of trees or other vegetation. As a result, many migratory songbirds cannot find suitable habitats on their wintering grounds, and resident species of birds in Latin America have reduced breeding success due to lack of habitat.

All Bird Friendly coffee is first certified organic, and then goes much further adding standards for shade cover, plant species diversity, canopy structure, required buffer zones, leaf litter cover and much more. These are all necessary for wildlife to flourish.

When you purchase Bird Friendly® certified coffee or cocoa, you preserve critical habitat for birds and wildlife, fight climate change, protect biodiversity, and support farmers committed to conserving bird and wildlife habitat by farming sustainably.