I'll be starting on my new garden soon and want to keep the honeyeaters and small birds that are current visitors. There is a huge viney exotic that has to go but its tube flowers are a good bird attractor. I am wary though of attracting in Noisy Miners as past experience is that they would exclude everything else. How do I pick the plants to keep them out? (Sorry NM but you can get to be a pain sometimes!) Wasn't sure whether to post this here or ANPSA ...
I'm no expert but I think noisy miners like a treed area with little understorey so that they have a clear view over their territory. If that's the case, then planting shrubs densely could put them off.
I agree with Night Parrot. You're unlikely to lose your other honeyeaters ( the Noisy Miner is a Honeyeater) & small birds if you plant plenty of shrubs & other understorey. Noisy Miners are advantaged when people clear understorey leaving just trees. Indigenous species are best adapted to the birds of your area & vice versa so those are the species which will best advantage your local bird life.
If the flowers of the vine are attracting birds, presumably honeyeaters, you might want to delay removing the vine until you have your plantings sufficiently established to provide the food, shelter & nesting places currently provided by the vine.
I agree with the others above - the best thing you can do to keep the small birds and keep noisy miners out is to provide dense planting (and dense and spiky shrubs) as noisy miners prefer open spaces under trees.
Good to see another ANPSA member here. I am a member of the SGAP in Qld.
Cheers
Tim
Brisbane
Thanks for your replies :).That's great info. I have located a Landcare nursery nearby and they can provide local provenance plants.
Timmo, I was a member of Central Coast ASGAP and have now moved up the Crescent Head (between Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour). I am not a fan of "ANPSA" acronym; very difficult to enunciate whereas "ASGAP" was easy ...
Way to go, hakeae. Local provenance plants will have been grown from seed collected from local plants.
Hi hakeae,
Another way to approach the NM issue is to provide zones. They are less likely to hassle little birds if they are distracted by something (e.g. tall bush/tree with large nectar-bearing flowers) in another part of the garden. Admittedly that works better for a large garden. On our 1500sqm block, the zoning is assisted by a steep slope and nearby features (e.g. bush reserve with good undergrowth, albeit too many weeds). Basically we are working with the existing presence of small birds in the reserve and creating an area of small to medium shrubs and grasses. Within this zone we have placed a bird bath (just a terracotta tray on a stump). It's been just over a year since we started planting (after removing lots of weeds) and already we have more little birds visiting this zone (e.g. Brown Thornbill, White-browed scrubwren, Variegated Fairy-wren). We are also hoping the very occasional Eastern Spinebill will discover the new flowering plants eventually.