Plant collection

Shelter Plants for Birds

Shelter plants for birds are the cover that makes a feeder usable: Project FeederWatch's placement advice is to put feeders close to natural cover such as trees or shrubs, which offer birds refuge from predators ⁸.

Growing facts are from the Wildflower Center's Native Plant Database, the native-plant case is Audubon's ¹, and placement guidance from FeederWatch ⁸.

American holly foliage — among the best shelter plants for birds, giving evergreen winter cover — Photo: USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab from Beltsville, Maryland, USA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Shelter plants for birds: evergreens

Eastern red cedar is the most widely distributed eastern conifer and provides cover and nesting material, with berries that are a staple for many birds ². American holly, a pyramidal evergreen to 60 feet, provides cover and nesting sites as well as berries ³. Evergreens are the only cover that works in January.

Thickets and vine cover

Winterberry is listed for cover and nesting site ⁴; elderberry grows fast into a hedge-forming clump ⁵; buttonbush makes a multi-stemmed thicket in wet ground ⁶; Virginia creeper carpets fences and walls with foliage and winter fruit ⁷. Place the feeder about ten feet from this cover — close enough to flee to, far enough that squirrels cannot jump from it ⁸.

Why native plants first

Native plants are those that occur naturally in the region where they evolved, and Audubon calls them the ecological basis on which birds depend: without them and the insects that co-evolved with them, local birds cannot survive ¹. The scale matters — a native oak supports over 500 species of caterpillars where a ginkgo hosts five, and it takes more than 6,000 caterpillars to raise one brood of chickadees ¹. Most nursery landscaping plants are alien species, so choosing natives is the single landscaping decision with the clearest effect on bird populations ¹.

The alternative is what most yards already have. Audubon notes that manicured lawn now covers over 40 million acres of the United States as a green monoculture, that the traditional suburban lawn carries on average ten times more chemical pesticide per acre than farmland, and that the continental U.S. has lost 150 million acres of habitat and farmland to sprawl ¹. Every bed of natives that replaces turf is habitat that lawn cannot be, and long-lived native trees such as oaks and maples also store carbon ¹.

Check the native range before buying: the Wildflower Center record for this species lists the states and provinces where it occurs naturally ², and Audubon's zip-code native plant database narrows that to your area and the bird groups each plant attracts ¹. Once established, native plants generally need little maintenance and far less water than lawn, and they do not need the pesticides that make a yard poor bird habitat ¹.

Each plant above links to its own profile with the Wildflower Center's native range, so you can confirm it occurs naturally where you live before buying ¹.

More plant guides

Trumpet Honeysuckle →American Elderberry →Canadian Serviceberry →Flowering Dogwood →Winterberry →American Holly →Eastern Redcedar →Common Buttonbush →Virginia Creeper →American Beech →Paper Birch →Red Mulberry →Native plants for birds →Berry plants for birds →Seed plants for birds →Nectar plants for birds →

Frequently asked questions

What plants give birds shelter in winter?

Evergreens: eastern red cedar and American holly, both listed for cover ²³.

How close should cover be to a feeder?

About ten feet: near enough for refuge from predators, far enough that squirrels cannot jump across ⁸.