Mitch Baker: Hi! Im Mitch Baker with American Plant. With cooler whether on the way, birds begin storing up for the winter. So give them the helping hand by providing a few key essentials in your garden.

Start by cleaning and filling your birdfeeders. Right now birds are trying to store that energy, so its upto us to provide the seed for them because theyve depleted most of their natural seed sources.

Ive got a specialty feeder here. This is a Thistle Feeder that attracts finches and were trying to attract gold finches. With these tiny little ports and the short perches and filled with niger seed, thats the kind of bird were going to attract, but youll also find a few of the purple finch are attracted to this feeder, unless you can find the upside down feeder which has the perch above the port, and the gold finch can hang upside down and feed from those ports, not eliminates the purple finch from getting all the niger seed.

Now, we have another type of feeder here, a high capacity die-cast metal, heavy duty feeder, that contains black oil sunflower seed. Black oil sunflower seed is one of the highest protein sources for birds. It also attracts one of the widest ranges of desirable birds. Now, this is a squirrel proof feeder because it has these collapsible perches; that also eliminates the larger undesirable birds, maybe crows or grackles from getting to the black oil sunflower seed.

Now, this third type of feeder we have is another squirrel-proof feeder because of the cage that surrounds the hopper. Now, this allows only small birds to enter and get to the black oil sunflower seed. This keeps the squirrels out. It keeps the larger birds out, also comes with a rain guard on the top to keep the seed dry.

These types of feeders attract the widest range of birds to our garden, and again this is the time of year when it's most important that they store up energy for the winter. So keep your feeders clean, keep them filled, and provide fresh water for your birds also by putting out a birdbath, maybe a birdbath on a pedestal or it could be a birdbath top thats on the ground for those ground feeding birds as well.

You can also attract birds to your garden with certain plants. Birds are attracted to plants for either of the seeds, the fruit, the nectar or in some cases just the foliage. So some great plants to put in the garden would include things like the Black-Eyed Susan Rudbeckia because of those prominent seeds that are ripening now. You can see the birds are just after them everyday.

The same thing with the coneflower, as those seeds ripen, finches in particular, gold finch will be attracted to the coneflower and also a couple of great ornamentals, hollies of all different types have great fruit for the birds, and viburnums; most of the viburnums produce fruit that is of great value to the birds as we go in to winter.

Also some birds are attracted to just the foliage of plants. You can see the markings from the birds beak on the tender foliage of the sedum; theyre interested in the moisture which contains carbohydrates and sugars that they need during the summer and the fall months. By following these tips, youll have a garden full of chirping birds in no time.