How Do We Create Bird-Friendly Yards & Communities?

Join Redwood Region Audubon Society for a

Bird-Friendly Yard Tour

Saturday, August 17, from

12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. in Eureka.

Visit six private Eureka yards and Lost Foods Native Plant Nursery at Redwood Acres. Get inspired to make your yard more bird and wildlife friendly!

Birds offer us a richer, more beautiful, and healthful place to live. Each community has a unique ecological and cultural story to tell. Creating bird-friendly communities is Audubon’s commitment to the sustainability of our urban, suburban, and rural places. Over the past century, urbanization has taken, fragmented, and transformed ecologically productive land with sterile lawns and exotic ornamental plants. We’ve introduced walls of glass, toxic pesticides, and domestic predators. The human-dominated landscape no longer supports functioning ecosystems or provides healthy places for birds.

We can restore and reconnect these places. We can reestablish the ecological functions of our cities and towns. We can provide an essential, safe habitat for birds. With simple acts of hope, everyone can help make their community bird-friendly.

See what you can do from simply adding the best plants in pots to your patio and deck, to bigger endeavors such as reducing your lawn. Visit a diversity of beautiful and enchanting residential yards that also provide habitat that benefits birds and other wildlife. Learn which native plants provide seeds, berries, nectar and insects. Discover different types of vegetation that provide shelter, structure, as well as, materials and habitat for nesting. Feeders, water features and cat enclosures are included in some of the yards.

The yard owners are excited about sharing their stories. On the tour you'll visit:

A yard that is occasionally visited by a sharp-shinned hawk!

A yard full of riotous color, birds, and wild animals, built on the bones of 50 years of gardening.

Spacious "catios," affordably built, that keep cats safe from cars and predators, and birds safe from cats.

A mix of wild and tame on an acre of land, with bird feeders in the middle of the vegetable garden.

A yard with an untamed mixture of plants, owned by two busy people with little time for gardening, that supports over 20 species of birds.

A yard filled with mostly-native plants, lots of berries, fruit trees, cement leafs for collecting little pools of water from the fog, and lots of birds.

And be sure to stop by Lost Foods Native Plant Garden to see the amazing variety of plants you can grow to welcome birds and other wildlife to your yard!

This is the first in a series of community yard tours being planned around the redwood region. See examples, collect resources, share stories and visit with some of your neighbors!

Participants will receive the addresses of the yards when they purchase a $10 ticket.

Funds raised will support Redwood Region Audubon Society’s ongoing educational programs and habitat conservation efforts.

Tickets are available HERE or mail checks to RRAS, P.O. Box 1054, Eureka, CA 95502 (please postmark by August 12!) Tickets may also be purchased on the day of the event at Lost Foods Native Plant Nursery located at Redwood Acres in Eureka.

Volunteers are needed as greeters at the yards. Responsibilities include working a 2 or 4 hour shift, checking tickets and providing printed information to visitors. For more information please contact Susan Penn at 707-672-3346 or email susanpenn60@gmail.com.