Cover Image: Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife, Expanded Second Edition

Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife, Expanded Second Edition

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Member Reviews

This is a great book for birders and wildlife lovers. I enjoyed the pictures and tips on how to attract birds and butterflies. Though I have been working toward attracting local wildlife for several years, it does not hurt to refresh.

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Enjoyed this book. Kept me interested all the way through. Would recommend to a fellow reader. Love the cover.

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This book is useful for those people who wish to attract birds and other wildlife into their backyard. It also tells how to obtain certification of being a wildlife area.

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I trust NWF publications with my whole heart. David is a clear, concise writer with our best interests at heart., He gives us the tools necessary to practice conservation on an at-home level, which is still something desperately needed.

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Fantastic guide to attracting wildlife to your property!  Tons of information and tons of photographs - a perfect combination!

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Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and give an honest review of this book.

This book is basically a ‘how to’ book for establishing your yard as a welcoming site for birds, butterflies, bees, and small mammals. It focuses on native plants, trees and shrubs, the use of water,
and creating natural areas in your landscaping. If you successfully establish your yard as a certified wildlife habitat you can get a sign and place it in your landscape to identify yourself as such.
Even if you are not interested in establishing your yard as a certified wildlife habitat, you can still glean
information from this book.to improve your own garden.

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This book is a great resource for anyone wanting to incorporate wildlife into their garden plans. The exercises at the beginning are useful in helping work through garden needs and goals. The information is presented in clear chapters with thoughtful transitions and doesn't feel overwhelming to the beginner. I would recommend this book to any gardener or nature-lover.

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Overall a useful reference book on ways to make your backyard more attractive to wildlife. I liked the basics, including placing a bird bath top on the ground to give animals a place to drink, for example skunks (not like I especially want one in my yard). At times though I felt like too much information at once, making it harder to separate and go specifically to a topic I want. Minor though, and overall still would highly recommend this book.

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This book is full of information and helpful tips on how to make your yard a haven for birds, butterflies and other wildlife. I learned so much from it. Thank you Fox Chapel Publishing via NetGalley for the free copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

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This book gives a great overview for someone who wants to create a backyard that is wildlife-friendly. I am just starting to learn about native plants and how to attract birds and pollinators, so found this to be a great resource. I love the lists included for native and non-native invasive plants, and was surprised to learn that many of the plants on the "bad" list were ones I frequently see.

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I loved the idea of being able to write in the book and keep your thoughts in order when you're trying to create the perfect outdoor garden space.

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I received this arc from NetGalley for an honest review. This is an excellent book on how to attract birds, butterflies, and other wildlife to your garden. There's a ton of information and easy to use steps to do this.

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Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife by David Mizejewski is a wonderfully robust book on how anyone can do projects that allow you to bring wildlife into your environment. This is an expanded second edition of this title and updates are wonderful! This book is easy to understand, and has a wide variety of advice and projects that you can choose from to make your space more environmentally attractive. The photography in this book is beautiful and you can really see examples of the types of wildlife that you can easily attract into your backyard.

This book has a variety of sections that you can use to educate yourself or inspire yourself to construct a project. Let's take a look at a few of these sections:
Featured Spotlights
Family Project - These pages have a specific project that you can concentrate on. It provides; tips, materials, and instructions. I found the family project for Composting 101 to be very helpful, and easy to understand. And I can't wait to delve into the instructions for Build Bird Nesting Boxes. You actually get 3 different plans complete with wood measurements
.Wildlife Profile - Taking an in-depth look at a particular species, to you a better understanding of their role in the environment, and how to attract them to your living space. The call outs for Bluebirds and Monarch Butterflies really inspired me to make some changes that could help them.
National Wildlife Foundation - Garden for Wildlife - Each new chapter includes a checklist of items that will be helpful for you to have present in your environment to attract wildlife. For example, in the chapter on Cover this check box states that  you need 2+ of the following places for wildlife to take shelter from weather and predators; wooded area, dense shrubs, bramble patch, meadow/prairie, evergreens, ground cover, brush/log pile, rock pile/wall, burrow, cave, roosting box, water garden/pond. At first you might be thinking that you can't provide 2+ of these things, but as you read the chapter you will get a sense on what one family or individual really can do by the looking around at what your space has to offer.
Lists of plants - There are wonderful lists of native plants (grasses, sedges, vines, etc) that will be helpful to have in your yard. Likewise (and to me VERY helpful) there are lists that warn you NOT to include, such as invasive plants and non-native plants.

Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife has so much information, it will be a helpful resource for you to have handy as you work on making your yard a friendly place to a variety of wildlife. Whether you want to start slow and try out a project at a time, or if you are starting a whole yard from scratch and want to assign places and plants that will be inviting, this book will help you to make decisions that fit a variety of budgets, not to mention great learning opportunities. This book will be a great addition to your library.

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An informative and inspirational guide on how to turn your yard into a welcoming habitat for birds, animals, insects, etc. While it's a bit of a battle for me to *want* them in my garden, since I grow a lot of my own produce and often find myself fighting the birds, squirrels and rabbits for my hard-earned bounty, I do understand the need for restoring habitat, so I plan to implement some of the ideas here (especially the ones for pollinators/beneficial insects). I liked the project ideas/how-tos sprinkled throughout the book as well.

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As someone new to gardening but very interested in learning as much as I can, I really enjoyed this book. It was broken down into easily digestible categories that transition well. It is a good introduction to how you can turn you yard into a mini ecosystem, sustaining plant and animal life. I learned a lot and took a few breaks between chapters to do my own research. I like how it talked about a variety of wildlife on your property, how to host them, and their individual benefits. It can be applied to most of North America, though you will need to do more research to find specifics for your region.
I would have maybe put the section on invasive cover plants after the native cover plants, as I believe the rest of the sections go in that order, and would make for consistent reading. that was the only part that stood out as a weird transition. The checklist is a nice touch.

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A good book for anyone looking to create an outdoor space that is enjoyable for both humans and nonhumans alike. Helpful as a learning tool whether starting a new garden or want to improve on what you already have. And it’s easy to follow and understand especially with the glossary at the back of the book and places to make note of what your ultimate goal is. Best part is you do not need a degree in horticulture to create a beautiful habitat for birds, butterflies, and more.
I received an arc from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

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