Fruit and berry producing shrubs are a superb way to provide habitat as well as a food source for your neighbourhood birds! If there is a small fruit or berry you find delicious, chances are the birds will too! Birds also eat a lot of fruits that humans do not consume, such as mountain ash, dogwood, and cotoneaster. Birds that like eating fruit include robins, thrushes, orioles, bluebirds, flickers, blue jays, and waxwings.

Some excellent fruit and berry producing trees and shrubs that are easy to grow and perform very well in Saskatchewan include the following:

Cranberry, saskatoon berry, crabapple, hawthorn (*note that not all kinds will produce fruit), currant, gooseberry, Tatarian honeysuckle, river grape, haskap, Nanking cherry, sea buckthorn (*not to be confused with buckthorn, which is a different shrub entirely), buffaloberry, Korean barberry, chokecherry, strawberries, and mountain ash.

Growing plants that produce an abundance of nutritious seeds is also an excellent way to feed local birds as well as creating beauty in your backyard! Don't be quick to dead-head or cut back plants that are finished blooming. Many birds rely on seeds to fuel their fall migrations and provide them with lunch! Goldfinches, house finches, pine siskins, redpolls, many of our native sparrows, grosbeaks, juncos, doves, and nuthatches are all fond of eating seeds.

Excellent seed-producing plants that perform well here and will be loved by your local bird friends include purple coneflower (Echinacea), bachelor's buttons, certain thistles, cosmos, sunflowers, and ornamental grasses such as big bluestem, panic grass, and most kinds of millet.