When the night gets chilly, butterflies like to find a place to sleep and shelter from the cold winds. Natural shelters include shrubs and fences with lots of vines, but you can provide a house that will also protect the butterflies from predators. These houses can be functional or decorative, depending on your taste

Everyone loves butterflies - the colorful insects flutter about your flowers and create beauty in your garden. They're a wonderful insect for you and your children to watch and learn about. You can learn how to attract butterflies to your garden using feeders, plants and houses. Creating attractants for butterflies will ensure that you always have some of the beautiful creatures around for study and enjoyment.

Your garden visitors don't stop when the sun goes down - in fact, your garden plays host to a whole new set of animals who are looking for food. One such animal you might see in the dusky hours is a bat. There are many different types of bats, so you'll want to know who you see flitting around in the twilight.

The purple martin is America's most desirable backyard bird. Homeowners enjoy purple martins for their beauty of flight, social behavior, pleasant chirp, and insect eating ability. Purple martins are totally dependent on humans for housing and are very friendly to humans.

In the past, bluebirds relied on woodpeckers and other cavity-dwellers to provide the majority of their nesting places. They'd select abandoned cavities in dead trees or rotten fence posts to raise their families. As development wiped out many of these natural nesting sites, the bluebird population declined dramatically.

But man-made nesting boxes have played a vital role in reviving the beloved bluebird.Bluebirds prefer to nest in open areas with low or sparse ground cover.

Every good bird habitat needs a small nesting house for petite birds like wrens and chicadees.

Open nesting platform is just what some birds are looking for. With its protective roof, it will help these birds produce more fledgings because of its protection against the weather.