Feeding the birds

With the trees bare, I have more opportunities to see the birds that are flitting around my leaf-covered backyard. On one memorable afternoon, I saw a flock of dark-eyed juncos foraging in the leaves on the ground while two blue jays flew back and forth from the birdbath to the big oak near the garage. 

I usually see juncos in flocks

A chickadee hopped along the oak trunk, jumping between the protective horizontal shoots of a climbing hydrangea. Meanwhile a cardinal couple appeared and disappeared among the dense evergreen needles of a large nearby yew.

This husky hydrangea vine provides cover for birds even after its leaves drop

     A week later at twilight, my attention was drawn to a loud chirping from the newel post of the front steps railing. I was able to identify the small bird that perched there, vocalizing officiously, as a house wren, Troglodytes aedon. 

House wren - photo JanetandPhil

This is not a rare species, but it’s not one I’ve seen in my yard before. I was proud to read on the Audubon Bird Guide app that this bird feeds on insects and likes to forage on the ground where there’s dense low growth—like here! 

     The house wren reportedly has a distinctive bubbling song. What I heard instead was its “excited chit call.” Listening to a recording on the app confirmed my bird identification. House wrens spend the breeding season all over North America, from southern Canada to the Mexican border. My wren may have been on the way to winter grounds in the southern US or Central America, migrating by night. How a five-inch bird weighing a few ounces can accomplish this long journey remains a wonder to me (For more on birds’ amazing powers, don’t miss The Genius of Birds, by Jennifer Ackerman).

     All these bird sightings seem to vindicate this year’s plan of piling up fall leaves on my garden beds. The reason for doing this instead of sending them out as yard waste or shredding them for mulch was to provide shelter for insects through the winter. When I see birds busily foraging in the yard, I can believe that leaf litter is doing its job.

Insects weather the winter among the fallen leaves--unless predators find them

     It turns out that those chickadees I see on the oak trunk are champions at coping with the cold. They can’t put on a lot of extra fat or a down layer like larger birds, because that would mess with their aerodynamics. Many small birds adapt by fluffing up their feathers, huddling together, and shivering in a special way by activating opposing muscle groups. Chickadees go further, dropping their nighttime body temperature by as much as 22° Fahrenheit in what’s called regulated hypothermia.

Chickadees are ready for the cold - photo USFWSmidwest

     How can we not want to help these birds with some winter calories to keep them warm? I’ve stopped filling my bird feeders during the warmer months, but now they’re back in action, and birds are using them. It’s encouraging to see them also hunting insects in those piles of fall leaves. This is the balance I’m aiming to achieve.

 

Coming soon

I'm off to visit the kids. See you in the New Year!

Insect-friendly in 2019

Judging by last year, seed catalogs will start arriving this month. I’m beginning to think about how to keep neonicotinoid insecticides out of next year’s garden.

Seed catalogs should be arriving soon

    Evidence is piling up that “neonics,” widely used in agriculture, are ubiquitous in the environment and the food supply. This class of chemicals was developed in the 1980s to replace earlier pesticides that were more toxic to humans. In the years since, they’ve played a part in a massive insect die-off. Neonics persist in plant tissues and kill or disable non-target insects, traveling by wind and water to affect untreated wild and cultivated areas.

Neonics kill and disable bees

    The problem goes beyond pollination. Insects also play a crucial role at the base of the food web and do essential work recycling waste through decomposition. Without insects, Earth wouldn’t support much human life (My thanks to reader Patricia McGinnis, who forwarded a revealing New York Times Magazine piece on this subject).

    In the midst of this gloom, I got some good news recently when I phoned a local garden center, Allandale Farm, to ask about their practices. I knew that the farm uses only organic controls on their site. The grower I spoke with reassured me that they also don’t buy any plants that have been treated with neonics. They’ve been able to find smaller nurseries that don't use these pesticides, she said. I was delighted to hear it. 

 

May plant shopping is a fun tradition

My lingering doubts about buying perennials at the farm were dispelled. Because garden centers source some of their stock from other growers, I’d feared that the farm might be selling neonic-treated plants from elsewhere. Now that I know their plants are neonic-free, I can enjoy a shopping spree in May. It’s great to hear that there are small wholesalers out there producing neonic-free plants. I hope they prosper!

    I feel good about shopping at local garden centers like Allandale Farm. At the other end of the scale of plant retailing, Home Depot promised in 2015 that they would phase out neonic-treated plants by the end of 2018. In the interim, they required their suppliers to attach a warning label to plants exposed to the chemicals. This is all progress, but I don’t see any statement on Home Depot’s web site announcing that the neonic phase-out is complete. Let’s hope that will be forthcoming next spring.

    Meanwhile, I’ve developed a short list of seed catalogs that offer organic seed. Conventional growers use treated seed to introduce neonics into a plant’s life cycle; organic growers don’t. Unfortunately it’s much easier to find pesticide-free seed for starting vegetables than for flowers.

Organic basil seeds weren't hard to find last year

     There’s still not enough consumer demand for organically grown ornamental plants. As one grower said to me, “You’re not going to eat them, so what’s the point?” The point is that we want to protect the soil and the creatures that live around us!

Here’s my list so far of catalogs that offer some organic alternatives: 

*Natural Gardening Company 
Johnny’s Selected Seeds
Renee’s Garden
*Adaptive Seeds
Botanical Interests
*Seeds of Change
Burpee
                        *organics only

Better red than dead

The ground is frozen, the leaves are down, and the landscape is a drab gray-brown, relieved occasionally by evergreens. 

Yellow coreopsis flowers turned to brown seedheads--just not the same

There’s one splash of color in the picture: red berries. The wildlife and I appreciate the trees and shrubs whose red fruits stand out at this time of year.

    Right outside the back door, a crab apple, Malus ‘Donald Wyman,’ still holds some small red fruits.

Crab apples at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn producing lots of fruit in full sun

 After we moved our tree from a spot against the back of the house to its current sunnier location, it started to make fruit every other year. Now we see red crab apples among the green leaves in August. The sour fruits aren’t squirrels’ first choice, but as the cold weather sets in, the easy ones to reach disappear, leaving a few bright holdouts on the outer branches. Eventually we see squirrels shimmying along wildly swinging twigs to grab the last few crab apples.

    I’ve been waiting for years to see red berries on a low-growing winterberry, Ilex verticillata ‘Nana’ Red Sprite, not far from the crab apple. A few dozen of them finally appeared this year. This shrub is a deciduous holly that’s native to eastern North America. Because it’s dioecious, I planted a male shrub nearby, a cultivar named ‘Jim Dandy’. Pollen from male holly flowers is needed to fertilize flowers of the female plants to produce the red berries, technically called drupes. A bigger version of this species that’s grown into a small multi-stemmed tree farther back in the yard makes lots of fruit, but birds pick and eat it enthusiastically. By winter, the fruit is mostly gone.

Mockingbird eating winterberry fruit-photo qmnonic

    Birds have visual powers that we lack. Many can see in the violet range, beyond the blues we see, and others can actually perceive ultraviolet light. To see these short wavelengths, birds’ retinas have four types of cones, compared to our three. They also have cell organelles called cone oil droplets, derived from carotenoids in food, which allow retinal cones to shift the range of wavelengths they perceive, like using filters to shift the color values of a digital photo. 

Birds can see ultraviolet light reflecting off waxy berries-photo kdee64

For both birds and humans, red anthocyanin pigment in fruits jumps out in the visual landscape, tempting us to take a bite.

Red is eye-catching

The first freezing weather causes starches in berries to turn to sugar and ferment, so if you see blackbirds that can’t fly straight, they may be drunk on fruit alcohol.

    At this time of year, you’re probably also spotting the small elongated vertical fruits of Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii). 

Japanese barberry-photo Leslie Holzmann

This thorny bush was a landscape darling for a while, but now it’s considered invasive in Massachusetts, and its sale is banned. When I see barberry in parks and conservation areas I worry, because it’s a strong competitor that can edge out native plants. Those pretty red berries are snapped up by birds who spread the seeds around, planting more barberry shrubs. But I have to admit that the bright red berries lift my spirits when everything else is gray and brown.

Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana), another bearer of bright berries

A journey of a thousand miles

Sunday at Celebrate Newton, a local craft fair, several shoppers asked me why I use the phrase “sustainable-enough.” I found myself replying, “My idea is that you don’t have to go from conventional to perfect in one step.” Back when it came time to choose a title for my book, I was stumped. My editor, Lorraine Anderson, suggested The Sustainable-Enough Garden, and that was just right.

Sustainable-enough gift basket

    There’s a nod in the title to pediatrician and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott’s concept of the “good enough mother,” a mother who recognizes and meets her baby’s needs but sometimes fails at perfect attunement, allowing the growing child to experience some manageable frustration. Similarly, I aim to be a good enough environmentally conscious gardener: trying my best, developing new insights over time, but not perfect.

On the path to 100 percent sustainability, but not there yet

    I think every step we take toward making a sustainable garden is a plus. If you can’t do everything, so be it. Do what you can now and add more as you go along. It’s foolish to think we know everything about natural processes. We’re bound to learn more as time goes on, and we’ll adjust our approach accordingly. For example, we now know that nonnative flowering plants do have a role to play in insect-friendly gardens. 

Nonnative butterfly bush draws lots of native insects

Thanks to active research, we’re getting more information in this area every year. Meanwhile, we can hold off on tearing out our beloved peonies and hydrangeas!

    It’s easy to get impatient with incremental changes. Compare the approaches of two effective environmental organizations. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), known for fiery defense of natural areas under attack, has been in high gear during the Trump administration, filing and winning lawsuits to block environmental deregulation. Their strategy seems to be to shoot for the stars.

NRDC fights to preserve wilderness

    In contrast, back in the 1980s, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) chose a more gradual, collaborative approach, showing industries how they can save money (and generate good PR) by eliminating waste and conserving energy. The idea of working with McDonald’s and Walmart must have been hard to stomach at first, but the results are undeniable. Over a decade, McDonald’s eliminated 300 million pounds of packaging and reduced restaurant waste by 30 percent with EDF’s help.

EDF persuaded McDonald's to skip the polystyrene clamshell packaging

Walmart has cut their greenhouse gas emissions and leveraged their clout to create a market for sustainably produced food and other products. I don’t want to support either corporation with my dollars, but I have to admit they’re positioned to be influencers in combating climate change.

Solar panels at Walmart in Caguas, Puerto Rico

    Recently EDF is working with Corn Belt farmers to reduce fertilizer runoff into the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Using less fertilizer saves money for farmers, and it promotes healthy soil and clean water. A goal of the program is to shrink the dead zone caused by man-made chemicals in the Mississippi Delta to “a safe level.” Is that enough? Even if it’s not, it’s still worth taking steps now, until we can do better in the future.