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!

Helping more by doing less

The Xerces Society, which works to protect invertebrates and their habitats, has created nine handsome posters to advocate letting fall leaves lie. They’re offering them in printable form on their website to spread the word that leaves on the ground are necessary for moths, butterflies, bumblebees, and many other garden contributors.

    The reason to let leaves lie on the ground through the winter is that so many species use that leaf layer for shelter. Most butterfly and moth species don’t migrate. They need to make it through the cold months in some stage of their life cycle, whether it be as an egg, a chrysalis, or an adult. Bumblebees don’t gather in hives, and they too welcome an insulating cover of leaves over the shallow holes in the soil where their queens spend the winter.

Fertilized bumblebee queens survive the winter in holes in the ground

    I’m working to welcome these insects and many others to my garden: leaf-eaters, pollinators, and the beneficial insects that, as predators, keep bug populations in balance. 

Dragonflies are top predators, useful for keeping leaf-eating insects in check

I’m counting on these native insects at the base of the food web to keep my plants healthy and my garden a welcoming place for birds and other animals. The three pillars of this approach are avoiding pesticides, choosing the right plants, and letting those fall leaves lie on the ground.

It might look messy, but letting leaves lie is more sustainable

    To help out native insects, I’ve completely discontinued pesticide spraying, even for nonnative pests without local predators. That’s to avoid killing off native insects with friendly fire. No insecticide is so targeted that it doesn’t cause unintended casualties.

In the woods, leaf litter is free of pesticides and stays undisturbed on the ground.

    I’m also choosing plants with the insects in mind. Last week students at a hands-on Newton Community Education course in the yard helped plant my latest insect-attracting shrub, a New Jersey tea (Ceanothus americanus), adding more native flowers to offer pollen and nectar in spring. 

New Jersey tea flowers offer premium pollen and nectar

This little shrub will grow into a 3-foot mound and attract butterflies and hummingbirds to its white or pale lavender flowers. 

     I’m looking forward to experiencing New Jersey tea’s spring fragrance. It’s drought tolerant once established, which fits with my efforts to water less. Right now it’s leafless, showing a few of the yellow twigs that will stand out in the winter landscape when it settles in. When next year’s leaves fall to the ground, they'll help insects through the winter.

    I could undo some of the benefits of planting insect-friendly perennials and shrubs by bagging up my tree leaves and setting them out at the curb for yard waste pick-up. 

Insects lose winter habitat when organic material goes out as yard waste-photo Bill Barber

The Xerces Society warns that sending away those fall leaves--or chopping them up with a lawnmower or leaf shredder for mulch—would be discarding or destroying insects and their eggs and larvae already sheltering among the leaves.

    Not shredding leaves for mulch will save a lot of time and energy. I can spend some of that time piling leaves around trees and shrubs that could use some extra insulation. And there’ll be time to cook up lots of schemes for moving plants around next spring. That’s the beauty of a garden. It’s never finished.

For the birds

     I heard a wonderful talk last week by Claudia Thompson, founder and president of Grow Native Massachusetts. Claudia spoke at a meeting of the Temple Shalom Garden Club in Newton.

    Claudia’s topic was the importance of growing native plants in home gardens. She illustrated how she created a lovely native plant garden in her yard in Cambridge.

    By planting native trees, shrubs and perennials, Claudia created habitat for many native animals, from soil organisms to insects to an amazing number of bird species. Photos from her yard captured birds I never expected would frequent a city garden.

    After hearing Claudia’s talk, I’m fired with enthusiasm to provide habitat for native birds in my own yard. I walked around the garden considering what I’d done for the birds and what else I could be doing.

    Claudia listed basic bird needs: food, in the form of insects, seeds and fruits, water, shelter, and cover for nesting and foraging (more information is available on the group’s website, www.grownativemass.org). She provides all of these necessities in a small garden, for example she attracts flocks of beautiful cedar waxwings who feast on the spring fruit of a grove of amelanchier, a small tree commonly known as serviceberry, juneberry, shadblow or shadbush. I’ve seen cedar waxwings farther north in the Adirondacks, never in my garden.    

      Looking at my own yard through the lens of Claudia’s talk, I recognized that I do have trees and shrubs of varying heights, including evergreens, that allow birds to flit safely from perch to perch. Two birdbaths are located near cover so that birds can feel safe. 

Birdbath beneath a thistle seed feeder

I’ve got quite a few native plants that provide food for birds, from towering conifers to low-growing native perennials. I even have two amelanchiers that produce the garden’s first tree fruit of the year in June.
  

     A knowledgeable birder, Claudia recognizes the call of the cedar waxwings when they arrive to check out her trees. I can’t identify them by ear, and I don’t spend enough time in that corner of the garden to spot them if they did come. The amelanchier berries disappear quickly. It’s possible that flocks of hungry waxwings are swooping in undetected. That’s not a completely satisfying thought. I wish I’d planted the trees within view of the house, as Claudia did.

      An area where I need improvement is my leaf litter management. Claudia reported that fall leaves lying on the ground, which I’ve been chopping in my leaf shredder for mulch, harbor insects and snails that play important roles in the garden ecosystem, including providing food for birds. She recommended letting the leaves alone to decompose in place.

      Whole leaves blow around, and in front of the house that’s a problem for my neighbors, who work to keep their lawns leaf-free in winter. To meet the neighborhood standard, I’ll need to keep raking and chopping leaves that drop in the front yard.

Leaves blow around if left on ground cover beds in front of the house

In back, though, I’m convinced I should try Claudia’s system, raking leaves off the lawn but letting them lie unchopped on the beds, even near the house.

Coral bells (Heuchera 'Montrose Ruby') under fallen leaves this winter

Then I want to find out more about native plant communities—and learn some bird calls.