Caterpillars are necessary to feed baby birds. Butterfly and moth caterpillar host plants are terribly fragmented (too few and too isolated), so we need to fill in the gaps by planting native host plants in our yards and community. Host plants are the particular plants their caterpillars are able to eat, with keystone plants supporting the greatest number of caterpillars. Birds, including the common species, are not getting enough caterpillars to eat because of the lack of host plants, and birds are quickly decreasing in number. Birds are the 'canaries in the coalmine,' indicating the beginning of our ecosystem collapse. If we include keystone and native host plants in our yards and community, we can save the ecosystem services that plants and animals provide and humans depend upon (i.e., releasing oxygen into the air, cleaning our drinking water, pollinating our food), stop the collapse of our food web and ultimately our own demise.
See Bringing Nature Home, an updated presentation by Doug Tallamy, below in Nature News. There's still time for us to work together to turn this around simply by changing the type of plants we add to our gardens. The top keystone native perennials are: goldenrod, aster, sunflower and wild strawberry. The top keystone native trees are: oak, cherry, willow and birch. Be sure to say "Native" in front of each plant. Using keystone and other native host plants, we can create beautiful native landscapes with healthy butterflies and birds. See paragraphs one and two about keystone plants to find out more.
Isn't this baby Opossum in my yard last March adorable? Opossums are mistaken to be related to rats because of their fur-less tail, but actually are related to Kangaroos because opossums carry their young in their pouch. Opossums are the only marsupial in North America. Possums are a different animal that lives on the Australian continent. Opossums eat up to 5,000 ticks per season, which helps to reduce Lyme disease. They eat venomous snakes and prey on them, so they keep snakes like copperheads and rattlesnakes away from your house. Opossums are resistant to rabies. They eat dead animals of all types. They help our gardens by eating snails and slugs. Please brake for opossums because they play dead when cars approach. They are beneficial to have in your yard. Read more.
Good news: Volunteers have created a sustainable area where you can bike, see native plants and wildlife or enjoy public art underneath the Miami elevated Metrorail. Meg Daly, one of the visionaries of the project, says that “nature is resilient. It will restore itself if given the opportunity.” Be inspired.
- Organic Lawn Care: Hire an exclusively organic lawn care company that does not use any chemicals, including insecticides, herbicides or any 'cides (ask for specifics)
- Organic Lawn Care DIY: Overseed your lawn to shade out weeds or apply Organic Corn Gluten (away from bodies of water) when the soil reaches 50 degrees and crocuses bloom (3/15 - 4/10 in central Ohio) for pre-emergent broadleaf weed control; make a note of the date if you want to over-seed 5 weeks after applying Corn Gluten (if we've had enough rain)
- Why Lawn Chemicals Really Are Harmful to Birds
- Keep bees and other pollinators in mind when you plan your garden and don't use anything containing neonicotinoids because the poison becomes a permanent part of the plant
- When choosing a lawn care company with organic, eco-friendly or natural in their information, caution: call and/or read the fine print to see if they actually use chemicals or non-organic treatments
- To remove lawn easily for this spring's garden, try the lasagna method. Put the garden where you can see it from your window
- Support our U.S. native plant vendors, and more for Ohio here. There are also online native nurseries, such as Prairie Moon Nursery
- Specialist native bees can feed only the pollen of their host plant to their babies. The native plants that feed the most specialist bees in most parts of the country are Perennial Sunflowers, Goldenrods, Native Willows, Asters and Blueberries. These plants will also feed the generalist native bee babies
- Mixing native plants with fruits and vegetables should yield a greater bounty at harvest time
- Keep plant stems in your garden until after overwintering insects have left (which is after the latest freeze date, or late May in Ohio). As one example, swallowtails overwinter as a chrysalis attached to the stem of a perennial. They are adapted to look like the plant, so they are almost impossible to spot
- How to cut down stems in late spring for stem-nesting bees
- How to Get Started with Native Plants
- When spacing out your trees and bushes, plant them as they would grow in natural areas. Place them densely together than in conventional areas, 3'-10' apart, so that their crowns and roots will become intermingled. Intermingled roots allow them to exchange nutrients below ground and resist stressors, such as high winds
- Be Brash about Planning for Nature - designing native plant gardens
- Shade Plants for the Ohio region
- To find out if a plant is native, put in the scientific name or click the arrow for common name, and type your plant's name here
- Plant native ground cover (for example, native violets) or place leaves or compost around trees 2-3 inches deep and as large in diameter as practical while keeping compost from covering the root flares; wait until after the ground warms to avoid a cold, damp place where fungus can form. This provides caterpillars the habitat they need to overwinter. Learn more (read to the bottom)
- Use alternatives to Peat Moss, such as leaves, compost or compost manure, because Peat Moss is an unsustainable resource taken from fragile bogs and wetlands
- Use alternatives to Cypress mulch, such as native groundcover (e.g. native violets), leaves, organic compost, to save our old-growth Cypress forests
- More Than Monarchs by Doug Tallamy: Conservation Starts at Home - short video 9 minutes
- Pick up plastic sacks, trash and other debris that has blown into the street gutter and throw it into your trash to keep it from harming wildlife and going directly into our streams and rivers and polluting our drinking water
- Let's save native bees by placing non-native, European honey bee hives only in landscapes that are adequately planted to support the honey bees. Honey bee hives can hold 10,000-50,000 honey bees and need at least an acre of flowering plants. Domesticated honey bees can fly much farther than our wild native bees, extracting resources from a large area where it overlaps native bee plant territories and out-competing our native bees
- Help save Bees. Instead of putting up bee houses that may bring disease and invasive, non-native bees and wasps over time, try this: leave untilled ground, corners of rough grass, logs, brush piles, tree stumps and tree snags for native bees. Bees lay their eggs hidden from sight in soil, holes in wood, plant stalks and other places we consider debris in the garden
- Leave bird nests where they are so birds can use or re-use the materials; it is against the law to remove the nests of most native bird species
- Natural food is not available to birds until the low temps stay above 50 degrees. Berries are usually all eaten by March. Please feed birds until caterpillars are on the leaves and insects are flying (March, April and sometimes May are the toughest times for birds in the Midwest)
- Flocks of grackles and other blackbirds may visit your bird feeder a few times a year. If you feed birds and are having a problem with a native flock in spring, it shouldn't last long and will stop when the birds break up into pairs. You could temporarily switch from Sunflower without the shell to Safflower seeds, but then Robins can't eat it because their beak is too soft to break the shell
- Understand the value and purpose of wetlands (p.5) - excellent article
- If you had yellow jackets or honey bees removed from a wall, be sure to plug their entry hole to prevent them from re-entering through the same opening
- Bluebird houses: Transparent fishing line (monofilament) parallel to the entry hole deters house sparrows from killing bluebirds and other cavity nesting birds in their houses
- Keep dead trees: the value of a dead tree throughout its transitions
- Keep your pet's distemper vaccines up to date. Distemper can be transmitted if pets come in contact with wildlife that has distemper, and the distemper virus may live on surfaces touched by infected wildlife for up to 2 hours
- Get on Doug Tallamy's Homegrown National Park map (scroll down) so we can tell the number of acres with native plants. Please let them know you heard it from Nature Scoop
Please send your backyard conservation educational event with a link the month prior to the registration deadline (e.g. May 1 for June issue)
- Would you please email me if your group would like to schedule a ZOOM presentation by a National Wildlife Federation certified Habitat Ambassador at no cost?
- Winter Backyard Birding Recording, Cathy Tiffany speaker, Habitat Ambassador, sponsored by Westerville Library
- Turn Your Yard into a Homegrown National Park Recording, Steve Inglish, speaker, Habitat Ambassador, sponsored by Westerville Library
- Available starting 3/5, Bringing Back the Bluebird: Best Practices Recording, Bethany Gray speaker, Habitat Ambassador, OBS (Ohio Bluebird Society) Virtual Conference
- Reg now for 3/19, Home Landscaping for Wildlife, Steve Inglish speaker 10am, Virtual, sponsored by Great Lakes Region Hosta College
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