Backyard Birds

The birds and native plants of North Carolina have co-evolved over thousands of years.  As wilderness shrinks with development and backyard space increases, your role in providing natural sources of food and habitat for birds becomes much more important.

Songbirds

By choosing to add native fruit and seed bearing plants to your yard, you can provide birds with the year-round food and cover that they need.  Native plants can support 10 to 50 times more species of local wildlife than their non-native counterparts, so there is also a great benefit for those of us who would like to see a greater variety of birds in our yards.  Ideally, your feeders should only supplement the natural types of food you make available.

To find out what plants are native to our area, a good resource is the North Carolina Cooperative Extension’s publication, Managing Backyards and other Urban Habitats for Birds.  This very useful short guide lists native food sources and the groups of birds benefited.  Some of the suggested plants to consider, along with their time of fruit/seed availability, are the following:

• Red maple (Acer rubrum)- tall tree; March to April.
• Blackgum (Nyssa sylvatica) – short tree; August to October.
• Red mulberry (Morus rubra) – shrub; May to June.
• Blackberry (Rubus odoratus) – shrub; June to July.
• Native virburnum (Viburnum spp.) – shrub; August to December.
• Muscadine grape (Vitis rotundiflora) – vine; August to October.
• Native aster (Aster spp.) – flower; August to Feb.
• Tickseed (Coreopsis lanceolata) – flower; September to March.

These plants give an example of a mix of plant types, heights, and food that will be available throughout the year.  The more plant diversity you have in your habitat, the greater the diversity of birds that will be attracted to your yard.

 Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds arrive in our area in late March and stay until mid October.  They are attracted to areas with a variety of plants that produce bright, tubular flowers.   If you can only choose one plant, make it the Trumpet creeper (Campsis radicans) which flowers June to October.  This is the hummingbird’s most favorite plant, as are vine filled tangles in general.

Here are a few other hummingbird favorites that are native to North Carolina, along with their flowering dates:

• Carolina jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens) – March to April.
• Iris (Iris spp.) – April to May.
• Beardtongue (Penstemon spp.) – May to June.
• Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) – July to October.

            If you use hummingbird feeders, fill them with a boiled solution made of four parts water to one part sugar.  Food coloring and honey are not recommended.

A few quick don’ts

Avoid pruning trees and shrubs during the nesting season — early March through late July.  Bird nests can be damaged or exposed to predators and the weather if the vegetation around the nest is removed.

If your circumstances allow, don’t pull up your poison ivy.  This understandably unloved plant produces fruit from August to November for robins, chickadees, waxwings, and many other birds.

Also, if circumstances permit, don’t cut down that dead tree.  Snags (dead trees) are used by woodpeckers for nesting and feeding; chickadees, carolina wrens, and titmice use the woodpecker holes for nesting.

And don’t mow the grass.  Birds are more likely to use unmowed, unmanicured areas of your yard.

Resources

An excellent resource for more information on native plants for your backyard bird habitat is Gardening for the Birds by Thomas Barnes (1999, Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky).  North Carolina Extension Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture maintains a site at www.ces.ncsu.edu/nreos/wild/ with good birding information and links to many other useful birding websites.

Published in the Sanford Herald.

Backyard butterflies

You can become a lepidopterist without any extra time in school and without paying any dues! All you have to do is provide butterflies with a place to lay eggs, food plants for their larva, a place to form a chrysalis, and nectar plants for the adults.

In fact, these needs are easily planned for by considering only the larval stage and the adult stage.

Larval stage

There is a wonderful thing about butterfly larvae.  They are very host-plant specific.  This means that by choosing the one or two particular plants on which a specific butterfly will lay her eggs, you can attract that species to your yard,

The monarch, for instance, will only lay her eggs on milkweed plants.  When the egg hatches, the monarch butterfly will begin devouring the milkweed’s foliage and thereby acquire all the food it needs for this stage of its life.

You will be happy to know that, although caterpillars munch off the foliage of the host plant, most butterfly caterpillars will never cause the damage we associate with moth caterpillars such as the bagworm or the gypsy moth.  Add a few extra plants and you may not even notice the missing foliage.

The North Carolina Cooperative Extension guide “Butterflies in Your Backyard” can be of great help in choosing caterpillar host plants for the adult butterflies you wish to attract. [Or refer to the agriculture service in your particular state.]  Here you will find that fritillaries prefer violets, the gulf fritillary loves passionflowers, and that the wild indigo duskywing has a preference for, of all things, the wild indigo plant.

So, now you have the caterpillars.  To keep them around, you must provide the food and shelter needed for the adult stage.

The adult stage

Adult butterflies are less plant specific and enjoy a wider range of food sources, though they still have some definite preferences.  When spring temperatures reach 60 degrees, butterflies begin to move around and look for spring flowers.  They are attracted to dense clusters of red, yellow, orange, pink, and purple blossoms.  The flower tubes offered in your garden should be of varying depths to accommodate the varying proboscis lengths of individual butterfly species. Place your nectar-producing plants in a location that receives six hours of full sun, as the adults of most species prefer to feed in the sunlight.

Some important nectar-producing herbs and wildflowers you might plant are purple coneflower, beebalm, phlox, rudbeckia, and goldenrod.  This group will produce nectar from May through October.  To provide nectar earlier in the season, from March until June, shrubs and trees offer some of the best choices.  Consider virginia willow, eastern redbud, wild azalea, and blueberry as your spring bloomers.

When choosing plants for your butterfly garden, remember that the greater the variety of nectar plants you offer, with bloom times from March through October, the more variety of butterflies you will attract to your yard.  Again, the publication “Butterflies in Your Backyard” will be of great assistance in your selection and lists only those nectar plants native to North Carolina.  Non-native ornamentals are often bred for color and bloom size and not for quality nectar production.

Some tips

• Some butterflies prefer to eat tree sap or rotting fruit rather than nectar.  Place applesauce, watermelon rinds, over-ripe bananas, and other fruits in a partially shaded garden nook to attract these species.
• Male butterflies like to “puddle”.  They do this to ingest salts for the production of sperm.  Create a puddle by providing a moist area of salt, sand, or compost.
• Butterfiles need havens fromm wind, rain, and predators.  Provide these by arranging leaf, rock or brush piles near your butterfly garden.
• Place a few rocks in your backyard.  Butterflies like to bask in the early morning sun, allowing their wings to act as solar collectors that soak up the sun before they fly.

The National Audubon Society (www.audubon.org) and the National Wildlife Federation (www.nwf.org) have good butterfly information and links, and the Carolina Butterfly Society (www.carolinabutterflysociety.org) has an excellent list of North Carolina butterfly populations.  If you prefer to use a book for reference, I would recommend G. Ajilvsgi’s “Butterfly Gardening for the South,” published in 1990 by Taylor Publishing Co. of Dallas, Texas.

Learn as much as you can about your favorite butterflies; then you can tell all your friends you’re a lepidopterist!

Published in the Sanford Herald.

Let your yard go wild

Want to attract more wildlife to your yard?  Making a few simple changes could increase the number and variety of birds, butterflies, and other species visiting or living on your property.  To entice more wildlife to your backyard, consider these four basic habitat needs:  food, water, cover, and space.

Food

Food includes seeds, fruit, nectar, and insects.  How many of these are you providing?

Many of us are already providing raised bird feeders in our yards.  A simple adjustment you could make to attract a greater variety of birds is to spread seed on the ground to ground feeders such as mourning doves, cardinals, and eastern towhees.  White millet seed is the seed of choice for many of our ground-feeding birds, so add this seed to the top of your shopping list.  Choose a feeding spot within 10 feet of cover to allow your birds a quick escape from predators.

Water

Not everyone has a pond or other natural water source on their property, but many of us have raised bird baths.  Here again, think ground level.

A simple dish on the ground will offer a wider of birds and small mammals the opportunity to drink and bathe.  This water source should be two to three inches deep, 24 to 36 inches in diameter, and, again,  within 10 feet of escape cover.

A longer-term project would be to add a small pond to your wildlife site.  In addition to the small mammals and birds this will attract, a pond will also provide cover and a reproduction area for small fish and amphibians –and it’s a beautiful improvement to your landscape, too!

Cover

Cover is necessary for nesting, roosting, and for escape.  This is usually the least considered habitat need — and one of the most important.

If you are presently lacking trees, shrubs, and ground cover within 10 feet of your feeders, consider adding a few.  Clustering these plants close together will allow your wildlife to move around easily with exposing themselves to predators.  At least one good cluster of evergreen trees and shrubs will offer year-round protection from both the weather and predators.  Think about adding a blackberry bush for cover; it has the added benefit of doubling as a good source of food.

Rock and brush piles are another great addition to consider for attracting small mammals and amphibians.  A brush pile near your feeders will also increase the number of birds you see.  Construct a pile with treetops, an old Christmas tree, or other loosely stacked debris.

When choosing plants for cover, strongly consider using plants native to North Carolina [or your state].  Native plants are usually better for our site conditions and require less maintenance.  This means less time and money for you and provides better food, protection, and nesting choices for your wildlife.  The publication “Landscaping for Wildlife with Native Plants” has an excellent list of a wide range of native North Carolina plants.  [For NC and all other states, see National Wildlife Federation's website below.]

Space

Space is easy.  This is your yard.  After designating areas for more formal gardens (most likely your front yard) and areas for family activities, plan a space in a more remote section of your property as your wildlife area.  Wildlife like things a bit messy (like your new brush pile) and tucking your habitat in a remote corner may keep your neighbors happier, too.

If you would like more in-depth information on planning your wildlife area, check into these two useful Internet sites: The National Wildlife Federation’s Backyard Wildlife Habitat site, www.nwf.org/backyardwildlifehabitat and a site maintained by North Carolina Extension Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture at www.ces.ncsu.edu/nreos/wild.

So, go wild — and have more wildlife in your yard!

 Published in the Sanford Herald.