cc >> Good afternoon, everyone.
I'm happy to be here. It's a pleasure to have all of
you potential gardeners for birds here.
Just to give you a little background about myself.
I am the author of the book Birdscaping in the Midwest, and,
previously, I was the director of the Wehr Nature Center for 18
years. And after I retired, I became
even more involved in organizations for both birds and
native plants. I'm active with the Lakeland
Audubon in my community, and, also, I just started the Kettle
Moraine chapter of Wild Ones, a natural landscaping organization
that I highly recommend if you're interested in native
plants. They have a chapter right here
in Madison, and they have a booth out there if you're
interested. So, let me get on with the
program then. I'm going to be speaking about
landscaping, birdscaping, in our area in the Midwest and,
particularly, in Wisconsin. Many of you have bird feeders at
this time of year. I do too.
I love bird feeding, but the best way to attract the most
birds and the greatest variety of birds is to landscape for
birds. There are many reasons for this.
There we go. There are a lot of birds that
never come to your feeders, like thrushes.
This is the hermit thrush here, one of our earliest migrants.
I guess I have to be over here. Okay.
Also, our warblers rarely, if ever, come to feeders.
In fact, just a very small percentage of our birds come to
feeders. As you can see here, the top
circle there represents our North American bird species.
There are over 900 varieties of birds in our country, but only
11% of them ever come to feeders.
Also, and as you look at the bottom there, you can entice a
lot of variety of birds, some that wouldn't come to your
feeders otherwise, by landscaping for them with native
plants. For example, the circle that
says Nowaks, that represents our yard when we lived on a fourth
acre property in Greendale, a suburb of Milwaukee.
We attracted over 80 different species of birds, but, of them,
only about a third ever came to our feeders.
The rest were attracted by our landscaping.
Likewise, with the next one that says Tufts, that represents the
yard of the late Craig Tufts who was the chief naturalist with
the National Wildlife Federation.
And he had an acre property, and he said he only got 21% of the
birds on his property coming to his feeders of the 99 birds that
he did see on his property. So, again, he was able to
attract far more birds with the right landscaping that creates
the habitats that birds need. Even those birds that come,
typically, to our feeders, like the chickadee, only get a very
small proportion. 21% in the case of chickadees,
and that was documented right here in Wisconsin by researchers
at the UW Madison university. They checked out chickadees for
several years, and they found they only came for, as I said,
about one-fifth of their food. The rest of the time they're
gleaning shrubs and twigs for little caterpillars and eggs and
other invertebrates. In this case, the sumac berries
do harbor insects in the winter, and, in addition, a chickadee
will occasionally take a berry, but they're primarily insect
eaters. It's very import to save large
landscapes for birds and other wildlife.
As you well know, the loss of habitat is the greatest threat
to our birds and wildlife. This is a beautiful prairie
filled with blazing star in the south Kettle Moraine near where
I live now. So there are birds, for example,
the need such large territories. Meadow larks up here might need
up to 15 acres, as you see here, to raise a family of its
fledglings. However, there are a lot of
other birds that need less acreage.
Baltimore oriole does very well on a larger property or in a
neighborhood. Those are the kinds of birds
that we can attract to our own yards by landscaping for them,
and we need to have this opportunity to have habitats all
over because we're losing so much to urbanization and
industrialization and even industrial farming for that
matter. And here's a very small property
right in Greenfield, a suburb of Milwaukee.
And you can see it has lovely flowers that will offer nectar
for hummingbirds earlier in the year.
It will attract insects for insect-eating birds, a little
shelter for the birds, and then seeds for birds later in the
year. And the entire backyard, which
is larger, is also landscaped for birds and wildlife.
This is the home of Greg Septon, whom some of you may known as
the coordinator of the Peregrine Falcon Recovery Project in
Wisconsin, and he has oak savanna, as you can see that
beautiful oak in his front yard, and he has prairie in the
backyard. This is where we lived for over
30 years in Greendale, a suburb of Milwaukee, and, as you can
see there, we built our house and we first grass there, as you
can see, on each side of our new home there.
And we did maintain a lawn for a number of years, but,
eventually, we realized that we wanted to have a wildlife
habitat there. And our front yard was the
sunniest so that's where we put our prairie, as you see here.
Here's another view of it. We did retain a little bit of
lawn in the front which helped integrate it with the lawns on
each side of us and made it look more like a planned garden.
In addition, I like to tell people that we sold our house in
one week to people who loved our landscaping.
And, also, Money Magazine, a few years ago, said that by reducing
or eliminating your lawn and planting a regional garden with
native plants, you can increase the value of your home by 10%.
So I encourage you to do the front.
What do we do to the front except mow it and water it and
fertilize it, right? We never use our front lawns.
There's a lot of other values to landscaping with native plants
for birds. Less time mowing.
Of course, you're all aware of that, but the important point
here is that there's less pollution.
Those small engines, like lawn mowers, have not been improved
like our car engines, so they emit a lot more pollution.
The University of California Berkeley health newsletter a few
years ago said that mowing with a machine like that is
equivalent to jogging in smog. So for your health, reduce your
lawn. There's also less watering, as
you may well know. This is the home of a friend of
mine in Greendale, and that path, of course, is just regular
lawn grass. And you can see that it's
starting to get a little brown. This is a picture taken in the
mid-summer, kind of droughty time.
But look how vibrant the native plants that she has, the greens
of those plants are much brighter than the lawn, and also
the vibrant flowers, of course they have the deep roots and can
survive very well in dryer times so you don't need to water once
native plants are established. Oops.
The second greatest threat after the loss of habitat is the
problem with invasive plants. And honeysuckle, pretty as it
is, is one of our big invasives. It does provide berries for the
birds, but those berries don't have the nutrition, and you
can't offer the variety of those native berries through the year
that our native plants can offer.
In addition, honeysuckle stunts the growth of trees and
woodlands where it's rampant. There was a study in Ohio that
said that it reduced the growth of trees by 53%.
This, of course, affects the birds too that have the habitat
of a woodland or forest. And, in fact, studies have shown
that the Acadian Flycatcher is one that is quite affected by
honeysuckle growth in woodlands. The other thing about
honeysuckle is that it harbors ticks.
Studies in both Maine and Missouri have found that in
woodlands with lots of honeysuckle there are a lot more
ticks, so they believe that this could be a factor in the spread
of Lyme disease. So even for your own health it's
good to get rid of some of these invasives.
One other problem with honeysuckle, in particular, is
that when birds with a little yellow coloring feed on the
berries while they're molting or when they're first growing their
feathers as a fledgling, the tails will turn a different
color. As you see the tail there, the
normal tail of the cedar waxwing is yellow, but when it eats too
many honeysuckle berries, its tail can become orange.
I've seen a few in Wisconsin but they're much more prevalent out
east. And while we don't know if
that's harmful to the birds, ornithologist are concerned
because birds depend so much on color for their mate selection
and for recognition of species and so forth.
This also happened to some of the warblers, by the way.
Warblers with yellow colors have turned red.
Buckthorns, of course, many of you know is another huge
invasive in our area. And a study at Morton Arboretum,
I bet some of you went down to, it's just south in Illinois.
At the Morton Arboretum they did a study of birds nesting in
buckthorn and honeysuckle and also in native shrubs, and they
found that the birds nesting in the buckthorn and honeysuckle
here much more preyed upon by raccoons and cats and so forth,
and one of the reasons, they think, is because they had
thicker branches lower down, and the nests of the birds were then
lower down. They thought they were safe
there, apparently, but it made better access for the predators.
So that's one problem. Of course, another big problem
with buckthorn is it doesn't harbor any insects that are, no
caterpillars that might produce butterflies.
And also, caterpillars are a prime food for fledgling birds.
Garlic mustard is the third big invasive in our area, and I'm
sure almost all of you are aware of that.
What you may not know about, besides the fact that it's so
invasive and wipes out all of our understory plants.
It's an herbaceous plant. It has also extirpated a native
butterfly in some areas. The native butterfly is called
the Mustard White. That is not the Cabbage White
that we find in our gardens. That is, actually, European
caterpillar and butterfly. But the Mustard White is a
native butterfly that feeds on our native plants in the mustard
family. But when it doesn't have those,
it will try to lay its eggs on the garlic mustard, but the
grubs can't feed on it successfully.
It has enzymes that they can't digest.
So we've lost that butterfly in some areas, and I've heard it's
extirpated in Illinois. We still have it in at least one
area near me, and that is a nature conservancy property
called Lulu Lake where they've gotten rid of garlic mustard a
while ago. So I do think that it would be
good to get rid of that plant. The other really bad thing about
this, perhaps making it worse than the others, is that there
is a chemical in the roots of this plant that kills the soil
fungi that plants need to grow. And this is considered like
sterilizing the soil, and this sterilization could last for
years. They don't know yet because it's
a fairly new discovery. It was considered one of the top
discoveries of the year by Discover magazine a couple years
ago. So, another bad thing about
that. Cats are also invasive.
And I have to tell you, I love cats.
We've had two cats for many years.
And this is our own pet cat, but after we found that it was
killing birds and other small mammals that are native, the cat
is not native to our area, it is not native to our ecosystems, so
they are invasive. And as you well know, most
veterinary organizations suggest that you keep cats indoors for
their own sake. They don't get into car
accidents, they don't pick up diseases, and they're better for
our kids. They don't contaminate
sandboxes. So a lot of good reasons to keep
those cats indoors, and there's been studies across the nation
in different states. Cats have killed millions and
millions of birds and, in some states, even endangered or quite
rare species of birds, including hummingbirds, for you
hummingbird lovers out there. Now, you've gotten rid of the
invasives and you're ready to plant your habitat for the
birds. One of the first things you're
going to want to do, of course, is to plant species that will
provide food for the birds: berries, insects, seeds, and so
forth. And those same plants can offer
cover and nesting sites for the birds.
Finally, you want to add some water to your landscape.
We've lost 50% of our wetlands in Wisconsin.
So it's a good idea to offer a little water, and as you might
guess from this picture, they love dripping water.
They love the sound of water, and you'll attract many more
birds if you have a little dripper like this or I'll show
you another pond later on. But they do love water, and
that's another good feature to add to your birdscape.
Cup plant is one of those wonderful native plants that
offer all three things to the birds.
It's a big, bushy plant so it will offer shelter for the
birds. If you can see those leaves down
there, they form a little cup, and after rain they'll retain
water for a bit for little birds and butterflies.
In addition, those beautiful flowers offer nectar for
hummingbirds, and then the seeds are just loved by goldfinches
and other seed-loving birds. The other thing I want to just
mention to you because I know some of you who know the cup
plant might say it's a little invasive so we don't really like
it that much, but I've never found it to be invasive and I
planted it in both of my yards. We've since moved from that
Greendale home. But you might want to watch it
or make sure it doesn't take over.
It's a wonderful plant for the background of a prairie or
wherever you might put it because it is quite tall but a
very lovely one. And birds love it as well as the
other, this is in the Silphium genus, and there's a number of
other Silphiums. Birds love Silphium seeds.
So there's a lot of good reasons why native plants are best.
There's more birds in areas with native plants.
There was actually a study done in a city where one half of the
city had a lot more native plants but the other half had
more cultivated, non-native plants, and there were more
birds in the part of the city with the native plants.
There's more nectar in native plants, so if you want
hummingbirds, plant those natives and they will have more
nectar and be better attractants for them.
As I told you before, the nests in the natives are less apt to
be preyed upon, as that study in Morton Arboretum showed.
Incidentally, there were some other studies too that showed
that. Excuse me a minute.
There are more insects for birds in native plants too, and
insects are important for our fledgling birds.
96% of land birds depend on insects to feed their birds.
And they particularly like caterpillars.
And so we want to make sure that our birds have that.
And even though you encourage native plants with the insects,
there have been studies that Dr. Tallamy, Doug Tallamy, who
wrote the book Bringing Nature Home, an excellent book, he and
his students did some studies and there was only 3% damage on
the leaves of native plants in native landscapes.
And that's comparable to what you would get in a cultivated
plant yard. There's more variety of food for
birds with natives. You can plant a great variety,
and I'll show you just with fruits how you can plant fruit
for nearly the whole year for the birds.
Natives sustain many other species.
When you're planting for birds, you're actually planting for the
entire community of wildlife: butterflies, bats, even small
mammals. And the good thing for gardeners
is that natives are easier to grow.
They're well adapted to our winters, our summers, our soils,
and even to the insects. They do have their defenses
against insects so they're not over-eaten.
So now I'm just going to talk about food through the
seasons. That's what you want to plan for
your yard, a whole smorgasbord of food for the birds through
the seasons. Berries are great for a good
number of berry-eating birds. Here are some of the ones that
you can plant for late spring and early summer: chokecherry
and serviceberry. For summer you can see that
there's a blackberry, blueberry, buffaloberry, cherry, currant,
gooseberry, elderberry, raspberry, and red mulberry.
And all of those plants, except for the chokecherry, you can eat
yourselves. So you can enjoy a few on your
cereal in the morning and leave some for the birds.
And you're sure to find several that will do very well in your
yard no matter what your conditions because there's such
a variety to choose from. Likewise, with those that are
available in fall and winter. The winter ones, by the way, are
all available in late fall too. However, they tend to keep their
berries longer, and that's why I have them listed under winter
because they'll last longer. In fall, though, there are
several vine berries. American bittersweet, grape,
Virginia creeper, for example. But there are some shrubs in
there too: the chokeberry, dogwood, and viburnum.
And the carrion flower is more like a vine, too, in most cases.
There are several species. For winter, of course, you have
a great variety too. Crabapple, hackberry, Hawthorn,
juniper shrubs, mountain ash, red cedar, rose, sumac,
viburnum, and winterberry. I have viburnum down there too
because some of the viburnums lose their berries quite quickly
to the birds and wildlife in the fall, but other viburnums retain
their berries longer. So, you can see you could
certainly find a good shrub or two or tree or two for your
yard. Of course, seeds are also
important for birds, and the easiest way in our area to
provide seeds is to have some native wildflowers and native
grasses for the birds. This is a winter-colored
goldfinch feeding on some seeds here.
Other ways to provide seeds, of course, there are shrubs and
trees that provide seeds for the birds.
Nectar, of course, we all want to have those nectar-filled
flowers for the hummingbirds. And insects.
Again, I want to emphasize how important insects are, and even
though you want to attract insects to a native landscape,
birds will keep them in check. Bluebird, for example, will feed
up to 300 little caterpillars like that each day to its
fledglings when they're nesting. So that's quite a good natural
control. And then we love the bluebirds.
We want them too, right? Leaf litter is a great way to
provide insects for the birds. A lot of the ground-loving
birds, like this white-throated sparrow and thrashers and so
forth, will grub around in leaves like that and they'll
catch the little beetles and ants and other things that they
will feed on. And so don't rake up all those
leaves. At least leave some lying in
some areas of your yard. And of course, they break down
and improve the soil too. And you want to avoid
pesticides. You don't want to kill or poison
the very foods you offer for the birds.
Here I want to also cover cover nesting in sites and give you a
few tips on that. One thing to consider is to have
a variety of levels of vegetation in your landscape.
As you can see here, we have the trees and the shrubs and the
herbaceous species below, and there are birds that like
different levels of the canopy, higher or lower, or they might
like the shrubs or the ground level.
One example, for example, is the thrasher.
Now that's a bird that actually likes different levels depending
on the time of its life cycle. In the spring when its declaring
its territory or trying to attract a mate, it sings high up
in the trees. However, it is basically a
shrub-loving bird, and it nest in the shrubs or even on the
ground, and it feeds in the shrubs.
Evergreens are a great thing to add to your landscape too to
have at least a few evergreens for this time of year.
Good shelter for the birds. And some birds are adapted
especially to evergreens like this pine siskin, one of our
winter finches that comes down in the winter to our area, and
the pine siskin, as its name suggests, likes pines and it
feeds on the seeds and pine cones and other conifers.
Evergreens are also nice for spring birds.
Here is a Tennessee warbler who found little shelter in a red
cedar in my yard as it's migrating through.
And also I've noticed that the robins, for example, like to
nest in my evergreens early in spring before the deciduous
trees and shrubs are leafed out. So it's common for early nesting
birds to look for conifers for nesting.
Thorny shrubs or trees are a good addition to your landscape
too. The birds are a little more
protected from predators in a thorny tree like this Hawthorn,
and both Hawthorns and crabapples have lovely spring
flowers which will attract insects for the birds, like this
your oriole, Baltimore oriole. And, also, of course you know
that they get wonderful berries later in the year.
Dead and fallen trees are valuable in your landscape.
As they decay, they'll be attracting insects that help
with the decay, and, in turn, that will attract birds like
wrens and woodpeckers and so forth.
And, of course, as they decay they'll enrich your soil.
So keep some of those dead and fallen trees in your landscape.
Dead standing trees, or snags as they're sometimes called, are
very important to about 50 different species of Midwestern
birds. Woodpeckers, of course, love the
dead trees as they build their cavities in them.
This redheaded woodpecker, he'll use this cavity the first year,
but then other years, other cavity-loving birds who may not
be able to make their own cavities will use that cavity.
The wood duck will use the cavities of our largest
woodpecker, the pileated woodpecker.
It is a cavity-nesting duck. And here, while you're waiting
for those cavities to develop in your trees or your snags, you
can put up boxes. And here is one in our yard, and
you can see the female checking out the box with the drake high
above on the branch there. They have nested for a number of
years in our yard. And bluebirds have been helped
immensely with bluebird boxes and bluebird trails, as you've
probably heard of. There was actually a fear that
bluebirds might go extinct in the 1950s because of various
causes, but bluebird societies were started and they put up
these boxes and trails and they are doing very well now.
In fact, Wisconsin produces at least about 30,000 fledglings a
year now, and it's one of the top, in fact I think it is the
top state for producing fledglings of bluebirds every
year. So we should be very proud of
the fact that we have a lot of bluebird enthusiasts here that
are doing that. Of course, there's even owl
nesting boxes. This one didn't nest in our
yard, but this little screech owl roosted in here all winter
long, and it would come out on that little stub there in the
front of the box every night at dusk and turn its head 270
degrees, looking almost like it would turn its head completely
around, as you know, and then it would fly off for a night of
hunting. It was nice to see that little
owl every night that year. Of course, this is what...
[LAUGHTER] Cute as it is,
this is what you do not want. This is a good illustration of
how raccoons are predators, and we do have our boxes, our
birdhouses and so forth on posts now to avoid that.
So I do suggest posts and guards below the boxes to keep
predators out. Now, I talked a little bit about
water. Here's a bluebird taking a
little bath in our birdbath. Also, you can consider ponds, or
water gardens as they're often called now.
This is one my husband built, and it's very small.
Again, I talked about dripping water.
You can see there's a little waterfall there.
We had that rock on the top gouged out to make a little bowl
for bird bathing, and then it drips and makes a little sound,
and we have a very small pump in there.
But then after that you can put all of your native plants all
around your pond and have a very beautiful native garden.
Waterlilies are classic pond plants, as you well know.
And not only that, they're very nutritious for waterfowl.
They'll feed on the seeds of the waterlilies in the fall of the
year. If you have a wet shrubby area,
you may be able to attract this warbler: the common yellow
throat. Or maybe even a heron.
Of course, there's a great blue heron too possibly.
Now, this is the one thing that you should be very careful of in
any waterscape that you put in, and that's to avoid mosquitoes.
That's a little illustration of a mosquito larvae there.
And when we first put in our pond, for a week or two we saw a
lot of mosquito larvae, but then the frogs came in and took care
of that, and we never have seen a mosquito larvae since.
In a birdbath, our little dripper seems to keep the water
moving enough so that we don't get mosquito larvae either.
But if you don't have a dripper in your birdbath, you should
clean it twice a week to make sure that you're not breeding
the mosquitoes. In the case of a pond, if people
in Milwaukee where the frogs are extirpated in much of Milwaukee
where I previously lived, and a friend of mine then bought
little minnows at a bait store, and that kept the mosquito
larvae down in her ponds in the summertime.
So, if you don't get frogs, be sure to do something to keep
those mosquito larvae down. You don't want diseases
yourself, like West Nile, and of course mosquito bites and all
the rest, and it's better for birds, too, who also might
succumb to West Nile. This is a very small home, and
the reason I'm introducing this is because it's such a small
home and yet they documented how even the smallest landscape can
attract more birds. This is their before picture.
They had the typical landscape. Mostly non-native plants; a few
native trees that they had inherited.
But they worked with National Wildlife Federation and created
a native landscape in both their front and backyard.
And the neat thing is, if any of you do this same thing and
document it, please let me know. Here is what they found.
You can see that they started with, look at the bottom line
there, with three native plants they put in, and eventually they
had up to 113 over several years.
And look at the increase of birds and butterflies and even
mammals and insects, including lots of butterflies.
They had, I think, over 30 different species of butterflies
at the end, where they had maybe about two originally.
So anyway, you can see how all of those native plants helped in
increase the wildlife on that very small property which was
only about a 50 by 100 feet lot. Oops, there we go.
Now, I mentioned to you about Doug Tallamy, Dr. Doug Tallamy
who wrote that book Bringing Nature Home.
He has also done a number of studies contrasting native
landscapes with non-native landscapes.
In this case, the native landscapes are indicated in
green here, and the conventional were the non-native landscapes.
And you can see here how many more birds.
First, the top graph shows there were certainly more birds in the
native landscape. The bottom one shows bird
species richness, that's the number of species.
And the number of species were great, but not only that, it
included some of the rare birds of concern in that state.
So, again, that was very important to have the native
plants for birds. Likewise, he did another study
and in this case, there were 12 properties and he paired them
according to size. All the little green circles
there are the native properties, and the conventional are the
non-native planted properties. And you can see he matched these
according to size. You'll see a green dot and a red
diamond there. From about one-third acre and at
the end of the scale there were several that were almost 10
acres. And you can see in every case
the native landscapes in the green had far more caterpillars.
Those are our butterflies, folks.
Far more butterflies and, of course, caterpillars for the
birds in the native landscape as it compared to the conventional,
and that's, again, because our non-native plants just do not
support the insects. They didn't evolve together and
they don't have the enzymes to feed on those non-native plants.
Now, in my book I talk about a number of different gardens that
you could create in your yard. One, of course, hummingbird
gardens have always been popular.
And here are two of the great plants that you can offer.
First plant of the year, the wild columbine, and the last
plant of the year, the jewelweed.
The ornithologists have found that the birds seem to follow
the columbine coming north in the spring and the jewelweed
going south in the fall of the year.
So those are beautiful native plants.
About the first and the last in our native communities.
Of course, there are many, many other great native hummingbird
flowers, like the cardinal flower here and the royal
catchfly. These are red and, of course, it
does attract hummingbirds, and often those flowers tend to have
more nectar. However, there's lot of other
yellow and pale little flowers that do attract hummingbirds
too, like the Solomon seals they liked in my yard and the evening
primrose. So there's lots of other
flowers, but I don't have time to show you all of those.
The other thing for hummingbirds that you might want to create in
your yard, make sure that you don't prune all of the little
twigs off your shrubs, especially at the outside
because hummingbirds like to perch.
They perch 85% of the time, and they not only are very
territorial and like to watch over their property and chase
other hummingbirds away, but they also digest their food
during that time, and when their crop is about half full, they'll
go feed again on your flowers or your feeders and then come back
and perch. You could also use those
invasive honeysuckles or buckthorns.
We've done that. We've stuck it in the ground
near our hummingbird garden, and it has all kinds of little
branches for the birds, and not only hummingbirds, but lots of
other birds like perches. And you might be lucky enough to
have a hummingbird nest in your yard.
Here's mom feeding two little ones in that little tiny thimble
sized lichen covered nest. Here's where we created a little
hummingbird garden in our Greendale property in the
Milwaukee area. As I told you, we had a lawn
just like everyone else. Our lawn is in the foreground.
There's a few shrubs separating it from our neighbors.
But we put in some of those little shrubs that you see, and
then, eventually, we put in some native hummingbird flowers in
the foreground, and here was our little hummingbird corner.
Prairie gardens should be the classic American garden because
what other continent had our beautiful prairies.
This is the corner lot of a friend of mine who is the
president of the Wild Ones at the Wehr Nature Center.
Her home is that little brown spot that you see in the trees.
But they have corner lot, which is very sunny, and she and her
husband created this beautiful prairie on the corner lot.
And goldfinches are birds that love prairies small or very
large prairies. They add so much life and color
to the prairies. This prairie is in the front of
a home in St. Paul, Minnesota.
And here you can see it's right in the midst of the city, and
they have a nice, neat edge, that wood-chipped edge on the
border, and I understand they get compliments all the time as
people walk by and enjoy these beautiful wildflowers.
This is where we live now. After I retired, my husband and
I wanted to live a little further out and in a more rural
area. We live in the south
Kettle Moraine area down near East Troy.
We inherited this landscape. Lots of grass down below and
this is a hill that you see in the foreground with all kinds of
field grasses. We did keep a little lawn around
the house, but for the most part we planted prairie plants.
And that's the hill in the background there.
So, much lovelier to look at and lots better for birds and
butterflies. Septic fields are a great place
for prairies too. This is on the other side of the
house. And studies have been done of
failing septic systems by the DNR, and they found that
herbaceous species are fine over septic fields.
Any kind of prairie or any kind of herbaceous plant.
You don't want trees or shrubs. That could damage the septic
field, but prairie plants are fine and they probably even add
to the drainage with their roots.
Rain gardens, of course, are becoming more and more popular,
and a rain garden could be as considered as little wetland
gardens for the birds because not only are they great
environmentally reducing flooding, keeping toxins from
our rivers and waterways, but they also offer beautiful
flowers for birds. Some hummingbird flowers here,
plus these flowers will attract insect-feeding birds.
They offer a little bit of shelter for small birds and so
forth. And when they go to see, of
course, they'll be good for seed-eating birds.
So, consider rain gardens as little wetlands for the birds.
Savanna gardens are another possibility.
Our original savannas were scattered oak trees, like you
see this beautiful oak here, with prairie beneath.
And most of our yards, when you think of it, are savanna in
structure. I think I've got to hurry up
here. But anyway, you can simply keep
the trees on your landscape, as long as they're not an invasive,
and plant prairie below it and you'll have a savanna garden.
And oaks are particularly valuable for birds when they're
at this point. The little caterpillars are very
abundant on oaks, and birds love to feed on them.
Later on, though, those oaks have toxins in their leaves,
tannins I should say, but the insects can't feed on those.
So, again, the plant itself can avoid being overeaten by
insects. Of course, the oaks have
wonderful caterpillars for some birds.
Here's a little area where I planted a savanna in our yard.
That's when I still had brown hair.
[LAUGHTER] We had planted that
oak a while back, and then here I am planting some herbaceous
species, and we created a little savanna corner in our backyard.
So of you may see that's Joe Pye weed, which likes wetland areas,
and the way we could retain it there is that our sump pump
drained into that area. So it was just enough water to
retain that. So use that water on your
landscape to grow plants that you might not otherwise be able
to. Here's another little savanna
spot in our current home, in front of it.
We'll have one tree there, and we have the prairie plants below
it. And, of course, this was all
grass, too, when we first moved in.
Here is what it looks like from the front door.
Shrubland gardens are great also.
We are losing a lot of our good native shrubs to all those
invasive shrubs. This is a corner lot in
St. Paul, Minnesota, and you can see it has a lot of native
shrubs that are turning color just like our native trees.
And we have beautiful shrubland birds that we want to preserve,
like the indigo bunting, the eastern towhee here, which
ornithologists say is one of the fastest declining birds in
eastern North America. And we have wonderful shrubs.
I've shown you a lot of those with the berries.
I just want to highlight two big groups here.
Dogwoods, we have a number of beautiful dogwoods, different
colored berries. Some like is sunny, some like it
shadier, some like it wetter, dryer, so you're sure to find
one species or more that would do well in your yards.
Likewise, with the viburnum is another great group of
Midwestern shrubs that you should consider.
And, again, there's a variety there that some like it shady or
sunny and so forth, just like with the dogwoods.
Woodland gardens are another possibility, and you could start
creating a little woodland corner with just a few trees, or
if you have a woodland, get rid of those invasives and make sure
you have the native shrubs and herbaceous species below.
Here's a front yard that is wooded.
And you might attract woodland birds like this cute little red
phase screech owl, my favorite color.
So, no matter what size yard you have, you can really increase
the wildlife, and it's so important.
Gardeners like you can really make a difference.
We should all think of our yards as little wildlife preserves so
that we can sustain all the birds and other wildlife that
are native to our yard before we lose more and more of them to
all of our urbanization and so forth.
So I highly recommend you thinking of your yard as a
little nature preserve and start planting a native.
Of course, besides birds you'll get lots of butterflies, and you
might even get a rare bird as we did once.
This green-tailed towhee landed in our yard one year in our
little one-fourth acre little oasis there in Greendale.
And it was only the 10th record in Wisconsin, so we felt very
proud that we were able to host this little bird.
It was off course from the southwestern United States.
So get out those invasive shrubs, as my husband is doing
here. You don't have to dig them out.
There's lots of other ways. Or one way to get rid of the
lawn or herbaceous vegetation that you don't want is to simply
put paper down and wood chips over it for a season, but there
are other ways to do that too. And then you'll have beautiful
landscapes for yourself after you've planted, and, also, it
will be much better for birds, butterflies, and all the rest of
our wildlife, and you'll really be doing something to make the
Earth better. There's not a lot we, as
individuals, can do personally, but this is one thing you can
do. You can really make a difference
by creating a preserve in your yard.
These are the wonderful photographers that provided
these photos that I've shown you today.
And I think I was starting to get a little out of time, so I
went kind of fast, but we're going to take questions and
answers now if we have time. Do we have time?
Just to clarify the color of the tail of the grosbeak, it's
originally what color? >> That was the cedar waxwing.
Originally, it's got a yellow-tipped tail, but it gets
a kind of orange or reddish color tail when it's eating too
many honeysuckle berries. Any other questions?
Would many of these plants help bees and bats also?
Oh, definitely. I have so many different kinds
of bees in my yard, and one of my favorites for bees is
St. John's wort, the shrubby St. John's wort.
I've never seen so many bees as I have on the particular plant,
but all of the flowers, the goldenrods, the blazing stars
that you see there. There's lots of, yes, and that's
so important too. We're losing our bees too.
It's very important. In fact, I believe several of
our bumblebees are extinct now in Wisconsin, several species of
them. So very important.
Any other questions? >> Is there a how-to if you want
to turn your green lawn into a prairie like that?
What is your question? >> Do you know of or recommend a
how-to if you want to turn your green yard into a prairie?
Oh, okay. My book is kind of a how-to so
you could consider that, but there's a lot of good nurseries
out there too. Prairie Nursery in Westfield is
great. Prairie Moon Nursery, they're
just on the other side of the border in Minnesota, they have a
wonderful catalog that will tell you how to grow almost anything.
And so those are, I would suggest that.
Join Wild Ones. They're going to help you a
great deal. Incidentally, I do have copies
of my book. I actually, right now it's out
of print at this point, but I think they still have some new
ones at the Audubon, but I have seconds, like returns from
bookstores. So I do have some to sell back
there if you would like a second, and, of course, it will
be a discounted price. Some else, a question?
Your book? >> Yeah, my book.
[INAUDIBLE] >> Birdscaping in the Midwest.
I guess it's not up there now. Any other questions?
Some asked about fertilizer. Oh, there are some over there.
You asked about it. Could you.
Anyway, while she's going, someone asked about fertilizer.
No, actually you don't want to use fertilizers on native
plants, especially prairie plants.
They will get very leggy and awful looking if you use
fertilizers. So that's the great thing about
native plants. If you plant the right native
plant in the right place, it should grow well with the soil
you have. Sometimes woodlands need a
little amendment, but they don't need fertilizer, they need more
mulch and stuff. Question over here now?
Can you make any suggestions for a shady area?
I have a whole section of my book for woodland gardens, yes.
So the woodland would be the shady?
Right. And some of the savanna plants
can take a little bit of shade, so if you're going from sunny to
shady it would be basically the prairie, the savanna, and then
the woodland depending on how much shade you have.
Do you have a web page? >> No, I do not have a web page.
I'm sorry. I'm kind of, I have to take my
husband every place because I don't even know how to turn on a
computer practically. [LAUGHTER]
Our house backs up to a prairie, and we were really
excited last spring because we had a lot of meadowlarks and
they were eating the grubs. >> Oh, wow, that is terrific.
It was fabulous, and then they turned into the Japanese
beetles. So, do you have any suggestions
in terms of what we could do to try to encourage the meadowlarks
and the other prairie birds to come in but not to have problems
with bugs later. >> The Japanese beetles you felt
came from the prairie? >> No, the nursery people told
us that the grubs that the birds were probably feeding on turned
into the beetles later. So now we're wondering what we
should do. >> I'm not quite sure, but the
Japanese beetles like lawns so they wouldn't be in the prairie.
They go underground as grubs and produce in lawns mostly.
Right. So our lawn backs up to the
prairie, and that's where we think the grubs were in our
lawn. >> Right.
So do you have any suggestions?
Well, I believe that there's a natural control called grub
guard that you can use, and the other suggestion that I have
read is that don't water your lawn during that midsummer
drought. Lawn can go dormant.
Because that's when the grubs are growing and so forth, and
you can keep down the beetle that way.
Those were the two best natural controls that I know of that
I've read about. >> [INAUDIBLE]
There are new ones, I saw a few new ones at
the Audubon booth out here. And I have seconds that are
returns from some of the bookstores that I'll sell at a
discount. Now, I'm out of, just this
morning I sold out of my last new books.
[INAUDIBLE] >> I'll be, yeah,
they said I should just stay out there then because then the
other speaker can come in and set up.
Any other questions or anything? Oh, here's some.
Oh, no, I think she's just stretching.
Okay, well, thank you all for coming and plant a native plant.
[APPLAUSE]