Wisconsin Public Television University Place Garden Expo 2012  Mariette Novak Birdscaping in the Midwest  February 11, 2012 UP687   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 placed, 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]