Seven Simple Actions to Help Birds

It is discouraging to read about the significant losses of birds that we have experienced worldwide in the last 50 years. The 2019 report on the status of birds documented the loss of three billion breeding birds since 1970, about the time I graduated from high school. Soon after I read that report, I came across an article by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology with a discussion of things we as individuals can do in our own yards and in our everyday lives that have a positive effect on the lives of birds and other wildlife. The author recommends seven simple actions to help birds:

Home-made BirdSaver prevents window strikes at the author’s home. Photo by Donna Legare.

Make windows safer. Most of us have had a bird hit a window now and then, some more than others. Birds are seeing the reflection of trees and think they can fly on through, only to sustain injuries or be killed upon impact. Sometimes a bird just seems stunned and soon flies away but we do not know if the bird has left to die elsewhere. If it is a small enough window, decals will keep birds from hitting the window. For larger windows consider making and installing an Acopian BirdSaver, also known as a Zen curtain, which is constructed of parachute cord. See www.birdsavers.com for instructions or to purchase. They are easy to make and work beautifully.

Rob Williams got started by planting three native trees and a bed of native shrubs that will provide excellent habitat for birds as they grow. Note the pollinator plants along the house foundation. Photo by Donna Legare.

Plant native plants and reduce the size of your lawn. Native plants are the basis of the ecological food web that sustains birds and other wildlife. A good place to begin is to plant a native tree this winter. If you have room, choose one that gets large and provides habitat in its eventual canopy. Live oak, white oak, Shumard oak, and longleaf pine are a few good choices, but there are many from which to choose. If your yard already has large overstory trees, consider planting smaller trees and native shrubs like redbud and arrowwood viburnum in their shade. Keep leaves and pine straw below the crown of the tree, rather than lawn, which will provide additional habitat. For smaller yards, consider planting a pollinator garden focusing on native wildflowers and grasses.

Enjoy shade grown coffee that is certified Bird Friendly. Coffee plants grown in full sun, as most coffee is, require environmentally harmful pesticides and fertilizers and offer no habitat for migrating birds. A forest canopy above the shade grown coffee, which is grown organically, will help migratory birds survive winter.

Use less plastic. Plastic takes 400 years to degrade and 91% of plastics are not recycled. Avoid single use plastic and recycle it if you use it. The article cited that, “to date at least 700 species of marine animals including shorebirds have been entangled by plastic or mistaken it for food leading to suffocation or starvation.”

Avoid pesticides, especially systemic ones like neonicotinoids that are lethal to birds and the insects they consume.

Keep cats indoors. Your cat will be healthier and safer and birds and other wildlife will benefit. Look into building a creative catio (cat patio). One will be featured on Apalachee Audubon Society’s annual Wildlife Friendly Yard Tour in February this year. See www.apalachee.org for more information.

Watch birds and share what you see. Teach others, especially children, about birds and nature. You may want to learn how to use eBird, an app which enables you to become a citizen scientist by reporting the birds that you observe adding to worldwide data.

To this I would add a few more suggestions. If you feed birds, keep your feeder clean and always provide fresh seed. Emphasis should be on creating habitat for birds while using a feeder as a focal point to bring birds up close for observation. Make sure the feeder is squirrel-proofed, so you don’t spend energy on being mad at squirrels. There are squirrel-proof bird feeders that work.

A northern cardinal maintains his plumage by fluffing and spreading his feathers in the bath. Photo by Stephen Gensits.

Provide a source of clean water in your yard. This can be as simple as a bird bath or as grand as a garden pond or stream. During the dry period last October, we set up a sprinkler near our bird bath that watered the native shrubs behind the bath. Within minutes and over the next half-hour two Ruby-crowned Kinglets, a Yellow-rumped Warbler, a Brown Thrasher, four Northern Cardinals, three Carolina Chickadees, two Carolina wrens, a Hermit Thrush, and a Downy Woodpecker all showed up enjoying the spray of water on the branches of the Virginia sweetspire shrubs. Several hopped into the bath and splashed. All seemed to be having a great time!

Birds bring joy into our lives. If you enjoy nature and birds, try to incorporate some of these simple actions to make life better for them and other wildlife. What we do in our own yard matters.

Start Your Own Tomatoes and Peppers from Seed in January

A few years ago, I planted pepper seeds for the first time to make my own paprika. This small start sent me on a journey from my bathroom window to a small growing tent in my closet and eventually to some of the best and most interesting paprika I have ever tasted.

Peppers and tomatoes are both members of the nightshade family. In our area they have similar growing habits and time frames for planting. The timing of seed planting is one of the most important aspects of growing vegetables. Other considerations include available equipment, quantity of plants needed, and the planting and caring of the seeds and seedlings.

When choosing a pepper or tomato to grow from seed, consider how you are planning to use the produce. For instance, if you enjoy pasta with red sauce, a determinate Roma-style tomato might be the best choice. For hot sauces, I have enjoyed some of the super-hot peppers, although one plant is often enough! Sharing or exchanging your extra plants with friends is often an option to gain a diversity of varieties after you have too many plants. If growing a whole seed packet of one variety, I usually have a project in mind that requires lots of the same variety of pepper or tomato.

The equipment needed for starting peppers and tomatoes consists of a heat mat, grow light, containers to start the seeds in, watering can, fertilizer and growing medium. Tomatoes do not need as much heat to germinate as a lot of the peppers. It is possible to grow both in a south facing window or greenhouse but without sufficient light and heat the peppers will be very slow to grow. Peppers prefer to be germinated between 70-90 degrees Fahrenheit, while tomatoes prefer 65-85 degrees. My house is usually under 70 in the winter, so I run a heat mat to keep the soil temperature closer to 80 degrees. This is the same with the lighting situation, which requires me to use a grow light to get sufficient light to the seedlings.

You can use a good quality potting soil or seed starting mix as your growing medium. Your container could be a nursery flat with individual cells or small 2-inch pots. Here is my recipe for sowing the seed:

1. Fill the seed starting flat or individual pots with seed starter mix

2. Place 3-4 seeds per cell or pot

3. Gently sprinkle worm castings to cover seeds (or use more of potting medium)

4. Press down to achieve good seed to soil contact

5. Water lightly using a watering can with a fine shower or water from the bottom to keep disturbance to a minimum.

The seeds will usually germinate in 5-to-10-days, but some peppers in low temperatures can take a few weeks so don’t toss empty containers immediately. During this time, keep the top portion of the container moist. During germination the cotyledon will emerge, followed by the first set of true leaves. Make sure the seeds and plants are getting plenty of light, 14-16 hours. A window will only get a few hours when compared to a grow light. Select the strongest seedling in each cell or pot and cut out the others. At this point the plant can be fertilized with Neptune’s Harvest or other fish/seaweed product which is gentle and promotes a great burst of growth. Continue to water thoroughly and fertilizer once a week.

The best time to plant both the seeds of peppers and tomatoes is in January. Tomato seedlings can be planted outside in late February, then protected from frost, while peppers prefer a warmer temperature and should be planted outside after the last frost, usually in late March or April.

Many of the peppers are slow to grow while tomatoes shoot up very fast. Each growing season will be different and will present different challenges, but the final product is delicious and well worth the effort.

The Importance of Pines in our Urban Forest

This grove of longleaf pine, planted by first graders at Kate Sullivan Elementary in midtown Tallahassee, is 13 years old at the time of this photo. Vanessa Walthall revisited the grove when she graduated from college in 2008; she was one of the first graders who planted the trees. The grove remains an important part of our urban forest. Photo by Donna Legare.

In April I discovered the nest of an American Crow high in a mature loblolly pine tree in our back yard. The nest is an accumulation of sticks attached firmly to two large limbs close to the top of the tree. I watched an adult crow hop into the nest, but they were for the most part quite secretive over the entire nesting period.

This reinforces what I have known for years – the importance of mature pine trees in our urban forest. At Native Nurseries in Tallahassee where I worked for 40 years, Red-shouldered Hawks nested repetitively in three different mature pine trees over the years. We watched the parents haul in snakes, crawfish, and frogs to feed their young. In my neighborhood we have observed Mississippi Kite and Cooper’s Hawk nests, again, always high in pine trees. But honestly, I had no idea where crows nested until I saw this crow in my back yard. Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s All About Birds website notes that crows prefer to nest in conifers but will nest in deciduous trees when conifers are less available.

Unfortunately, between lightning strikes, hurricane losses, and irrational fear of pines, suburban and urban Florida is losing its pine canopy. At the nursery, we observed that customers bought perhaps one hundred hardwood trees for every one pine tree. The old pines are not being replaced. On our nursery property, we have lost grand old pines mostly due to lightning strikes and resultant pine bark beetles. Each time we replace the missing pine with a young one.

The home of Ann and Don Morrow is nestled beneath a lovely grove of pine trees which is an important feature of their wildlife habitat yard where 89 species of birds have been observed. Photo by Ann Morrow.

To plant a pine, choose a sunny area. If you are at the Gulf coast, choose a slash pine which is the most salt tolerant species. Most typical soils around Tallahassee support loblolly, shortleaf, longleaf, slash, and spruce pine. We prefer to plant longleaf since it is less common and it is a strong, long lived tree reaching ages of 300 years. No, I will not be around to see it, but we are planting for future generations.

Spruce pines are somewhat shade tolerant. They have soft short needles and small cones and have a very graceful shape, often holding on to their lower branches for many years, unlike the other species of pines.

The home of Ann and Don Morrow is nestled beneath a lovely grove of pine trees which is an important feature of their wildlife habitat yard where 89 species of birds have been observed. Photo by Ann Morrow.

If you have space, plant a small grove of pines. Their proximity to each other will help protect them during high winds. Friends Ann and Don Morrow live in the Melody Hills neighborhood beneath a handsome grove of pine trees. They have lived here for over 30 years and have never had a branch fall on the house. In high winds the trees sway together in the wind supporting each other.

The best tree planting time is November through February. Start small with six-inch bare root trees to ones growing in three-gallon pots.

Pines are very desirable. They provide a light shade that native understory trees and shrubs prefer. They provide free mulch every autumn for use in landscape beds. They are long lived and make excellent carbon sinks. They harbor a world of insects that become food for birds. According to the National Wildlife Federation’s Native Plant Finder, 171 species of moth and butterfly caterpillars use pines as a host plant in the Tallahassee area. This is significant during bird nesting season as the high-quality protein of caterpillars is the preferred food for nestlings. In addition, seed bearing cones are an important source of food for birds and mammals.

Pines are such beautiful, stately trees. I love to listen to the wind rustling through their needles. Let’s start planting more pines in our yards and parks. Wildlife and future generations will reap the rewards.