Author: Ethan Perry
On October 24, ANPE welcomed local birdwatching celebrity Laura Erickson to our first indoor event of the season. She is an award-winning author and long-time host of the radio program For the Birds. Her newest book is 100 Plants to Feed the Birds: Turn your Home Garden into a Healthy Bird Habitat.
Despite the title, Erickson emphasized that she is not a gardener, but that it’s impossible to be a good birder without recognizing the association of birds with plants. Feeders help you see birds, and may help some make it through winter, but birds are dependent on plants, not feeders.
Planting berry-producing shrubs may be the most obvious way to support birds, but they are also eating wild seeds, such as the Boxelder tree in Erickson’s yard that used to attract large flocks of Evening Grosbeaks before their population declined. One of the important entries in the new book is oak trees, whose acorn crops provide feasts for birds and other wildlife.
Seeds and berries are important, but more than anything Erickson says it’s insects that are key for birds, and insects depend on native plants. Broadleaf trees she described as boxes of chocolates. Even on cold days birds are finding insects in the trees and shrubs. But insects are in steep decline. She remembers fondly the days when she needed to wash bugs off the windshield multiple times on trips to Michigan. No longer. On the surface that could seem like an improvement, but not when you think about what it means for birds.
Erickson also mentioned the happy confluence of spring wildflowers and bird migration in hardwood forests. You can go out to see one and find yourself enjoying the other just as much. When she was in search of a Pileated Woodpecker for the first time, she grew impatient with her husband who stopped to take photos of a Nodding Trillium. But as she waited, a giant woodpecker landed just feet away. Dead plants are just as important to birds as live plants, for the insects inside them and for places to nest. And not just tree trunks: thrushes and other birds also pick through the dead leaves on the forest floor.
Populations of many birds have been declining for decades. To help them Erickson implored people to keep their cats indoors, and to hang paracord from windows to lessen bird strikes, especially during migration. For more information see her earlier book 101 Ways to Help Birds or check out lauraerickson.com. All our work to improve habitat for birds is to benefit future generations, so they don’t inherit from us a world diminished even further of its rich diversity.
Arrowhead Native Plant Explorers 