The Birds and Native Flower Power
Beautiful songbirds migrate through and to Vermont each spring to their breeding grounds. They rely on healthy food sources to keep them strong, raise their chicks, and fuel their long-distance migrations. Our native trees, shrubs and flowers provide, by far, the most nutritious food for our natural feathery treasures.
Note: Native plants are of the utmost importance to bees, butterflies and other pollinators as well as birds. But for now, this post will just focus on the use of native plants by birds.
Spring & Summer: Protein for our Breeding Birds
In the spring and summer, birds are looking for protein-rich insects to help them develop strong eggs and feed the demanding, growing chicks which will hatch out of those eggs. Research shows that native plants house the most nutritious insects. Silky Dogwood, Red Oak, Speckled Alder, and Paper Birch have caterpillars, flies and spiders hiding in nooks and holes as they feast on the rich food these plants offer. The Vermont insects “know” how to find food in the native Vermont plants, as they evolved together over thousands and thousands of years. In turn the Vermont birds can eat these nutritious bugs and offer them to their chicks. The insects that are fed on by the birds don’t find the same quality of food in the introduced, non-native plants like Burning Bush and Barberry. These species generally have hollow stalks and provide much less nutritional value.
Fall: High Fat = High Energy for our Migrating Birds
In the fall, birds leave Vermont or pass through from breeding sites even farther north. They are headed to their wintering grounds. Some of our tiny songbirds fly thousands of miles to find food, shelter and warmth in Central and South America. The Neotropical migrants, including black-throated blue warblers, yellow warblers and ovenbirds depend on fruits and berries with high fat content to give them energy for their all-night flights south. Researchers tested the lipid content of native and non-native berries and found that berries from native plants have many times higher fat content. Berries from dogwoods and arrowood have excellent fat content. Fruit from Autumn Olive and Honeysuckle are a “bird junk food”: it looks good, but contains empty calories. If the migrating birds fill up on the lower nutritional value non-native species, they might be unable to complete long distance flights to the next resting area.
How You Can Help
Incorporate native plants into landscaping practices and planting them in your yard. We can create habitat that supports our native species. There is a risk that using non-native and invasive plants can create an “ecological dead-zone”, which is useless to birds. Worse yet we could create an “ecological trap”, or an area that looks good to birds, but when they try to live in the area become worn out and run down due to lack of adequate nutrients. . Fortunately there are many sources of native plants in Vermont, one is the upcoming Winooski Tree & Shrub sale. The deadline for orders is April 1. You can learn more and download the brochure and order form by visiting the WNRCD website at: http://winooskinrcd.org/trees-and-trout-sale-2016/.
For more information on the relationship between native plants and birds check out:
For more information on the impacts of non-native and invasive species on the Vermont ecosystem, please visit the WNRCD website.
