 Having a good day? Yeah. Do you have any wow moments? Yes. I just did, and Bill Evans talked. Holy cow, that's just amazing, mind-blowing. All of that. Well, first I want to thank North Branch Nature Center for inviting me to be here today. I love the spot, and I love coming back and being able to just get a little bit more rooted in this place each time that I come. And I'm grateful that all of you came out, and we're interested in sharing those types of experiences with birds today, and with fellow bird nerds. Awesome. Speaking of bird nerds, today we're going to talk a little bit about seaving the bird in the bush. So a long time ago when I was at Audubon, Vermont, one of the ways that I was really learning birds and getting into birds was by walking the same place over and over again. And it was based on habitat. And so I really started to learn birds along with the landscape that I was in. And it got me thinking a little bit more about the landscape that's around my house, and what's there, and what's the potential for what could be there. And now as we move into this time when we're starting to see birds in decline, and things kind of pressuring some of the things that we love to enjoy in the out-of-doors, I think kind of thinking about how we can pay it forward and put more back into this passion that we love is really important. So that's a little bit about what we're going to talk about today. So how many of you keep track of birds in your backyard? OK. What's keeping you track? What's keeping you track? I don't know. Like, you're like, oh, noticing. How many of you are noticing the birds in your backyard? Great. All right, let's start there. How many of you are noticing a change in the birds in your backyard right now? OK. Good. I had a really great conversation earlier with a person about the roost breasted gross beaks are gone. Where are they? They were there earlier in the year. Now where are they? How many of you keep a list of the birds in your yard? OK. List. How many of you keep that list as part of e-bird? OK. I keep my yard list up on a wall and a big giant post-it note. Number 68 was seen last month, and it was the first time bird for our yard. It was a yellow-throated virial. And I was like, yes. Happy birds. And then it flew away. But sometimes birds just stop it. A lot of times birds are stopping in because of what we're providing for them. And this tends to be the gateway, right? Anybody had this kind of set up in their yard? Gorgeous flowers in the back that you get all this lovely pop of color? I did have an indigo bunting in my yard this year, too, for the first time at our feeders, which I was very excited about. But this kind of splash of color that's coming in because we have our feeders out, there's a whole other. Look at that. That's like a primary crayon box right there. You got it all. And you got a picture. Somebody got a picture of it. I don't think it was in this one. Yeah, in the green, all there. One of the things that could be really challenging for us here in Vermont is if you're in a space like this, where there's large tracks and you get to use forest, you often have to bring your feeders in because you have bears. How many of you don't have feeders up during this time of year? Yeah. How many shoulders? How many shoulders? Those feeders often in really interesting contraptions and things like that. I think of the birds of Vermont Museum, who has like those huge holes, but they take them in. Are you know it? Yeah. What does that look on the top of? So this, so let's see. They have a big spirit in this one. Who's that? Gross breast and gross feet. Who's that? Gross. Gross breast and gross feet. What? Right? See, man. How about this one? Let's see. The woodpecker. Balder. Nice. So some of us have to take feeders in. Some of us don't. I live in St. Augustine, the forest is fragmented by 89 and it's in very, very small patches and so I feel pretty confident that you don't have a lot of bears around. So I do keep my feeders out year round. But some of us have to take them in. So it kind of becomes what's the next step? What else can I do? And I try to push a lot of people into the realm of gardening. And there's a number of really great reasons to do that. Like part of it is that you get this connection again with the birds, but there's this other part that's a really good thing to think about. This is my only doom and gloom slide for the whole entire show. So this will be brief. But consider this. So this is from the 2016 Ottawa State of the Birds report. So in an analysis of all 1,154 species of birds in Canada, the US, and Mexico identified, they identified 432 species that meet the criteria for the Ottawa watch list. And so we're looking at a higher and higher number of birds being listed in this space each year. And part of it is the degradation of habitat. It's the fragmentation of the habitat. It's conversion of habitat. And one of the things that we can do is we can be better stewards of the habitat that we're in and the footprint that we create. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to turn passion into action. And we're going to combine the top two hobbies in the United States into this really good thing for birds. So we're going to talk a little bit about preserving native plants. And I have been thinking like my thinking process and how to provide the best backyard habitat for birds has really changed over the probably past 10 years. We're going to talk a little bit about changing the garden aesthetic and being a caretaker of wildlife. How many of you have gardens at home, whether vegetable or flower? How many of you are land owners that own larger tracts of land, acres? Good. So I'm not going to talk so much about larger tracts of land today, but you're going to see some back here and there and what we are going to discuss. So let's start from the foundation. We're going to build some basic elements here for birds. So these basically are covering the four needs that birds have, which is food, cover, nesting, and water. If we can find a way to incorporate these four elements into our backyard, we're going to be inviting a larger diversity of species in. All right, here we go. Quiz time. Who's that? Goldfinch. Yeah, American Goldfinch. Tell us about this one. American Robin. Yellow Warbler. Yellow Warbler. We're going to have a card roll next time. All right. The case that we can do this is really by getting and assessing what we've got going on already in our yard. And this is a very nice drawing of mine for my yard. It's really super messy. But it gives me a place to start. So we can map out where our house is. This person put in dotted lines about where, like, this is the yard that we use. This is our half acre yard. And then thought about outside of that area, what can we do in order to kind of make that less yard-like, less lawn, and we can let that go. But you're going to see inside here, they also laid out some of the other things that are important to them. The back is here. They've got a gazebo. There's the play area for kids. Man, I know that. In my house, there's like a trampoline is there, and the play structure is there. And then the vegetable garden is here. So we could start to put all of those on the map and then think about, how do we create less lawn? How could we decrease the amount of lawn we have and have more wildlife? I mean, you've all driven by the houses that are like, up, back on the property, and then everything is mowed. And I was like, that's going to take you days to do. That's like days of burning that you could have in your back pocket rather than mowing, or whatever you'd like to do, whether it's golf or whether it is, I don't know, playing cards. I don't think I could play, oh my gosh, frisbee disc golf. Now, all of those things, more wildlife, less lawn, more time for yourself to match. I'm like, yeah, thank you, nice. Rather than mowing the lawn. We can also start to look at how we can preserve and protect a native plant. So let's see, within the yard space, starting to identify, oh, let's see, we'll take D, is silky dogwood. So this is where they have dogwood. So let's make sure that we keep that there and maybe look at other places where we can put that on the property. There's white birch. So all these letter B's are white birch. Maybe two, we can work out where, or here's the apple tree. Maybe we make sure that this apple tree stays with enough space from the cedars and the other tree next to it so it can continue to grow into fruit. So we want to identify where our native plants are on the property. And we also want to start to create layers. You've probably noticed this today. For those of you who are out with me still burning this morning, we were watching where the different birds were. Within the spots where we were sitting, the ravens were way up high on the ridge line. And down in the garden down low were the sparrows. So we want to be able to mimic that and maybe create some different layers in our yards as well. All right, then there's the fun stuff, too. Like those really nice maggots that can pull the birds in. So water can be a challenging feature. I'm really fortunate in my yard, we have a very small quarter acre lot in St. Albany City. But right out the back of where our play space is is all forest from all the other landowners that are on the street that's perpendicular to our street. And there's a brook that runs through that forest. So we get that nice water sound and it's a very wonderful attractive for birds. We've had great blue heron in there. I'm like, where did that bird come from? We had a belted kingfisher like cruise up the brook the other day and I haven't had that one on the list before. But if you don't have a natural water feature, you can create it. One of the coolest things I have ever seen on Hot Island in Maine, they built a bubbling fountain much like this where there was a pool where the water came out and then dropped in. And what was wonderful is you could sit on the deck with a cup of coffee and sit and watch the water fountain. And because that water sound was being made with the bubbler, the warblers came in to rest and to bathe and to hang out. And I mean, this is awesome. Who's this? American Red Star, right? Canada Warbler? You've got to work hard to see one of those birds. They're normally deep within the thickets, but they need water and they need to bathe. I don't even know who this is, who's this? Yes? Goldfish, maybe? Yeah, I don't know. Somebody different. Full-on bathing. And maybe, right? The other thing that we can put in is bird bath as well. One of the things I tell people with bird baths is make sure you put some rocks or something in here, especially if it's a glazed bird bath. Like, be the bird. Come in for a landing. Think about you're slipping on that glaze right into the water. Put some pebbles and cobbles in the bottom. Put one stone that stays up a little bit so the birds have a spot to kind of perch and drop in as they wait. And there's also a shoveler. Stoveler fountains, you put them in a bird bath and when the sun gets on, they spray. So there are new little devices that you can float in the middle of your bird bath that then will create that fountain effect to create that bubbling sound for them. So what's a good depth of the water to head into? Not many inches. I would say like two inches, probably not more than that. And you also have to wash it out because you get mosquitoes in there or it gets kind of gunky without you. Or your dog drinks out of it. And then you're like, all right, we've got to start over. But I think about two inches is really good. And put, even if you just put one stone in the middle, you'd be good. There are also heated options in winter. Anybody messed around with that? I haven't tried that yet. Yeah? I think it's right back how you love it. OK, good. I would really love to try that. You've got to make sure you don't let it go empty. OK. Because if you do, it could burn out the heat, but also it can blow the circuit break. You're going to burn out the air. And then you put more water in and it freezes. Yeah. So you know. Then you've got to go find the circuit break. Well, kind of over it, yeah. The best habitat in my yard is the brush pile. Oh, we're going to talk about brush piles. Yes. It had a big brush pile. And that, look at that. Perfect segue. It's the very next slide. So this is part of changing the garden aesthetic, which is what I love about being able to walk around here. We can take a lot of cues from nature to figure out how to mimic that same kind of look in our yard. If we think about how many of you went out to the garden today, or at least walk by it on the way to the banding station, right? Is it like perfectly weeded? It's all, you know, like, no. It's messy. It's got a lot of stuff going on. There's dead headed. The dead heads have been left on. So they're full of seeds. So really what we have to start to do is start changing our perception of what is beautiful on the landscape. And thinking more about how can we provide a little bit of a variety of different features for birds to be able to be on. I will never forget the first time I was a homeowner. And we had this beautiful picture window. And the edge of the property fell off in front. And it was awesome. And I built this giant brush pile. We should view. And my mom came over and we're hanging out. She was like, why do you have that brush pile there? It's just so messy looking. And I was like, get your cup of coffee, and come and sit with me. And you're going to see in a minute what it's like there. And the sparrows were bopping in and out of there. She's converted. Now she's like, I believe in brush piles. So brush piles, you can make them super fancy with larger logs and things on the bottom. So things like rabbits and squirrels and chipmunks can get in there and get cover. So you're provided cover for other wildlife. Or you can just toss it up there. I've got a couple in my backyard now, including all the Christmas trees from my neighbors, because we gather those in the winter time to build cover for birds around our feeder, that now the jewelweed is coming up through. And it's just kind of beautiful. So there's a soft green edge along with the brush. Yeah, our brush pile kind of becomes a green mound during the summer. There's different vines and stuff that grow up in there. I know. Maybe you get some Virginia creeper on there or some wild creeper. It's covered in Virginia creeper. And that's got berries, which is pretty. So Richard, do you leave it forever ongoing? Or is there some maintenance to take your time taking it down and building something? If we want to have a fire, that's where I go to grab stuff. And we're going to have a little fire together, a couple Christmas trees. But otherwise. So it can be like a storage room. It's just there, and it's on the back border of our property. And that's where all my sparrows are. As the sparrows start to come in and the white crown sparrows move through, that's where I'm going to hang out and focus my attention, especially. In my sit spot in my backyard, I talked about this with slow burning. I have a spot that I like to go to in my yard every day for about 20 minutes, where I look and watch and take notes about what I'm seeing and what I'm noticing. And so I know that's the sparrow spot. That's where I'm going to look for my sparrows. I will slowly rot from the bottom, so you can just keep adding stuff to it. And then you have 30 years. Yeah, every time there's a windstorm, I just go around the yard and get a room. There we go. On the other hand, if you have made of a room for miles, and there's so much life in it, when is it for me, say, the same as time to actually learn winter? Winter. So it's like, but then two more. Stick season, right? We're getting into this now. I'm going to move through. The other thing, too, is if you're not looking, things are burrowing in there. Little critters. They could. I think as you pull things off, too, it'll disrupt and build another one. You'd be like, moving over there. This is your next spot to go. So stick season or winter? I would say stick season is probably pretty good. Because then wintertime, there may be birds taking shelter in that at night to stay warm. And there may be multiples in there to stay warm at night. Yeah. All right. Remember I was talking about layers? Here's another way to think about why we want to add layers to our property. So birds sit in different niches. They all have their little place where they like to be, where it fits. So they're not totally over or out competing each other. So the more different types of layers that we can have in our yard, where we're softening some of those hard edges, especially the predators like to move along. I think of foxes and I think of cowbirds or skunks that are nest predators. That hard edge is a really nice pathway for them. If we soften that edge, they've got to go out and around. They may become objects of prey, like the Cooper stalk in my yard. So we soften those edges. We add layers. And there are different birds that are in each of those different types of layers. So our diversity is going to go up as we add more layers in our backyard. So that's another way. When you get that map done is to look and be like, ooh, I could add something there. So there's that big white pine. And there's the corner of the yard. I'm going to add some kind of mounting shrub and then drop down into perennials down here. Yeah, we put a witch hazel bush in one of the back corners. Yeah. And that gives a little corner of habitat right there. And it's a spot for them to go into, right? All right, so we're going to talk a little bit now about preserving native plants and really knowing natives for your region. Finding native stock, and this can be really challenging, I think. Removing invasive plants and alternatives to invasives. So here we have cedar wax wing on a juniper. Juniper is one of the top 10 plants for wildlife because they provide a whole set of those different elements. So it's food, nesting, and cover, especially during wintertime. Anybody know the bird and the plant in this one? Yes. Who says? Gross, gross, gross, gross. Yeah, look at this. There's just a little bit of that gross wash coming in here. And the plant? How do you know? You're close. That's close. Juniper is close. Mountain ash. Yeah. There you go. Mountain. Sadly, my neighbor has to take down his mountain ash in his yard. And I'm already like, so, Peter, what are you going to put in instead? You're going to put another mountain ash in there? How about a crab apple? What do you think? Because that's a spot where all the pine grows bees hang out in the wintertime, if my name is right. So here's the other thing to really think about as you start to pick native plants is these guys. All the caterpillars that are going to munch on your native plants. And instead of getting bummed out about that, get really excited about that. Because the main source of food, especially during the breeding season and the mating season for birds is our caterpillars. They really prefer insects, but the number one choice is going to be a caterpillar. They are really high in protein. They're high in proteins. And they're going to be great to be able to feed their young as the young are starting to flesh. Including 10 caterpillars? Including 10 caterpillars, yes. And it's funny. I knew someone was going to get that today. So what's really great, especially the fall webworm that we're seeing right now. So cold holiday Canada, which is a forest conservation nonprofit, if you go to their website, 2017 Nancy Patch, you can find a really great article that she wrote about the life cycle of 10 caterpillars. And how one of them is native. It's part of the natural cycle here. And there's a whole set of birds that go along with that. The cuckoos that Bill was playing the calls for, both the Blackbill and Yellowbill cuckoos will eat those 10 caterpillars. They're really good at smashing them and tenderizing them too. So if you watch them, you could be like, yes, take out all your aggression on that 10 caterpillar. So think about, I want you to think more about caterpillars. So here's what's really cool. This is the white blotched hetero-campa. And this one changes into this. So it's a type of moth. And this is from here on site. I pulled this up of Ionatolus, Judy Walma documented this moth. And so we have this caterpillar somewhere out there chewing on, I don't know, anybody got a guess of what that is? I don't know. How big is the moth? Yeah, Jesus, yeah, like that. And how big is the moth? The moth, I'm not sure how big the moth is. I don't think it's very large. I don't think it's much larger than, like, down to that first nipple on your thumb. It's not a very big moth. What was the moth? Oh, it's some species of oak. I have a question about caterpillars. What about the monarchs? What about monarchs? Yeah, so. I have them everywhere, so I'm just wondering. Monarch caterpillars are tasty too. And birds are definitely good at it. I don't want to eat them all. I know you're like, don't eat those. And they do have some of those, like, warning stripes that some birds are not going to be into eating those. But yeah, they're our food source. Yeah, the monarchs eat milkweeds. And they take up that horrible taste. Yep. And that's their defense. Because that's their defense. Yeah. They'll let us to rattle for it too. Yeah, and there's probably a species or two of birds that's like, yeah, I like that. That's fine with me. So here's why it really matters. I do think back to science, maybe to biology class or ecology class in college, is when we start to think about trophic levels and some of the things that birds need in order to survive. If caterpillars are one of the big, hardcore pieces of their diet that they are going to need in order to successfully breed and flesh their young, we need a lot of caterpillars on the landscape, right? So if we provide this bottom part of the pyramid here, we do a better job at this, then we're going to have more of this. And we'll have more. This is from a royal society for the protection of birds study on blue ticks and sparrowpox. And so they found that in neighborhoods that had more native species of plants that were preferred by more native caterpillars, that the blue ticks were more successful breeding. And then you had a stronger population of sparrowpox as well. All right. But there's this other really great paper that just came out last year. And I connected with Desiree Norendo online. What's really interesting is there's a very robust community of PhD candidates and PhD scientists who are very active on Twitter in the bird world. So that's how I met her, was on Twitter. And so she was posting all this great stuff about improving natives in the garden setting and how it affects different bird species. So she actually did this study with Caroline and Chiquities looking at non-native plants and how they reduce populations of an insectivorous bird. And the really cool way that she did this is she did a nest watch program. So in DC, she was working with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center as well at the time. What they did is they approached landowners who would be willing to put up a nest box in the backyard. And they used PVC piping. This was one that the landowner already had. Landowners who didn't have nest boxes, they built these really cool PVC pipe nest boxes that were just about that big. It was a white PVC pipe. Then they put some brown paint streaks on it so it looked like birch. And the birds came and nested in those boxes. Now they put perches up. Normally you don't want to do this, because it encourages housefarers and some other birds that you might not want in the box in preference to maybe your bluebird, or in this case, the Chiquities. But what it did is it allowed the bird to pause before it went inside to feed the young. And it gave the scientists an opportunity to either watch the bird or they put game cameras up to snap photos of the bird so that they could then identify the insect species that they were bringing in. So super cool. I was like, oh, this is awesome. The birds were also banded as well. So the scientists would come out. The volunteers would come out. So this is Desiree here with one of her landowners. They would band all the baby birds that they found so that she's got a baby bird here in her banding kit. So they would do a color band study where at the map station here, you put out a little bracelet that's got a code on it that then gets written down. But with their study, they wanted to use the bands for visual confirmation of an individual bird as they were watching it. So there were color codes. So there was silver on one leg and then yellow on top of blue on another leg. So that was silver, yellow on top of blue. Goes from the bird box to the oak tree or goes from the bird box to the willow. And they started tracking that as well to see which different types of plants in the yard that each of these birds went to. They also did a yard assessment to see what was there in terms of native versus non-native species. And they found something really pretty cool. So what they found, you can see that right here. So here's a number of young, here's all these caterpillars, in a yard that's mostly native plants versus mostly non-native plants. And then they looked at the reproduction success for each of those little nest boxes. And so in the yards that had mostly native plants as reproduction and the fledgling success rate actually was very, very high. Mostly non-native plants was low. So what they found was that when most solid birds need all of those insects, and I'm gonna say caterpillars, I'm gonna be bold and say when all those solid birds need lots of different varieties of caterpillars in order to survive. The yards that had non-native plants, the birds weren't as successful. The fledglings were less robust and the survival rate was lower. And the great thing is, is they came up with a threshold to be able to give to the public and say this is where you want to be at. So the threshold is a 70-30. So yards with more than 70% native plant biomass will succeed in the chickadee populations. And so you wanna air on the 30% side for your non-natives. So that's another thing that we can go back to. We've created that beautiful map of our yard. We've started to get to know what we have where, and now we can start to focus in on boosting the native species of plants that we have there. Then you're like, what do I put in? And what do I take out? So that's when we have to start doing a little bit of deeper dive and what's even more cool that's come out of the study and they don't have my box out under my table, I'll have to grab it. So she is studying with, I believe his first name is Doug Towney, and he has written a couple of different books on improving your backyard. They're within the past. Actually he has a new book coming out in February as well. And what he's done is he's started to look at species in caterpillar counts. So now you can look at high caterpillar count species and be like, that's what I wanna have on my property. So here are four. So we have American, and I didn't change the size. So this is not American Allen, this is now yellow birch. And choked cherry, sugar maple, and northern red oak. So yellow birch, 403 species of caterpillar feed on that type of tree. This is one of the trees that we encourage landowners with larger acres, right? If you're talking 50 hundred acres that we're asking them, think about creating a refuge for yellow birch on your property. Let's keep those on your property because they have a high number of caterpillar. More so than the other birches. More so than the other birches, yes, definitely. So yellow birch is very, very high. Choked cherry in the erronea species, 456. One of the things that I, this is shifted for me is a lot of times we think about birds eating the fruits and the berries and the nuts. And now we have the research that's also starting to show types of insects that they're fraying on and now caterpillar types. So we can really get down to it. Maples, this is sugar maple. Not super high, not as high as those other two, but still in the hundreds, 297. And this last one is red oak, which is also a really great species in terms of climate resiliency. So if you have red oak on your property, you want to keep that there. That's one of the species that's gonna be able to kind of withstand climate change, especially in the Northeast. So we actually are trying to assist oak in staying here by employing squirrels and blue jays to grow out and plant more and more acorns. Actually, they're better at doing it than we are. In Europe, they actually find where the blue jays like to hang out and leave oaks that they would like planted, like the acorns, because the blue jays do a better job. There's a higher success rate when an oak, when an acorn is planted by a blue jay than by a person. Are most of the oaks that are in this area in order red oak? No, no they're white. So do we have patches of them? So that's part of thinking back on when I look at my property, what do I have? What's really super valuable and what can I keep and protect here? Audubon, Vermont, and, oh gosh, do you need me to find out? Somebody help me out in Montpelier. They have a really great set of resources that will help you look at climate resiliency across the landscape in terms of forest management. I believe forest parks and recreation actually has a whole booklet on that that you can get us a hand over. So how resilient are you here? So it grows on its own or does it bring it in? No, it does grow on its own. It's in pockets, so more in the southern part of the state, but as things change and shift, we are gonna see it more in this part, in the northern part of the city. It's important to start that now because it takes so long to mature. Yeah, yeah. So that's why when you work with a forester especially, so if a forester found a patch of red oak or any type of oak here on the property, if you were thinking about harvesting it, you could say we're gonna leave that alone. We wanna leave that alone because we wanna keep that in place. So for perennials, and this is the other challenge, I feel like trees and shrubs are pretty easy because there's plenty of resources out there that will tell us what's good in terms of food, cover, nesting, and now caterpillars as well, but I think the challenge comes when we want these beautiful landscaped gardens and there's a lot more ornamentals out there as well. But we can start to think about what can we put in our garden that gets us that same, affects that same pop of color, but also is bringing the caterpillars. We get goldenrod, 122 different types of caterpillar, and there's multiple types of goldenrod as well. When I saw Zach going out today to catch monarchs, I wanted to be like, can you just get me like a bag of caterpillars? Because I just wanna see like some of this 122 species of caterpillar that are probably out there on the early goldenrod. Jerusalem Archup is the next one. I have this one in my backyard, the hummingbirds love it. It's not that tubular shaped flower that we always think of that hummingbirds love, but in the center of that, in many of the aster species, all of those are little tiny individual flowers. And so they really love that Jerusalem Archup. And then I leave it, I leave it messy and I let it go to seed and then the birds are there throughout the winter as well. Do the goldfinches like this seed? Goldfinches like the seed, yep, they're there as well. So leaving it messy, which also drives my mom crazy. I don't even know if your garden's yet, I'm like, I'm not done. I'm gonna leave it, I'm gonna try to leave. Joke Highly is one of my favorites. It's also a really great one for pollinators as well, just that beautiful purple and the deep dark branching on it as well. So 30 species there. Anybody know this one? Yeah. What's that? Primrose, evening primrose. So common evening primrose, 17 species of caterpillar and you get the bonus if you leave it. It has that great, so all the flower stock comes up and then the pods on here. These kind, after the flower goes to seed, you still get these weird little trumpet shaped pods that open up and the goldfinches and the sparrows and if you have snow buntings around you, they will come to that as well. So leave that behind or grab those flower heads from the side of the road when you're driving around and bring them and stick them out in your backyard or shake out the seed as well. It's amazing how much seed in there. But they're a great host for caterpillars too. So the other challenge here when we're starting to look at gardens is what's available out there. This is where the state has started a program called PlantWise where they're recognizing the nurseries that don't carry invasives anymore or are starting to take invasives out of their stock. So things like this first one, anybody know this one? Burning Bush. Burning Bush, quite gorgeous. You see it everywhere, right? It's like the standard one that gets planted as a foundation planting. A lot of non-native species that have various people or are always like that, has berries. The birds eat it. A lot of those non-native species don't have a really good caloric value to them or fat value or carbohydrate value to them. So it passes through the bird really quickly and there's nothing there for it. So in place of that, we could consider something else like that one might be tough. That's blueberry. So Highbush blueberry is a really good one. So you're still getting that pop of red color that maybe is attracting you to the burning bush. There's lots of other bushes that are on fire in the fall. So we can find one that's native and have some. Okay, so blueberry, 276 caterpillar species. So you might be throwing the net over for the blueberries but leave it open before the blueberries are ripe so that the birds can get at the caterpillars. Because there's a lot of great caterpillar species there. And over 37 species of birds use blueberry bush in one way or another whether it's re-cover or nesting. How about the next one? Oh yeah, yellow flag iris. Have you ever dug this up and gotten burned by it? So it's got that like, is it the sun hits the oils and it burns your skin? So you have to be very careful when removing this. So this is a non-native but we can replace it with the blue flag iris. And there's 14 caterpillar species that like blue flag flag iris. So that's a good replacement. This is a non-native honeysuckle. We do have a native honeysuckle that has a more low tone flower. So you could try to replace that way. I have a whole head drop that is shared with my neighbor of honeysuckle. The birds love it for cover. That's where they go when the Cooper sock comes in. They leave the feeder and they go there. But if you think about it, if you could pick something else that was, that had like more of the elements that we're looking for plus caterpillars on top, right? So if honeysuckle is just good for cover and the berries are getting pooped out so they don't really have a good nutritional value, maybe we can replace that with something else. Oh my gosh, my favorite one in the whole world. If I ever had a plant crush, it would be on this tree shrub, service berry. So Shabbush, Emily here. Gorgeous white flower early in the spring. So it like makes you think, yes, spring is actually coming and then it'll snow again. But it'll go away and Shabbush will let me know. And then it's this beautiful little orange berry that so many different species of birds love. About 26 different species of birds. So what do you work with in terms of deer attraction? Deer attraction, yeah. I don't care as long as the deer don't kill them. Kill them, right? Yeah, and so do blooper is it months time by deer? Not so much. Not so much. Anybody know about service berry? None. I know cedars get hit really hard. Some, but mine are making them. So I'm pretty sure the list that the state has some sort of that way. So they have different native species that they can recommend. And then there's the Vermont invasive network that can also start to give you one set. Okay, if you're looking for deer tolerant species, you'll be able to find those on there as well. All right, a couple more. This one, couple of the strife. Yep, put Jopai wean. Ah! And they like similar, you know, wet feet, right? They like those wet habitat. How about this one? Barberry. Barberry, oh my gosh, it's so unpleasant too. Like I'm like, can you pick a bush that catches all the city's trash, please? It's also just so non-attractive, yeah. It also attracts mice and it's tick and a dip piece, right? So when we have a landscape that has more non-native species on it, we have more ticks. So for some reason, ticks don't mind the barberry or the honeysuckle, I'm trying to think of the other one. Probably that muonimus as well. So you just find, I know at Hard App where I really love to go because there's shrub scrub birds. This is the ski area up in St. Albans that you can see from Route 89. That lower level is all this beautiful shrub scrub habitat. It's where I go for brown thrashers and toadies, there's golden-winged warglers in there too. But I am like buttoned up and socks up to my knees and like sprayed because there's all kinds of invasives in there, in that shrub land as well. Does this have thorns too? Yeah, it's like the thorns too and that's what collects the trash. So here's a different, this is the black choke cherry, so Aronia melon carpa. So you get that bright red pop, which is really nice. It's not as deep red as the barberry, but then you get these deep blue berries as well. Bishop's weed, I have it in my house, oh my gosh. I just want to beat the Bishop's weed, I can't. I keep trying, it'll take a while to suppress it. I keep pulling it out and putting cardboard down over the top of it, I'm sure, after a while. But it's a ground cover and that's what people find it attractive for. But there are native ground covers that we can go to as well that'll just be a little bit better. So this is berry, berry, berry. Yeah, just really beautiful and thick, leathery like leaves. And just leave this berry's room. Our animal, yep, partridge. Some grafts really like those. All right, so really what we're trying to do is we're trying to provide the best bird buffet we can. Right? So you think of the best potluck that you've ever been to and that's by organized by someone who's like, you're gonna bring this and you're gonna bring a salad and we need a fruit thing and we need a pasta dish. Like they've done all that work. So it is a little bit of work to get there, but it's gonna pay off and it will pay off in birds like the 68 species of birds that I've recorded in my backyard. And it's not just the resident ones, it's the ones that are moving through and taking a break and dropping out of the sky, Bill, right, that are like, I just gotta take a rest before I take off again and maybe get something to eat and move on. So now I told you about the caterpillars for the breeding season. The other part of the buffet is it needs to be seasonal year round, right? So we wanna try to make sure we're hitting all the different spots of the year for these birds that we love so much. So spring and summer we can think about, okay, all of those different caterpillar species and other insects that they are gonna want to eat. But then as we move into late summer and into fall and even into winter, we've got the migratory food choices that we really need to provide for them so that they can make it across the Gulf or make it down to Argentina or wherever they're gonna go in Central and South America. And then we need to think about the things that are gonna help them get through winter as well. So different ways to group these things when you're looking at your yard can be like, do I have summer fruiting choices in my yard? Things like service berry or blueberry, raspberries, blackberries, elderberry, you were talking, right, you were talking about the elderberry in the middle of the garden and being like, I'm gonna watch that plant because the birds are gonna go there. Wild grape, wild cherry, a lot of these are really, really important for our young birds especially so that they get that energy that they need as they're trying to hide and outwit and outlast predators and prey. So it's really about kind of giving them high carbohydrates in the form of sugar that's gonna help them get to that point where they're then ready to migrate and move on. Okay, who's this? Cedarwaxi. Cedarwaxi. It's Scarlett. Scarlett, I gotta tell you, I was at the Merc Forest Center down Ruth's way, yeah, Merc Forest Center leading a walk with some clients and we went up to where the blueberry patch was, of course, because it's so awesome to like, bird and eat at the same time. And we looked down into this little swale and there were choked cherries, sumac, and I'm trying to think of what else was in there but it was mostly choked cherries, big choked cherry trees. And these guys had on their list that they wanted to see Scarlett Tanninger and roast breasted grosspeak and I was like, oh wow, how am I gonna deliver that? That's gonna be so hard. The birds were there, that's where they were. So these deep woods interior species of birds, it's really amazing. When you put these things in your yard, they will come out and come into those places where they can feed. So I did that, got them Scarlett Tanninger and I got on a roast breasted grosspeak. It was great and all thanks to the berries that were there. How about this one? Yeah, there you go, red Igeria and capybara. That's like, that's the elderberry that's right in the middle of the garden. All right. So then we can think about fall fruiting plants and shrubs as well. And warblers switch, so some of these birds are like switching up their diet. I need to go from high protein insects to things that are gonna give me the fat that I need to put on. It's something ridiculous, like you would have to eat like 52 big masts a day to put on the body weight that you need to put on to migrate like a warbler does, right? So you're just pigging out. That's what these guys are trying to do right now. That's the buffet you wanna put out for them. I have a viburnum in my yard on the corner of my house, right outside my sunroom and my theaters are there. The cat birds don't like the honeysuckle hedge. They don't like it. They won't nest in there. They barely come in there at all. My nest neighbor over has a cedar hedge. Guess what I'm gonna replace the honeysuckle hedge with? Cedar, because that's where all the cat birds are. I mean the cat birds are gonna come a little bit closer. But right now the cat birds are coming into my yard to take out all of the berries on the viburnum. The viburnum brush was done in about three days. It was really amazing. It was all right outside the window so that we could box it. So we have fall fruiting plants like dogwoods, viburnums, and progenic creeper, which changes a beautiful red in the fall. They are high fat, good energy for migration. We can consider these things the superfoods. They're really the superfoods that we need to put out for them during migration. And this red tone that you see popping up on these plants, that's the cue to the birds that these are ripe. So in a lot of these fruiting you'll see the stems are a red color. This is Virginia creeper here. This is a, I think this is a great dogwood. And a chilt cherry down here. That red color is the signal that they are ripe and ready to go. Okay. This one's, this is tougher. Okay. This one? Cape man. This is a Cape man morgler. How about this one? Black hole. Oh my gosh. Right? Find where those dogwoods and viburnums are on the property that you're walking in and follow the weather like Bill told us to do. And then listen for the chip notes. And then you're there. You've got to all together, map it out. And there's our waxing buddy again. All right. And then finally winter persistence, right? So these berries that are gonna stick around through the winter time and that are gonna provide food for our resident birds like chickadees, there's sumac. Oh my gosh. Pine grossbeak, I know in St. Albans where all the crab apple trees that the pine grossbeaks been on. I think this winter I'm gonna do a mapping project of the city and just map where all those trees are and then try to go around and confirm grossbeaks. The next time there's a grossbeak, right? Push. I'm gonna get that down. So I start thinking like the birds. Where are they gonna be? Then I'm gonna, then I'm gonna seed them off. And then Easter blooper there on the winterberry. So these are really important. They are late berries that stay on the plant. They've got a low lipid content so they don't rot. But they'll freeze thaw, they'll ferment. So then sometimes you get the drunk birds too, which will be kind of interesting. But they're really important for winter resonance. And then those early birds that are right back. Think about here in Vermont when it snows in late April and you're like, oh my gosh, I just saw, or even May, I just saw my first thrush. What are they gonna do? Go to where the sumac is. That's where all the thrushes are gonna be. Right? And the robins are gonna be there. All those guys are gonna be there. So really super important. Seeds and nectar. Leave your gardens messy. Allow the jewelweed to grow. I have a couple neighbors who are like out there morning. I'm like, no, no. And it's taken me some time. It's a little bit of relationship building. It's a little bit of like soft conversations about, hey, did you notice this about the jewelweed? It's really cool. It's got these seed capsules that pop. They explode. It's really fun. That jewelweed is also called the these earlobe or something. Somebody told me. And touch me not, right? All of those little things. And the hummingbirds like them. And other migrant birds like them. So. And it also warned you that there's poison ivy nearby. Yeah. We're stinging nettle. And you mash that up and put that on either of those. And that sting of the nettle goes away. And it can help with poison ivy, too. Luckily, I don't have poison ivy in my yard. I got a lot of jewelweed and some stinging nettle. But mullin. This is the other one that I love to leave behind. Those beautiful fuzzy leaves. We think of it as a weed. But it's a great seed source and a perfect photo opportunity that you know you have in your backyard. What's the one I like to see? So this is a crab apple? Yeah. And so in the springtime, when those eye-paved attention. Eye-paved. We were talking about weather pushing migrant birds. So when the weather's right, foggy morning pushes the birds down. I'm going to go find where those apple trees are that are just starting to bloom. Great for orioles and wardlers and all of that. The insects that are in them as well. Just a great kind of magnet. So the cherry trees? Cherry trees are good too. The south had whole flocks of like sea rewhats that come in that they have another tree to land in will land on that and then take turns going down and getting and going back. Back and forth. And back and forth and back and forth until it's stripped. Until it's gone, then they move on to the next place. That's that nomadic nature that they have, right? So how can we figure out what we need to put? And this is one of the things that I constantly, I struggle with. I fell a little over the plant this year called cup plant. Anybody know this one? Yeah, it is so beautiful. Squarish stems. It's literally, it's like seven feet in my garden right now. It's really big. It was given to me by a friend down in Grafton. And it has these beautiful leaves that come out, but they wrap around the stem and they form a cup. So water collects in there. They're in the Helianthus family, I believe. The yellow flower. Yeah, so they, and then the stem comes up and it's like a whole bunch of yellow flowers way at the top. I was so thrilled. I watched Titmice drink out of the water this year. I was like, no way. It actually works. And then the hummingbirds have been feeding on it. Now it's native to the Midwest, which I was like, all right, it's a native. I'm gonna plant it everywhere. I was collecting the seeds and putting them along the back edge of the yard. And then as I started to do a little bit more research, I discovered that it's actually a little bit problematic in Vermont, because what it does is it starts to spread. It spreads really easily and it out-competes our regional native plants like Joe Pyeweed and the golden rod and some of the other wetland edge plants. So be careful. Like the nursery that I went to recently that has it is like, this is native. It's good for your yard. And I'm like, okay, maybe just in the garden where you're gonna contain it, but I'm not gonna plant it along the edge of my property. Yes. Some cup planted out across the parking lot there. There is. So it came out of our original pollinator garden when we go under our feet here. Yep. And it just eats space. Yes. Yeah, it takes over everything. Which I was excited about for the edge of my property, but then I was like, no, that's probably not good. We were just pulling our cup plant all summer. So native to the United States is not always native and good for our region. So that's my heads up there. I was very sad. So I will keep mine contained. National Wildlife Federation, and it is Doug Talamy. Dr. Doug Talamy is a professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware. So he's an expert in the science of plant-insect interactions. And the book that he has read, which I will bring inside so you could see that, and it's on the resource list in the back, is Bringing Nature Home, How You Couldn't Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants. And then another one that's gorgeous to look at that gives you good images of how to landscape on a whole is the living landscape designing for beauty and biodiversity in the home garden. And that one is awesome, because I like all the context. And then I zoom in on the individual plants and try to figure out what I need. But here's working on this, and this is in beta form. So when you get there, you're not gonna get all the pictures. It's not super robust for Vermont yet, but it's really good. So you can go here, you can put your zip code in, you can find butterflies, you can keep your own list, and you can find native plants. And so it'll give you flowers and grasses and trees and shrubs, and it'll give you the caterpillar count for each one of those species, which is really kind of fun. So now I can go through and see where I have what. Add that to my map and see where the holes are where I want to put a little bit more in, especially when it comes to flowers and grasses. I'd like to start taking up less and less lawn. The other one that's really great is the Audemann database. And what they do, it kind of one ups it. They will give you a list. They will send it to you as well, which is great. They'll tell you the attributes, how the birds or pollinators can use it, and then they give you individual birds that it might attract. And I believe you can do it in the reverse as well. So you can click on the link for the bird and it will give you a list of other species that the bird likes, or yes, that the bird likes as well. And then you could add things to your plant list and ask them to email it to you, which is really great. You can find local support as well, I think once again, which is still very challenging in the state in terms of finding stuff that's truly native, so I encourage you to do a little bit of homework so you don't fall into the cup plant dilemma like I did. And where I found the information about the cup plant in New England was here. It's from the I-Pain website. So the invasive plant Atlas of New England. This, I find, has the most robust information about things that are problematic or truly invasive non-natives in the state, including boa constrictors and stuff like that. So really, I'm talking to you about native plants, but I want you to think a bit about how this is all really connected and how we can build off of that. One of the things that happened to me this week is I was putting this together as I started to think about the slow burning program that I was gonna be delivering and I thought about how this health aspect comes into play here. So one of the things that scientists are discovering is just a walk in a garden or a forest or outdoors. Does a lot of things for your health, right? It lowers all of, I think all of those stress hormones and things like that that are like coursing around. So really, we can think about how not only are we providing for birds, but we're providing something that's really good for our health and for our public health. I talked a little bit about climate change. This is another one of the pieces. If we really root the landscape in native species, we are gonna be in a much better place as climate starts to shift and change and our communities are gonna be a little bit more resilient. And of course, birds are not just only birds, but it's also other wildlife as well and I couldn't help but notice that as I watched how many monarchs and other butterflies were flying around here today. So I'm gonna leave you with this quote. There's a palm warbler beating, tenderizing caterpillars. How many of you have seen that? Like birds like smack in caterpillars around another branch before. This is what I'm talking about. Slow birding, you gotta sit and watch. Like spend more time with that bird. Some of those behaviors that you're gonna pick up on are amazing. So I'm gonna tenderize it. How many can I carry? Am I gonna feed myself? Is this bird about to feed itself or is it gonna move on and grab another one, get a third and a fourth and a fifth and then take off and feed it? Is it gonna strip the spines off of it before it eats it? Does it eat it so fast that it's got gobs and caterpillar out the side and now you're gonna watch it bill wipe, which we watched goldfinches do. You fly down to the garden to feed then go up on the branch in the sunshine to dead trees and do some bill wiping and then go back down into the garden to feed. Oh yes, no. So it all ties, it all ties together. Sorry, here's a quote to end things today. This is from, oh my God, we gotta scroll down. How am I gonna do that? No, I don't wanna go there yet. Let's go back. Um, so this is from Oliver Sacks. He is a neurobiologist and he's author of everything in its place. First loves and last tales. I love finding people who are in totally different spheres and circles that have an appreciation for birds and, well, in this case, gardening. So he says, clearly nature calls to something very deep in us. Biophilia, the love of nature and of living things is an essential part of the human condition. Portophilia, the desire to interact with, manage and tend with nature is also deeply instilled in us. The role that nature plays in health and healing becomes even more critical for people working long days in windowless offices, for those living in city neighborhoods without access to green spaces, for children in city schools or for those in institutional settings such as nursing homes. The effects of nature's qualities on health are not only spiritual and emotional but physical and neurological. So with that, I hope you will go back and look at your gardens a little bit differently. Your front yard, your back yard, your side yard, all of that and think about how you're gonna provide that beautiful seasonal buffet for all the birds that maybe you're already seeing or that you saw here today. Thank you guys so much.