Week 23 in Your Vegetable Garden

Robin

In many home landscapes the bird feeders are put away until late next fall. Many folks who feed birds in winter believe that it’s a bad idea to continue to feed the songbirds in the spring and summer.  The story was that you could make those wonderful creatures dependent on you for food and that was a bad thing.   In fact, spring is a time when the natural food supply is low; the same time many songbirds are caring for their babies.  Food in the bird feeder is a valuable spring food source for these feathered cuties.

Nuthatch

In fact, I think we should feed songbirds all year long.  Yes, songbirds are interesting and beautiful, and they certainly are fun to watch, but that is not why we should go to the trouble to attract as many songbirds to our yard as we can. The reason? Songbirds, in sufficient numbers and species, will control over 50% of the pest insects in the entire home landscape. That is why we want to attract birds to our yard and we want them to hang around all year if they don’t migrate.

Songbirds Devour A Gazillion Bugs

Scientists have known for many decades that songbirds are important in easing insect population fluctuations. They are amazing insect eating machines. Although many adult songbirds such as finches and sparrows are seed eaters, most baby birds cannot digest seeds and so must be fed fresh insects. A single diminutive and feisty house wren feeds 500 insects to its young in the course of just one afternoon! Seed-eating chickadees and house finches glean hundreds of insects from your yard every day for their babies. Insect eating adults harvest even more insects for themselves. A tiny swallow will devour 1,000 leaf hoppers in 12 hours. A northern oriole can eat 17 hairy caterpillars per minute. Even the lowly starling and the pugnacious English sparrow devour literally thousands of pest insects or insect larvae each season.

The More Songbird Species the Better

Even Sparrows Help

Songbirds are only one factor in the natural control of pest insects in a healthy home landscape. Small mammals, weather, “beneficial” insects, parasites, fungi and diseases all play a role in keeping pest insect populations at a level where their damage does not mar the appearance of the yard. Nevertheless, the more songbirds you can attract to your yard either as residents or as visitors, the fewer pest insect problems you will have to face.

Pest insects are found all over the home landscape, in the ground, on the ground, in shrubs, in trees, and just generally flying around. Some songbirds feed while in flight. Some are foliage gleaners, while others find their prey in bark. And there are birds that eat what they find on the surface of the ground. So if you can attract lots of different species of birds, you are likely to have birds in residence that work hard at debugging all those different areas of the yard. So part of the fun in attracting songbirds to your yard is to find ways to entice lots of different species.

The Do-It Dozen Feathered Buddies

Which songbirds are the “best” for controlling pest insects in the home landscape? There are 12 species of songbirds that are the hardest workers, the most numerous in most home habitats and the easiest to attract in this area. We call them the “Do-It Dozen”. Some are beautiful, such as cardinals and goldfinches. Some are a bit disreputable, such as starlings and house sparrows. However, as a group they are extremely effective at patrolling every nook and cranny of your yard for pest insects.

Starlings Eat Grubs

Every pest insect found in the home landscape is a potential meal for at least one of the Do-It Dozen. Collectively, they scout lawns, trees and shrubs, flowers and vegetable patches. The more you can attract to your yard by offering necessities such as food, water and shelter, the more help you will have in controlling pest insect problems. Let me introduce you to the Do-It Dozen. They include Cardinals, Catbirds, Chickadees, Finches, Flycatchers, Nuthatches, Robins, Sparrows, Starlings, Titmice, Woodpeckers, and Wrens.  How many of these hard workers do you have in your yard?

So if you want a relatively bug free yard, put back the bird feeders, set up one or two bird baths, and get your realtor working on setting up some housing.