A black-capped chickadee sets down on a tree branch. (Photo: Colin Durfee, CC)
Cultivating natural environment for native birds can help fight biodiversity loss, as Ariana Remmel reports in today’s BirdNote.
Transcript
CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood.
O’NEILL: And I’m Aynsley O’Neill.
[BIRDNOTE THEME]
O’NEILL: One method to help fight biodiversity loss in your own yard is to cultivate the type of natural environment that yard feeder birds can make into a home. BirdNote’s Ariana Remmel has the story.
BirdNote®
Creating Bird Habitat at Home
One of the greatest hazards to birds is the decrease in biodiversity due to environment loss — and the conventional, manicured yard isn’t assisting.
[Black-capped Chickadee call, ML 202239]
Even birds who go to yard feeders — like these Black-topped Chickadees — require a healthy mix of seeds, berries, and bugs frequently discovered on the native plants we villainize as “weeds” when they grow in our yards, says ecologist Douglas Tallamy.
Doug Tallamy: We have more than 40 million acres of yard in the United States, which is the size of New England. And that’s an eco-friendly deadscape.
[Deciduous Forest Morning Songbirds]
That implies among the simplest methods to safeguard birds at home is to grow native plants, says Tallamy, who co-founded an organization called Homegrown National Park® to help individuals change their yards into sanctuaries for wildlife.
Doug Tallamy: And I’d like individuals to stop taking a look at their lawn as a separated environment, it belongs to a community. And someone who’s got a bright area down the street, however no trees? Okay, that’s where the pollinator gardens go. Somebody who’s got a huge oak and is overspreading 2 or 3 backyards? That’s terrific! That’s going to supply a great deal of resources for much of your houses because lawn. So take a look at your community as a whole regional environment and see what the overall resources are.
A black-capped chickadee bites down on a seed. (Photo: Tom Murray, CC)
Reducing your yard to include native plants is a little advance —
Doug Tallamy: But envision if everyone did this. This is why we call the Homegrown National Park® motion a grassroots motion, it’s a call to action.
To learn more about Homegrown National Park®, start at our website: BirdNote dot org.
[Black-capped Chickadee call, ML 202239]
###
Written by Ariana Remmel
Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds offered by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Black-topped Chickadee ML 202239 taped by J. McGowan. Morning Songbirds taped by Gordon Hempton.
BirdNote’s style was made up and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2022 BirdNote March 2022 Narrator: Ariana Remmel
ID # hnp-01-2022-03-21 hnp-01
Links
Learn more on the BirdNote® webpage
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