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WHAT IS AN ECOBIRDER?

I am dedicated to helping make the world a better place for all creatures, great and small. From the tiniest ant to the mighty elephant, every creature on this planet performs the task given it by Mother Nature. I believe it is our duty to appreciate and protect those creatures whose beauty brings joy to every moment, for they have no voice and no way to protect themselves against man's will. Won't you join me? Together we CAN make a difference!

 musings and sightings

    IN MY       HABITAT

 

Research has shown that wildlife does benefit from even isolated backyard habitats. If you can convert your neighbors, even better! Butterflies, especially the Monarch, are a great way to start. Everyone loves Monarchs, and a lot of milkweeds are a beautiful, non-invasive addition to any flower bed.  Online seed stores sell almost exclusively non-native Tropical Milkweed, which has been the subject of increasing scrutiny as we strive to help the Monarchs increase their numbers. Many people say that the Monarchs "love" the Trop MW they plant. Recent research suggests that the only females who "love" it are ones that are infected with OE disease. They seek out the Trop MW in an unsuccessful attempt to cure themselves and their offspring. Non-infected females show no preference for Trop MW over native milkweeds such as the Woodson Swamp Milkweed that I use almost exclusively in my habitat. After seeing so many people who use Trop MW on social media, I decided to start selling my excess Woodson seeds. So far I've sold over 100 packets, and I feel good that more people are helping the Monarchs in a responsible way. They are available on Ebay at this link .

 

Butterflies and moths need us to plant a variety of natives for them to use as host plants. If you have butterflies visiting your nectar plants, it's so important to find out which host plants they use and add them to your habitat. I'll work on adding these plants to the Native Plant page this year. And let's also try to plant as many berry- and seed-producting natives as we can. Birds depend on these plants to make it through the winter. For the spring and summer, Black Cherry and Mulberry trees will bring in all sorts of beautiful birds, such as the Scarlet Tanagers I've highlighted in the next column. Everyone loves the mulberries--it's a plant I consider a "must-have" if you want to attract birds to your habitat.  

 

You can also check out the photo gallery on the Native Plants page for photos and IDs of things you may find sprouting in your habitat each spring. For years I have let the birds be my landscape gardeners, and they've done an amazing job for me. With their help, I've created thickets of native shrubs, "weeds", and small trees that the birds use as cover and nesting sites, as well as for food. Don't be afraid to let weeds grow in your habitat; all native weeds have a corresponding moth or butterfly that will use it as a host plant. Birds depend almost solely on caterpillars to feed their nestlings, so the more, the better!

species alert
Monarch
Butterfly

 



I am focusing most of my atten-tion this year to doing every-thing I can to help the Monarch butterfly, whose populations last winter were the lowest ever recorded. 

 

For a number of years I have raised Monarchs here from eggs I collect in the milkweed patch. Full instructions on how I do this are in a photo album on the Butterflies page. I hope you'll all join me in what is one of the most profound, rewarding things I have ever done.

 

Something we all can do to help the Monarch caterpillars sur- vive in the wild is to put up fly-catching bags in our yards. Tachinid flies are a major par- asite of caterpillars, espe- cially early in the season. The female fly can lay an egg either on the cat or on the leaf nearby to be eaten, and the larva will mature inside the cat and then emerge as a pupa. This kills the developing butterfly. Fly bags can be purchased at almost any store that has a garden section.

 

Are you seeing a large, round, black and red beetle on your milkweed? The Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle prevents milkweed from flowering, and therefore, from making seeds. See the profile on the Dragonflies, etc. page. 

 

    Scarlet

I first started getting Scarlet Tanagers, like the female above, in the fall as they migrated through on their way south. They love the Pokeweed berries and I've had them stay here as long as two weeks! This year in the spring I had adult males visit for the first time. I had two separate males visit two weeks apart. You can see by the dots of yellow feathers that this male below was still molting!

  TANAGERS

It can be difficult to find organic items, native plants and seeds, eco-friendly products, and bird-themed merchandise. I hope you enjoy and check out the links you may find in my articles. I receive no compensation for anything other than my Ebay seed sales and CafePress store.

I have loads of fun, organic, nature- themed merchandise in my Cafe Press online store. Click on the photo to open it in a new window.

Organic, nature-themed merchandise

Wanna GET LUCKY?

Set up POSING AREAS     Draw birds out so you can observe & photograph them

Last year I was lucky enough to get this shot of one of the pairs of Catbirds courting. They nested in what I call The Big Thicket. It's the largest of the thickets I have scattered about in my habitat.                        Just the other day, the same                        male brought the exact same                        kind of leaf (which I'm                            guessing is a Gingko leaf                          from a tree down the street)                        to his mate, but this time I                        wasn't lucky enough to more                        than glimpse it. Why?                              Because this year, there                            isn't a perching stick                              strategically placed in     the thicket. So add this to your To-Do List--collect long, dead branches that fall from your trees during the year, and use them throughout your habitat. A really big one could be "planted" somewhere, and all the birds will use it as they would a dead stag, especially woodpeckers such as the fledgling Downy Woodpecker in my photo. If you look through the photos at the top of the page, you'll notice that a lot of them show birds perching on the same sticks over and over. I take almost all my photos out my kitchen window, and I have perching sticks of various sizes and small dead stags placed strategically around the area I can see from that window. Set up a posing area in your yard and you'll be amazed at who comes to visit! 

 

       My Favorite Nature Moments

Gray Catbirds

Gardening for Wildlife: Seed Sowing

I'm so thrilled with my success this year with the seeds I sowed in late winter. I saved up clear plastic food containers to use, and it was a great way to recycle them. One or two holes in the bottom, and around half a dozen in the top to let in rainwater was all the prep they needed. I used soil from my raised garden beds and also some Seed Starting mix I had on hand. After sowing all the different seeds I wanted, I closed the lids and lined the containers all up on my picnic table in a sheltered spot where they wouldn't get blown away or knocked over. Then I waited for spring and the first sprouts to appear.

 

I've been saving seed for a long time now. When I first started gardening for wildlife, a lot of my online friends sent seeds from their gardens to get me started. At that point, I was working full time, so most of the seeds have been in a cardboard box on a kitchen shelf, waiting patiently for me to have the time to grow them. During that time I usually just purchased plants online whenever I wanted to add anything to the garden. I ordered butterfly host plants and other wonderful native plants from nurseries such as Lazy S's Farm Nursery, Sunlight Gardens, Niche Gardens, Coldstream Farm, Prairie Moon Nursery, Mail-order Natives, and many others. Have you found a great native nursery in your area? I know now that it's best to buy plants that have been grown locally, if possible. This link will take you to an extensive list of nurseries around the country: Plant Native.

 

Now that I'm not working I have a lot more time to do fun projects like these, and I'm really enjoying it. The flat of seedlings you see on the left contains the first of what turned out to be around a hundred milkweed plants. It was a bit of work tending to them and potting them up as they grew. I hope to sell them at a festival my town has each year, and hopefully enough people will buy them to make a difference for the Monarch butterflies. Some of the other things I sowed successfully were Northern Bayberry, which is a shrub most people don't know about. It contains the highest fat content of any native berry, which makes it a very important food resource for songbirds during the fall and winter; and American Beautyberry, another wonderful native shrub that gets clusters of lilac-purple berries all along its branches.

 

If you're just getting started in wildlife gardening, some easy perennials that I recommend are Purple Coneflowers, Anise Hyssop, Monarda, Tall Phlox ("Delta Snow" is a particular favorite), Vervain, Cardinal Flower, and, of course, milkweed. There are many varieties of each of these plants. Use the link in the paragraph below to find the ones native to your region. 

 

In early spring, I decided to sow my annuals using this method also. I grow tall zinnias and Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia) every year for the butterflies. (Hummingbirds love them too, by the way.) I had saved my seed last fall, and it was really satisfying to see the seedlings growing, and now, starting to flower. I'm keeping track of when each species of flower in the habitat begins and ends flowering. My goal is to have a few nectar sources flowering at all times, so the seeds I'll be wintersowing at the end of this year will be those I need to fill any gaps I find this summer. I'll use the plant database on the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center website to narrow down my choices using the controls on the left-hand side of the web page. I've listed just a few online native seed companies to the left. I hope you'll give wintersowing a try this year and add as many native plants as you can to your gardens next year. Most seeds are inexpensive, but the results will be priceless when you see butterflies, bees, and your beloved yard birds thriving because of the beautiful native plants YOU grew just for them. I just find the whole process so rewarding, and I love how my garden is evolving!

        Flower Fly (or Hoverfly) on Delta Snow Phlox from Niche Gardens

Female American Goldfinch visiting the wildflower garden

"I'm an EcoBirder...also known as the Crazy Bird Lady!"

Hi! It's great to meet you! Welcome to my new website, and please forgive my growing pains and inexperience as I add more content and attempt to create something worthwhile and interesting here. My head is literally swimming with ideas. Hopefully I will be able to convey them in such a manner that you will feel the steps I have taken to turn my yard over to nature are things that anyone can do--that YOU can do, and that you'll see the same results I have and feel the same joy and peace I feel.  Join me on this journey BACK TO NATURE and let's all make a real difference in this world.

 

Some of you may know me from my Facebook page, Eco.Birder., which I created in 2011 to help spread awareness about environmental issues, and to share some of the things I do to help nature here in my habitat. As the years go on, of course, posts get lost down the page, so hopefully this website will be a better way to access all the information from the Facebook page. I will be working hard to get everything transferred over to here, and hope you'll check in often to see what's new.

 

As you've no doubt already surmised from my photos, I'm not a professional photographer...I'm not even a good amateur photographer! But hopefully what I do post will be good enough to convey the message. :o)

 

I'm so happy you've joined me here to share my love for the nature in our own backyards. My own life has been immeasurably enriched because of it, and I hope I can help you feel the same.

 

:o) Karen

 Email Consultations!
       Coming Soon!
 

"Bug Love"

You can tell you are really noticing the small stuff when a lot of your summer photos are of mating insects! Have you ever seen these bugs before? Check them out on the Dragonflies, etc. page.

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