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One bird’s north is just another bird’s south |
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December 4, 2017 |
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By Ashley P. Taylor
Audubon
Sad some of your favorite birds are going south
for the winter? Don’t worry — others are coming
to take their places. As birds that breed in the
lower 48 states head to Central and South
America, those from the boreal forests of Canada
and Alaska are also heading south in search of
warmer climes.
One study found that in California’s Central
Valley, there are just as many different bird
species around in the winter as in the summer.
While there isn’t good data showing whether this
seasonal trade-off is just as balanced in other
locales, “winter visitors” can be found all over
the country, says Jeff Wells, Science and Policy
Director for the Boreal Songbird Initiative.
“There’s this massive sea of a billion or more
birds that come down into the U.S. and become,
often, the common birds of backyards and parks
and lakes and ponds,” says Wells. “Yet we don’t
think so much about where they're coming from
and what their needs are.”
Helping these winter visitors out could help
sustain their populations in both their
wintering and summering grounds.
Birds have the same needs — food, water, shelter
— in winter as they do any other time. Winter
habitat has also been shown to affect breeding
success, according to studies on
tropical-wintering birds, and the same could be
true for the boreal birds wintering here, says
Kristen Dybala, who led the California study.
If the birds don’t find quality habitats with
good food, their health suffers, Dybala
explains, and it may take them longer to gather
the energy to migrate back to their breeding
grounds. When they finally arrive, the best
breeding spots might be taken.
“Each stage of the annual cycle kind of depends
on the previous one,” says Dybala. Basically,
it’s a snowball effect.
While conservationists tend to pay the most
attention to habitats during breeding season,
“there’s this whole other season that we haven’t
been paying nearly as much attention to, and
there may be opportunities to do a better job
providing higher-quality habitat during the
winter,” Dybala says.
So what can you do to welcome the boreal birds
to your backyard this winter? Here are some tips
from Stephen Kress, who directs Audubon’s
Project Puffin.
Create a songbird border of native trees and
shrubs to shelter your yard from the wind.
Choose berry-producing landscape plants, such as
juniper trees and shrubs like dogwood,
serviceberry, and viburnum; many boreal birds,
such as the Cedar Waxwing, the Yellow-rumped
Warbler, and several sparrow species, eat
berries during the winter. Fall is the perfect
time to plant, says Kress—though be sure to put
wire-mesh cages around the new plants to protect
them from mice, deer, and rabbits.
Make a brush pile in the corner of the yard to
shelter the birds from predators and storms and
to provide night roosting places. Put logs and
larger branches on the bottom and layer smaller
branches on top.
Rake leaves up under trees and shrubs—and leave
them there. The resulting mulch will make a lush
environment for the insects and spiders that
these birds, such as the Savannah Sparrow and
Golden-crowned Sparrow, like to eat.
Turn part of your lawn into a mini-meadow by
letting it grow up in grass and weeds. (Mow it
once a year, in late summer.) Seed-eating boreal
visitors, including several sparrow species and
the Dark-eyed Junco, will benefit from your
letting things go literally to seed. “In
general, overly tidy gardeners are poor bird
gardeners,” Kress writes in The Audubon Guide To
Attracting Birds.
For other tips on how to make your property
hospitable to birds, check out
How To Make Your Yard Bird-Friendly,
Make Migration-Friendly Window Decorations,
and, of course,
Kress's book. |
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