Each week during Garden for Wildlife Month, we will be featuring backyard flora and fauna of a particular color.  This week we are focused on red, a color associated with dominance in a number of animal species. Does your backyard play host to any of the following species?

These photos were donated by past participants in the National Wildlife® Photo Contest. To enter your photos in this year’s contest, visit the contest site.

Source of bird facts: Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds

Scarlet Tanager

A striking black-winged red bird, the Scarlet Tanager is a common species of the eastern forest interior. Despite its brilliant coloring it is often overlooked because of its rather secretive behavior and its preference for the forest canopy. (Photo: Daniel Marquis)

Ladybug

Ladybugs are favored by farmers as voracious pest-eaters. By the end of its three-to-six-week life, a ladybug may eat 5,000 plant-eating insects. (Photo: David Bahr)

 House Finch

The red of a male House Finch comes from pigments contained in its food during molt. So the more pigment in the food, the redder the male. Females prefer to mate with the reddest male they can find, perhaps raising the chances they get a capable mate who can do his part in feeding the nestlings. (Photo: Gregory Fisher)

Pileated Woodpecker

The Pileated Woodpecker is one of the biggest, most striking forest birds on the continent. They dig characteristically rectangular holes in trees to find ants. These excavations can be so broad and deep that they can cause small trees to break in half. (Photo: Hal and Kirstin Snyder)

Red Spotted Newt

The strikingly colored juvenile stage (terrestrial) of the Red Spotted Newt is followed by the olive-green colored adult stage (aquatic). They have a lifespan of 12 to 15 years in the wild, and may grow to 5 inches in length. (Photo: John Kornet)

Cardinal Flower

Although relatively common, overpicking this handsome wildflower has resulted in its scarcity in some areas. Since most insects find it difficult to navigate the long tubular flowers, Cardinal Flower depends on hummingbirds, which feed on the nectar, for pollination. (Photo: Paul Lackey)

Pyrrhuloxia

A distinctive songbird of arid scrublands, the Pyrrhuloxia lives in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. It superficially resembles its close relative, the Northern Cardinal. Foraging winter flocks of Pyrrhuloxias may number as many as 1,000 birds. (Photo: Daniel Ruf)

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

The male Rose-breasted Grosbeak participates in incubation of the eggs, accounting for about 1/3 of the time during the day (the female incubates over night). Both sexes sing quietly to each other when they exchange places. (Photo: Lori Deiter)

Northern Cardinal

Only a few female North American songbirds sing, but the female Northern Cardinal does, and often while sitting on the nest. This may give the male information about when to bring food to the nest. Cardinals don’t migrate or molt into a dull plumage. (Photo: Stan Lewis)

Create a haven for birds and other critters in your own backyard and have it designated as an official Certified Wildlife Habitat site. Certify in the month of May and we’ll plant a tree in your honor!>>

The International Union for Conservation of Nature documents more than 1,740,000 plant and animal species on our planet. Creeping and crawling invertebrates make up 1,305,250 of the total. That’s about 75 percent of all known life on earth!

It’s A Generational Thing

Monarch butterflies are known for their long migration from Mexico and Canada and back, but did you know that most monarchs don’t even make the entire trip? Monarchs that winter in Mexico start their migration to the southern United States during early spring.

During their rest stop, they have baby butterflies and die. Their offspring then move further north, breed, and die as well within only a few weeks. The cycle continues until the fall, when the last generation of monarchs makes the journey from Canada and the states all the way to Mexico—without ever having done this trip before.

Friends In Garden Places

Another beautiful insect that is fun to watch is the ladybug, a gardener’s true friend. Lady Beetles (also called ladybugs) have a voracious appetite and their meal of choice is the aphid. Aphids are a major pest to farms and gardens because they eat sap from plants and crops. Lady Beetles are a natural, organic form of pest management—they eliminate aphids without causing any damage to other wildlife.

A Garden Friend Who Lost Its Way

Earthworms are cherished by gardeners and farmers, but not all worms are good. The last retreat of the Ice Age eliminated earthworms from the Great Lakes region, thus the forest ecosystem evolved without worms. Today, invasive earthworms are eating up all the leaf litter and negatively impacting the ecology of Great Lakes forests and other forests across the United States.

Fun Facts

There are invertebrates whose scientific names are inspired by Harrison Ford, Darth Vader and Stephen Colbert.

Slugs are hermaphrodites.

The rhinoceros beetle is the strongest animal on Earth and possesses the strength to lift objects 850 times its own weight. To put this statistic in context, that’s like me picking up something that weighs 93,500 pounds. Wildlife is amazing!

Now Get Moving!

With Wildlife Watch, learn what types of invertebrates live near you and share your sightings and creepy crawly stories online with us!

Read What Are Bugs Worth? and then try your hand at capturing their image with NWF’s photography tips. Speaking of photography, find for the perfect place to snap photos of insects with Nature Find, NWF’s online database of nature sites and events across the country. All you need is a zip code!

Video – How to watch for wildlife:

References:

Popular Mechanics

Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

Journey North

Smithsonian National Zoological Park

Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Whether they hibernate, have thick fur coats or take shelter, animals are masters of surviving the cold weather. Here are a number of interesting animals and the fascinating things they do to survive harsh conditions.

1. Japan’s macaques monkeys keep warm by taking hot baths in volcanic springs.
2. Polar bears (or “solar bears“) soak up the sun with their black skin, which is covered by a coat of  clear hair that conducts the sun’s heat. Not to mention they also have a handy 4 inches of fat to
   insulate them.
3. Animals will also flock to warmth created by humans, such as pigeons in Chicago that huddle around the Eternal Flame and manatees that seek out warm water discharge from power plants.
4. Aside from having blubber, penguins avoid losing energy and heat when they exhale by using special nasal passages to reclaim the warm air.
5. Some honey bees huddle together to make a winter cluster in order to keep warm.
6. Bees aren’t the only ones that huddle together, even bats and ladybugs will huddle for warmth in a safe place.
7. Various plants depend on snow to trap heat and insulate them from cold winds.
8. Seals have a special set of blood vessels that function to conserve heat.
9. Occasionally some fish will use a natural anti-freeze to keep from freezing in low temperatures.
10. When water is scarce, wild bactrian camels will eat snow.

Despite all these adaptations you can still do your part to help wildlife survive the winter in your own backyard. Here’s a few bird feeding tips.