A male northern cardinal feeds its mate a beetle larva in a Brandon, Mississippi, backyard. Insects, which rely on native plants, are critical food for birds, particularly during the breeding season. Photo by Paul Brown.

I didn’t appreciate just how important native plants are, however, until I began to work a story, “Urban Renewal,” published in the current issue of National Wildlife magazine. Reporting for the article, which describes various ways residents of cities and suburbs can help birds, I interviewed wildlife-gardening guru Doug Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware, and read his book, Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants.

Tallamy’s key message was that native plants are essential to producing the insects birds need, particularly during the breeding season. “Birds do not reproduce on berries and seeds,” he told me. “Ninety-six percent of terrestrial birds rear their young on insects.”

Carolina chickadees can feed their offspring up to 590 caterpillars a day. Photo by Patricia McCairen.

And they need a lot of caterpillars. Recently, Tallamy spent 16 days observing a Carolina chickadee nest in his Delaware backyard. He discovered that the birds fed their offspring between 300 and 590 caterpillars a day. The chickadees needed 4,800 caterpillars to rear a single clutch of chicks.

“We’re used to thinking of the plants in our yards as decorations,” Tallamy says. It’s wonderful when plants are attractive, he adds, but if they’re exotics such as gingko, crape myrtle or European privet—all unpalatable to insects—they do not pass along the sun’s energy to birds and other wildlife. “You might as well install a statue,” Tallamy says.

Learn more about choosing and cultivating native plants, then turn your yard into a Certified Wildlife Habitat ® site. This month only, Garden For Wildlife Month, NWF will plant a native tree in your honor when you certify your property.

During summer, male birds such as these indigo and painted buntings are wearing their colorful breeding plumage. Photo by Bernard Friel.

Ever since I started feeding backyard birds several years ago, I’ve religiously taken down my feeders this time of year and not put them back up until late fall or early winter. Natural food is abundant during the warm months, I figured, and I’d heard that bird feeding in spring could potentially disrupt the timing or routes of the animals’ migration to summer breeding grounds.

Backyard Birding Pleasures

This year, however, I’m reconsidering my decision. While working on a story, “The Case For Summer Feeding,” published in the current issue of National Wildlife magazine, I spoke with George H. Harrison, the author of seven books about backyard birding. Harrison told me there’s no evidence that the presence or absence of feeders has altered the migration behavior of any backyard bird species. In addition, he shared four reasons why it’s a good idea to feed birds during summer — especially if, like me, you’re an avid backyard bird-watcher:

1. Birds that visit feeders during summer include species not present during winter. Depending on where you live, you may be visited by rose-breasted or black-headed grosbeaks as well as several species of orioles and hummingbirds that will be hundreds or thousands of miles away later in the year.
2. During summer, birds that look drab during winter are sporting their colorful breeding plumage. Consider, for example, the bright yellow male goldfinches you see only during the warmer months.
3. Once they’ve nested and their offspring have fledged, adult birds will introduce their young to your bird feeders and birdbaths. “I’ve seen fuzzy, rotund baby chickadees, red-capped downy woodpecker young and spot-breasted American robin chicks, many begging for food from their overworked parents,” Harrison says.
4. Warmer temperatures encourage closer viewing of backyard birds. If you regularly sit on a patio or deck, the birds at nearby feeders and baths will get used to you and go about their business while you watch them. “In my experience,” Harrison says, “there’s no better way to enjoy a summer day.”

In a Florida backyard, a black bear raids a sugar-water feeder. Photo by Reba Anderson.

A Bear of a Problem

The case for summer bird feeding sounded convincing. After we published the story, however, we heard from several readers who pointed out potential problems with summer feeding in areas where wild bears roam. “Wildlife officers in many states say the first taste of human food bears get is from bird feeders, and once they get that taste, they keep coming around people until they get killed,” wrote one worried reader. Bears in backyards also put pets and property at risk.

For these reasons, it’s probably a good idea to take feeders down between mid-March and mid-November if you live in a location where bears are active. But “taking down a bird feeder does not mean a homeowner has ruined his or her wildlife habitat,” notes NWF Naturalist David Mizejewski in the National Wildlife article “When Carnivores Come Calling” by Mark Cheater. “Feeders should be viewed only as supplements to the natural foods a person provides for wildlife by cultivating native plants,” Mizejewski adds.

Since I live in an urban area with no bears but plenty of breeding birds, I’ve decided to leave my feeders up for the first time this summer—though I’ll not neglect nurturing the native plants that provide birds and other wildlife the most important food of all.

Learn more about using feeders and native plants to support wildlife, then turn your property into a Certified Wildlife Habitat® site.

A monarch butterfly feeds on swamp milkweed in Connecticut. Photo by Victor Quintanilla.

This visit, however, turned out to be disappointing. Though the boardwalk leading down to the protected monarch grove looked just as I remembered it, I spotted only a handful of butterflies flitting among the eucalyptus and Monterey pines that once teemed with them. A reserve employee suggested I drive about a mile south to Lighthouse Field State Beach, a more open area bordered by roads and houses and visited by large numbers of bikers, dog walkers, beach goers and surfers. Some monarchs, in fact, were there—at least several hundred clustered in a small, roped-off grove of pine and eucalyptus. Why had the insects moved down the road to this apparently less hospitable habitat?

John Dayton, a San Jose State University biologist conducting a survey of the colony at Lighthouse Field, provided an answer.  During the 1990s, Dayton told me, a deadly fungal disease, pine pitch canker, killed off most of the large Monterey pines that had sheltered the monarch grove at Natural Bridges from strong winds. Without this windbreak, many of the large eucalyptus trees at the northern portion of the grove blew down during winter storms. The loss of these trees has degraded the roost area, forcing monarchs to seek shelter elsewhere beginning about mid-December.

But Dayton had even more troubling news: Since the mid-1990s, he said, the number of overwintering monarchs up and down the California coast has declined by nearly 90 percent. According to the Xerces Society, butterfly populations at Natural Bridges alone have dropped from about 120,000 in 1997 to just over 1,000 (when the insects are there at all).

Two monarch caterpillars nibble on a milkweed stem. Photo by Larry Lynch.

Dayton, Taylor and other scientists point to several culprits. In California, coastal development and habitat degradation have reduced the area suitable for overwintering monarchs. In Mexico, illegal logging, poorly regulated tourism and water withdrawals near the butterfly colonies are taking a toll. Last year, when monarchs headed north to feed and breed beginning in March, they encountered extreme drought and heat waves that persisted in some areas from spring through fall.

Throughout the butterflies’ North American range, declines in milkweed plants—which monarchs need in order to reproduce—also are knocking down the insect’s numbers. The problem is particularly acute in the U.S. Midwest, where genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant corn and soybeans now allow farmers to apply the chemicals broadly, wiping out milkweed that once thrived between crop rows and in fallow fields on millions of acres of agricultural land.

According to an article in the April/May 2013 issue of National Wildlife magazine, climate change may worsen the monarchs’ situation. In her story, “Catering to Butterfly Royalty,” writer Doreen Cubie reports results of experiments suggesting that as atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide continue to rise, milkweeds are likely to produce less of the toxic compounds that protect both butterflies and caterpillars from predation. Milkweed leaves also may get tougher. “Caterpillars would have a harder time chewing the leaves,” says ecologist and study author Rachel Vannette of Stanford University.

Cubie concludes her text with a hopeful message: While there’s not much an individual can do about effects climate change may have on butterflies in the future, she writes, “there is a simple way to help today’s monarchs. You can grow more milkweeds in your garden.”

Find out about five native milkweeds that are easy to cultivate, then help butterflies and other backyard wildlife by turning your property into a Certified Wildlife Habitat® site.

Defined beds of native plants, along with benches and a patio, made this Washington, D.C., wildlife garden more appealing to neighbors. Photo by Laura Tangley.

Not only did I make some early bad decisions about cultivating nonnative plants—later corrected—I did not plan ahead to consider how my neighbors might react to the unconventional landscape. It’s too bad I couldn’t have read “Gardening With a Good-Neighbor Policy,” an article by Doreen Cubie published in the February/March 2013 issue of National Wildlife magazine. In the article, Cubie shares 10 “suggestions for redesigning your yard to attract wildlife while at the same time keeping neighbors and local authorities happy.”

Here are three of her tips:

Lay the groundwork: “Getting your neighbors on board is really important,” says Erin Cord, who manages Wildlife Austin, a project operated by that city’s parks department to promote neighborhood wildlife habitat. Cord suggests talking to residents who live nearby to explain what you are planning to do before you begin your project.

Start slowly: Don’t remove all or even most of your lawn at one time. Try putting in a small hummingbird and butterfly garden, then gradually expand it. Starting small gives neighbors time to become accustomed to your yard’s new look.

Don’t leave food on the ground for pets or other animals: The native plants you cultivate in your yard should provide sufficient nutrition to support insects, birds and other wild creatures.

How NOT to garden for wildlife. Just ignore those pleading eyes. Photo by Laura Tangley.

Neighborhood reaction was, understandably, less than enthusiastic, ranging from amusement to annoyance to worse. Beyond the aesthetic concerns, “my” raccoons became nuisances far beyond my own yard, approaching people much too closely and wreaking havoc with manicured lawns (digging for worms) and trash cans during the middle of the night.

But all was not lost. Miraculously, nobody reported me to animal control or any other city authority. Then, as I became better educated about wildlife gardening by working with NWF’s Certified Wildlife Habitat® program, I began to change my ways. After that season’s raccoons dispersed, I refrained from feeding subsequent generations. I tamed my jungle by creating well-defined beds of mostly native plants interspersed with human-friendly touches such as walkways, fountains and benches. Most important of all, I began to communicate with the neighbors. Proudly displayed, my official Certified Wildlife Habitat® sign always helps get the conversation going.

Check out the rest of Cubie’s neighbor-friendly wildlife gardening tips, then learn how to help wildlife in your own yard by making it a Certified Wildlife Habitat® site.

A cedar waxwing feasts on white mulberry in a Michigan backyard. Photo by John E. Heintz, Jr.

Among them, perhaps my favorite was a white mulberry, Morus alba, a fast-growing tree that is native to northern China. Every spring, this tree—which seemed to double in size each year—would be covered with berries that lured in an amazing assortment of resident and seasonal birds, from chatty mockingbirds and catbirds to colorful Baltimore orioles and scarlet tanagers to large flocks of ravenous cedar waxwings—all in the middle of metropolitan Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, at my job as senior editor for NWF’s National Wildlife magazine, I began to learn about the benefits to birds and other wildlife of cultivating native rather than nonnative plants as well as the work NWF does to combat invasive species. As my knowledge grew, I stopped planting new exotic species altogether, particularly once I registered my property as an NWF Certified Wildlife Habitat ® site. That prized white mulberry, though, I left in peace. After all, the tree did not appear to be invasive, and many of the birds that were feasting on its berries were migratory species. I was surely helping these birds by providing an abundant and nutritious food during their long, arduous journeys north.

But recently, after working with Virginia writer John Carey on a story just published in the magazine, I’m no longer so sure about that decision. In the article, “Ecological Traps,” Carey describes research conducted by Ohio State University ecologist Amanda Rodewald on the potential effects on northern cardinals of feeding and nesting in nonnative Asian honeysuckle. Over the course of six years, Rodewald and her students meticulously monitored the fates of 888 northern cardinal nests in honeysuckle and other plants in central Ohio, observing each nest at least every few days during the breeding seasons. “It was a ton of work,” says the scientist.

A male northern cardinal courts his mate in a Texas backyard. Photo by Howard Cheek.

And there was more bad news. As another part of the study, Rodewald’s team collected feathers from 280 male cardinals, then photographed them and used computer software to measure each feather’s shade of red and color intensity. Normally, males with the brightest feathers are the most fit because they’ve competed successfully for foods rich both in nutrients and the pigments that make feathers red. But in urban and suburban areas where cardinals feed in honeysuckle, that connection is lost because the nonnative berries contain abundant pigments but fewer nutrients than do native berries. The result: Nonnative honeysuckle “reduces the value of plumage brightness as a sign of male quality,” Rodewald says.

I wondered: What unexpected effects might nonnative mulberries be having on the cardinals, waxwings and other birds that feed in my yard? Fortunately, white mulberry is a short-lived as well as fast-growing species, so the tree is beginning to die on its own. And these days, whenever I notice a nonnative volunteer sprouting on my property, I quickly pull it up, roots and all.

Find out which plants are native to your region, then learn how to help birds and other wildlife by making your yard a Certified Wildlife Habitat ® site.

Rob Sheppard took this image of a California ladybird beetle on Cleveland sage in Southern California using extension tubes, a cheaper alternative to an expensive close-up, or macro, lens. For more information on this cost saver, see Rob's article, "How to Make Better Nature Photos," in the June/July 2012 issue of National Wildlife magazine, or use the link at the bottom of the blog text.

• Get out of the middle: Many photographers tend to put their subjects right in the middle of the frame. But moving subjects to one side can make a photo more interesting and compel viewers to look at it more carefully. Consider a technique called the “rule of thirds,” which simply means that you divide your image into thirds horizontally and vertically. Line up horizons on the horizontal thirds, and put strong vertical subject matter, such as trees, on the verticals. You can also put subjects where these lines intersect.

• Get sharper photos without buying a new camera or lens: The number one cause of poor sharpness is camera movement during exposure, particularly when using the slow shutter speeds required in low light. If you don’t have access to a tripod—the best means for getting around this problem—then hold the camera with two hands and bring your elbows into the sides of your chest. Be sure your feet are in a stable position, then press—don’t punch!—the shutter button. If your camera allows you to set the shutter, avoid speeds slower than 1/60 second (or 1/500 when using a telephoto).

• Turn on your flash outdoors: That built-in flash on your camera is a great resource to use outside, but many people never turn it on outdoors. Flash can fill in dark shadows and brighten subjects on cloudy days.

• Shoot lots of pictures: You will learn more about your camera, as well as about what makes a good picture, by going beyond your first approach to photographing a subject. Experiment with different angles and focal lengths, and have fun taking more pictures!

This text is adapted from Rob Sheppard’s article, “How to Make Better Nature Photos,” in the June/July 2012 issue of National Wildlife magazine. See the original, longer article for more tips on photography, or visit Rob’s informative website.

If you love wildlife photography, you’ll want to see the new slide show of National Wildlife magazine’s best photos from the past half century, a special feature in honor of National Wildlife’s fiftieth birthday.

PLUS:  If taking wildlife photos is an enthusiasm of yours, whether in the far reaches of distant wilderness or in your own backyard, then submit your favorite images to National Wildlife’s 42nd Annual Photo Contest. The deadline is July 16, so there’s still plenty of time to enter. This year’s competition features some great prizes, including a $5,000 grand prize, and you can submit photos in seven categories, including one devoted just to backyard wildlife and natural gardening.