Help is Needed to Save Disappearing Songbirds

Native Landscaping will Restore Songbird Habitat in Yards and Parks

Apr 1, 2009

Spring is here, and birdsong should be filling the air. So why is it so quiet outside? And where are all the birds that were once so common just a few decades ago?

Songbird populations in North America have dropped as much as 80 percent, according to a recent Audubon study. There are many reasons, but two stand out: loss of habitat and loss of food.

City parks and landscaped yards used to be havens for both resident and migrating birds. Those micro-habitats still exist, but the birds are gone. Their larger habitats that would have held the bulk of their population have been destroyed: forests bulldozed or clear-cut, wetlands filled in, meadows planted with crops they can’t eat or replaced by a housing development or strip mall.

Birds, bugs and plants evolve together in their habitats, and all need each other to survive. The replacement of native flowers, grasses, trees and shrubs with imported and exotic plants from other parts of the world has helped cause a crisis in the songbird population by breaking the chain of interdependence amongst native species. Bottom line? No bugs, no birds.

Here is one example. In Ontario, Canada, purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) was imported as a pretty garden plant. It was wonderful, because it was resistant to pests. Then loosestrife seeds spread outside of gardens and into the wild.

In no time, loosestrife began colonizing wetlands. Bugs, birds and animals didn’t eat it. In a few years, the hardy invader had crowded out the native plants. Wetlands once filled with a great diversity of animals, birds and insects turned silent. No frogs. No dragonflies. No herons. No blackbirds. Nothing but silence.

Clear-cut forests once filled with a variety of plants and species of trees are often replanted with acres upon acres of identical trees. The living forest with all its interdependent species of wildlife has been replaced with the equivalent of a sterile tree factory.

How Individuals Can Help Restore Native Habitat

This isn’t the only solution, but it is one way to help. When adding or replacing plants in a yard or garden, make an effort to use as many native species as possible. Native birds need native plants to survive. The plants need to be native to a particular habitat. A Colorado spruce is not native to Ontario.

In southern Ontario, there is a narrow strip of Carolinian forest zone, which stretches from Niagara Region and Windsor right down into the southern United States. People living in this unique ecological niche can grow a wide variety of plants, but this has a negative effect by enabling people to grow many exotic plants. Instead, people should increase biodiversity by using native species.

Here are a few examples of Carolinian trees and shrubs that would be much better for this area’s ecology: pawpaw (Asimina triloba), sassafras (Sassafras albidum), tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), Kentucky coffee tree (Gymnocladus dioicus), spicebush (Lindera benzoin), eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), witch-hazel, flowering dogwood and eastern redbud. There are many more.

Among the hundreds of native Carolinian Zone flowers are jewelweed (Impatiens pallida), trillium (Trillium grandifolium), Dutchman’s breeches, jack-in-the-pulpit, blazing star, wild bergamot and black-eyed Susan. Many, like the wildlife that depend on them, are endangered. (Be careful planting some in an area frequented by pets, because some are toxic.)

Check with a local conservation organization for names of plants for specific ecological zones.

If a neighbourhood works together to replace imported species with native species, one tiny habitat can become a larger one. If an entire town pledges to plant only native trees and shrubs when putting in new landscaping and parks, that habitat grows bigger. If a region or county makes an effort, there will be a continuous corridor of native habitat hat will be a rest area for migrants and large enough to support a breeding population for many songbirds.

That’s a lot of “ifs”, but here’s another one. If it isn't done soon, the songbirds so familiar to previous generations will not be there for the next one.

Sources

Clayton, Mark. "Common Bird Species in Dramatic Decline." Christian Science Monitor, June 18, 2007.

Reshetiloff, Kathy. “Migratory songbird decline hits an alarming note”, in Bay Journal, published by The Alliance For Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore, Maryland, May 1996.

Stutchbury, Bridget. Silence of the Songbirds. Harper Collins Canada, Toronto, Ontario, 2007.

The copyright of the article Help is Needed to Save Disappearing Songbirds in Bird Habitats is owned by Terry McNamee. Permission to republish Help is Needed to Save Disappearing Songbirds in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.