Please note the change of topic and speaker for this meeting. Stennie Meadours, the original speaker, is presently engaged in recovery efforts from Hurricane Ike but hopes to give the program on our Yucatan friends at a later date.

Speaker: Flo Hannah, HAS Sr. Sanctuary Steward
Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Time: Social at 7:00 PM, Program at 7:30 PM
Place: United Way Center, 50 Waugh

Map

What does bird food look like? Bird food looks like caterpillars, moths, and the millions of other insects that birds feed their nestlings. This presentation is inspired by Douglas Tallamy's book, Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens. Reading this book can change the way homeowners think about landscaping their yards and presents what individuals can do to stem the receding tide of biodiversity. Dr. Tallamy encourages every homeowner to landscape with native trees, shrubs, wildflowers, and grasses because native insects cannot use alien (non-native) plants for food. The foliage of alien plants is inedible for almost all native insect herbivores. Instead, plantings of goldenrod, boneset, milkweed, black-eyed Susan, or other native perennials supply the insects birds need to raise their young. Insects are key to the intricate food web. It is important to landscape with plants native to our area in order to support a diversity of insects the plants have co-evolved with. Most alien plants that have naturalized have not been here long enough to be edible to our native insect population. We need to garden for insect diversity since insects are the key to the food web and key to the survival of birds.