Birds need a habitat rich in places to nest, feed, find water, and find shelter. You can bring that range to your own home by adding native plants. Remember, other than the American Goldfinch and House Finch, our other nesting birds require insects, mostly as caterpillars, to feed hungry nestlings. Having native plants means you are supporting our breeding birds, and the fruits of native plants in fall fuel migration! Below, Augusta Bird Club member Robyn Puffenbarger has assembled some good introductory information to help you think about how to enhance your home with native plants to better support birds.

Robyn Puffenbarger, PhD, is a Professor of Biology and Environmental Science at Bridgewater College, and she trained as a Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in 2011. Her love of birds and birding made her look at her outdoor spaces in a new way, as an ecosystem to support birds and other wildlife. As an invited speaker, Robyn talks about “Gardening for Birds” across the state, from Virginia Beach to the Shenandoah Valley.

Your Space as an Ecosystem:

Your landscape can be a space for many species to use and call home. One of the first things to recognize is the native plants are the basis of this ecosystem and unfortunately turf grass is not native to North America. While the “Kentucky Bluegrass” is a great name for marketing, turf grass does not typically provide significant habitat, food, water, or shelter for wildlife. Turf grass also requires huge inputs of water, nutrients, time, energy, and potentially both herbicides and pesticides to keep it “green.”

Taking just small amounts of turf grass out of your landscape and replacing it with a few native plants where leaves are allowed to accumulate, makes a space for wildlife to live and thrive. If you put up bird boxes in a heavily urban or suburban habitat to attract one of our common songbirds, the Carolina Chickadee (Poecile carolinensis), what does it take to raise those nestlings? Well, it turns out no bird seed you buy is going to help. To grow and meet the energy and protein requirements, the parents need about 5,000 caterpillars. Where do these caterpillars live? All over the leaves of our keystone plants – oak and cherry trees – for example. So, it’s time to take out a bit of lawn, and convert it to a functioning ecosystem.

ECOSYSTEMS:

The ecosystem is both the non-living parts of the environment like soil and water, plus the living parts: plants, insects, animals, fungi too! In the landscape, by adding in the basic level of the ecosystem – the plants – you will encourage all the other wildlife to join your property. The keystones are the plants, they either directly support wildlife like insects and other herbivores (plant eaters), or the plants indirectly support wildlife as a home like an insect living in bark, Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio) as a cavity nester, the woodpeckers excavating grubs living in the plant. If your space is very small, even if it is a patio, think about some native plants in containers and a bird bath – give the birds a very shallow, wide basin with water and some rocks. Most songbirds instinctively fear drowning so they will not enter water over their feet, so shallow is best. If you change the water every few days, there won’t be any worry for mosquitoes. And small spaces can mean container gardens so you’re adding plants to the environment, plus think about putting up a hummingbird feeder in summer.

Online Resources:

• Habitat at Home from the VA Department of Wildlife Resources (virginiawildlife.gov/habitat)
• Virginia Native Plant Society (https://vnps.org)
• Doug Tallamy’s books, website, lectures (https://homegrownnationalpark.org/)
• Blue Ridge PRISM on invasive species management (https://blueridgeprism.org/)
• Plant Ridge & Valley Natives for Augusta County specific native plants (https://www.plantvirginianatives.org/new-page-4)

Where to Purchase Native Plants:

• The Natural Garden in Harrisonburg, VA sells seasonally at the Harrisonburg Farmer’s Market and the Friendly City Coop.
• Hummingbird Hill Natives is in Free Union, VA. They will consult with you about your goals and best native plants for your specific habitat.
• Hill House Native Plants is near Culpepper, VA, with many interesting native plants to offer.
• Wood Thrush Natives is in Floyd, VA and worth the drive for the range of native plants they propagate for sale.
• Seven Bends Nursery is in Berryville, VA and offers native plants and other landscape services.
• Earth Sanga’s nursery is in Northern Virginia and they offer volunteer opportunities in that area if you want some experience with invasive plant removal & native plant restoration.
• Ernst Seeds is in Pennsylvania and they offer a wide range of native seeds.
• Prairie Moon Nursery is in Wisconsin and they have a very large selection of plants and seeds for sale.

Some Native Plant RECOMENDATIONS to Support Your Local Bird Community:

So, what plants can you add to your space? Well, space is the issue. One of the champion plants for Augusta County would be the native White Oak (Quercus alba) since this plant hosts the most native insects. However, White Oaks are champions for size, potentially growing to 100 feet tall and living for over 200 years! Not everyone will have the space for the tallest trees, just remember that many of these wonderful specimens would take many decades to reach a mature height, so if you are wondering if your space can handle an oak or mature Black Cherry (Prunus serotina), plant the acorn or the seed and see what happens. The worst thing is, if the tree outgrows the space, cut it down and try something else, such as a much smaller redbud. This is the first rule of gardening – if you don’t like it or it didn’t work, try again! Keep a garden journal so you know what you’ve tried and go back to the entries to record what did and did not work for you.

LARGE TREES: 1) Oaks – like white, black, chestnut, chinquapin. All valuable for size, hosting insects, acorns (mast) as food source, leaf fall to provide overwinter habitat. 2) The Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) flowers white in spring, hosts tent caterpillars that attract orioles, has valuable fruit resource in later summer. 3) All the Amelanchier species, common names include Serviceberry, Juneberry, Shadblow – there are several different species that all offer white flowers in spring, fruit in early summer that attracts mockingbirds, robins, waxwings, catbirds, with lovely orange-scarlet coloration in fall. 4) For fun, try the native persimmon (Diospryros virginiana) which can grow to 120 feet with a distinctive, knobby gray bark. The fruit is a bird favorite in late fall after a hard frost or freeze begins to sweeten it up.

EVERGREEN TREE: The Virginia Red Cedar (Juniperus virginana) with its blue berries on the female is a must have for the native bird-friendly landscape. In winter, these berries are highly attractive to many species, including Yellow-rumped Warblers.

SMALL TREES: 1) The native dogwood (was Cornus florida, now Swida florida) blooms white or pink in spring, has desirable fruit in fall, deep purple-red color on leaves in fall. 2) Redbud (Cercis canadensis) blooms pink early and birds like catbirds, waxwings, orioles, and cardinals will eat the flowers. 3) Some of the Amelanchier species have all the features of the larger ones in the previous section, while keeping to a more manageable height like 20-25 feet in the case of Amelanchier canadensis. 4) Two species of crabapples are native to Virginia (Malus angustifolia and coronaria), both bloom in spring and have fruit that might seem unappealing to wildlife since it lasts on the trees so long. Don’t worry, after a few freeze-thaw cycles this fruit is highly attractive.

SHRUBS: Native viburnums can be large (in the 10 ft range) have small white flowers in spring and irresistible fruit (drupes) in fall (Viburnum dentatum, rafinesqueanum, prunifolium). Our favorite so far is Viburnum prunifolium, Black Haw that brings the Hermit Thrush to our space every fall. Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) has tiny flowers in spring, beautiful lavender color berries in late summer, nice yellow fall leaf color. There are several native sumacs that are not the dreaded poison sumac to add that have rich, burgundy-colored berries in fall that might last until winter, these natives also have excellent fall foliage color.

FORBS: These are the perennials that dieback every fall/winter to the ground and then re-grow each year. These are often plants that are highly attractive to deer, unless these plants have toxic or noxious tasting chemicals, like White Snakeroot (Ageratina altissima), Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana), and Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). I have all three for the insects and wildlife, pokeweed berries are very attractive to birds and not toxic to things with feathers, unlike things with fur. We are also enjoying several species of mountain mint that produce seeds we’ve seen finches and sparrows enjoying in winter.

GRASSES: Several native grasses are extremely important food sources for birds in winter: Purple Top (Tridens flavus), Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), and Broomsedge (Andropogon virginicus). These are all clumping, warm season grasses with beautiful seed heads. And grasses are typically deer-resistant, since deer are not ruminants they cannot digest grass material.

VINES: Native honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) is a must-have for any hummingbird garden. The long, red, tubular flowers of native honeysuckle and Trumpet Vine (Campsis radicans) are both very attractive to hummingbirds. These two vines have very different growth habits, while the honeysuckle is slow growing, Trumpet Vine has a very vigorous growth habit with the ability to sucker and spread prolifically! My best advice for Trumpet Vine is to put it somewhere where you mow around it so it gets a ‘standard’ or single, thick trunk of growth over time.