Today we are sticking with the superhero theme, and why not?! Each of us really can save a bird – or two or three – by simply leaving the leaves alone this fall. Yes – let them lay where they fall under the trees growing in our yards!
“I keep a well-stocked bird feeder in my yard”, you might say. This will not help the birds come spring when they are looking for good places to build their nests, lay their eggs, and raise their young.
So how does leaving the leaves in the fall help birds in the spring?
Carolina Chickadee, Douglas Tallamy
Most birds feed their young soft, gushy caterpillars. They are perfect nutrient packages for growing baby birds. As we wrote in our last post, research has shown one pair of chickadees requires between 6,000 and 9,000 caterpillars to feed their nest of young. But those same chickadees only forage up to 50 meters from the nest – an area not much bigger than a football field! So if we want birds to nest in our yards and neighborhoods, we must provide the food they need to feed their young – the caterpillars.
Here’s where the leaves come in.
Many insects live and grow in the trees above us. During the fall and winter they fall and burrow into the leaf litter underneath those trees to wait for spring. According to the Xerces Society, the vast majority of butterflies and moths overwinter in the landscape as an egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, or adult, using leaf litter as insulation from the cold of winter. Some even disguise their cocoons as dried leaves. When we rake or collect the leaves from our yards, we are taking away the habitat that is essential to the survival of moths, butterflies, snails, spiders, bees and dozens of arthropods, by removing the insulation that protects their burrowing sites or leaving them nothing to burrow into at all.
This disrupts the entire circle of life!
When the birds return in the spring looking for good places to build their nests they are increasingly finding nowhere suitable. That tree growing in your yard that looks like such a good spot from a distance, simply can’t provide the food source birds are also looking for if we have removed all the leaves in the fall. And if we are all doing it, our entire neighborhood is now lacking the food sources birds need to reproduce.
Why are we forcing the birds we love to go elsewhere to find suitable homes for their families when they could be nesting in our own neighborhoods? How far and wide will they have to search?
So choose to be a superhero this fall! Help complete the circle of life. Save a bird. Leave the leaves.
At FT Proctor Park, we will be leaving the leaves everywhere except on paths and staircases. See you at the park!
FT Proctor Park in Fall – Pictures by Dianne Nassar
To learn more:
- Nature’s Best Hope by Dr Douglas Tallamy, or read this summary by the Grey County Master Gardeners https://www.greycountymastergardeners.com/natures-best-hope
- Xerces Society https://xerces.org/blog/leave-the-leaves
- Audubon Society of Northern Virginia https://www.audubonva.org/news/sanctuary-species
