The Birds are NOT OK

What is the birds-eye view of your yard
your community?

Birds Aren’t Just Declining.
They’re Declining Faster!

Scientists studying data collected for more than three decades found accelerating losses. The steepest losses in the study, from 1987 to 2021, were seen in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Arizona. This research offers clues about the causes. Here are links to a gift article in the NY Times that looks at this research and to a WashingtonPost gift article, which both cite the same study.

This research showed a correlation with increased use of pesticides in agricultural regions, but it also linked back to an older study showing that cats cause huge harm to our birds. I wrote about that as well and how controversial this is in this article.

This Red-shouldered Hawk provided its
opinion on how humans treat birds.

BUT...

Whatever the causes for their decline, we are NOT helpless and, as Joan Baez stated, "Action is the antidote to despair."

There are many actions we can take to make our yards and our communities more bird friendly. I've covered this topic from several different angles over the years, so I've gathered some of the most relevant articles here to make it easier for people to up their game at this critical time. The birds need us to act now more than ever.

Southern arrowwood, a pollinator & bird-friendly, easy-to-grow shrub

The beautiful flower heads attract a wide array
of pollinators, including this yellow
tiger swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus).

Southern arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum) should be planted more often. It’s a medium-sized shrub that attracts pollinators with its flowers and feeds birds with its blue berries in the fall. It's also the larval host for the spring azure butterfly (Celastrina ladon).  This is a wonderful choice to add habitat to your landscape. (See my article on habitat gardening.) 

It grows well in a variety of conditions, from full sun to partial shade, and a variety of soil types. It does best along pond edges and low areas, including rain gardens, but not where it’s really dry. It's low maintenance, once established, but it tolerates trimming.

It can be planted as part of a hedgerow or as part of a grove or thicket around trees with other native shrubs. It tends to sucker and spread by rhizome, so plan for this.

Sweetbay magnolia, a lovely tree with highly scented flowers

The beautiful sweetbay magnolia flower
is pollinated by beetles.

The sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) is lovely, mostly evergreen medium-sized tree with leaves that are dark green on top with silver undersides. It has beautiful, fragrant flowers and bright red fruits. It is tolerant of flooding, even with brackish water. It grows best in acid soil in full sun or partial shade.

It provides excellent habitat for wildlife. While it's pollinated by beetles, a wide variety of birds and other wildlife consume the fruits, plus it's the larval food source for several butterflies including the Spicebush Swallowtail (Papilio troilus) and the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilo glaucus). It should be planted much more often.

Miami's Underline Park

The Underline is an impressive
& well-used urban park located
under the Metro Rail in Miami.

Taking its inspiration from the High Line Park in New York City and The Lurie Garden in Chicago, The Friends of The Underline non-profit organization formed in 2013. The Underline is basically a multi-use path with parks, recreational spaces, playgrounds, plantings, and stormwater infrastructure. It's expected to extend to its full 10-mile distance by 2026.

These gardens feature untrimmed native plants that attract and feed insects and birds. This is different than traditional formal gardens where everything is tightly trimmed and exotic plants are chosen for their beauty and because they are not favored by the local insects. This style is left over from British and European upper class expectations where those who owned grand houses and estates favored those highly maintained gardens to show how wealthy they were.

Morning glories: So much more than just pretty flowers

The iconic tall or common morning glory
(I. purpurea) is a garden favorite around the world.

Iconic garden morning glories

When most people think of morning glories, it's the tall or common morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea) that they envision. It's a vine native to Mexico, Central and South America, but its beautiful blossoms and vigorous growth even in poor conditions have made it a garden favorite around the world. There are hundreds of named cultivars.

Each delicate flower lasts only one day and they look best in the morning when they first open; hence the name "morning glory."

It's Time to Think Globally, but Act Locally.

www.climatewiselandscaping.com 

Climate change is real!

We are seeing its effects on the weather with more frequent, stronger and slower-moving hurricanes, more severe droughts, more fires, and rising sea levels. But Sue Reed and I did not debate the reality of climate change or what has caused these rapid changes when we wrote our award-winning book, "Climate-Wise Landscaping: Practical Actions for a Sustainable Future." Instead we said, "Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work."

The same thing has happened in the writing of my 7th book with the working title "Living Shorelines for Florida: A Practical Guide for Building Resilience," which will be published in 2025. I and my three coauthors did not debate sea level rise or discuss what the causes might be, but plans for dealing with rising sea levels are included in our various actions and designs for more resilient shorelines.

So what actions can we take and will it make any difference?

While actions we take in our yards and in our communities may seem insignificant, there are many millions of homeowners and communities, and together, we are a powerful force. What follows are some ideas and links to resources for some of the most significant actions. 

Snags, stumps, and logs provide habitat

Three birds perched on a snag. A ball moss
(Tillandsia recurvata) also lives on this snag.

Dead standing trees are snags. If a snag is located so that it will not hurt people or damage property, leave it standing for its wildlife value. Snags are highly productive sources of habitat that work well in both natural areas and designed landscapes.

Tree basics

The vast majority of organisms on our planet depend upon the life-giving process of photosynthesis. Plants and other organisms with chlorophyll combine carbon dioxide from the air and water with energy from the sun to form sugars and oxygen gas. The plant can then combine the sugars to form starches, fats, enzymes, or whatever the plant needs. 

Photosynthesis: 6CO2 + 6H2O >> C6H12O6 + 6O2

Then most living organisms (plants, animals, fungi, bacteria) take in oxygen and digest the sugars in one form or another to gain energy for life through respiration, a process the equal and opposite of photosynthesis. 

Respiration: C6H12O6 + 6O2  >> 6CO2 + 6H2O 

Since trees normally live for many years, they sequester carbon in their wood and root tissues as long as they live, while the flowers, fruits and leaves store carbon only temporarily until they are eaten or decompose. Much of this decomposing plant matter ends up in the soil. But when a tree dies, the wood begins to break down as bacteria, fungi, insects, and other organisms begin to absorb the wood tissue so they can gain energy for life. As the wood deteriorates, then birds and other larger animals can consume the decomposers and so the carbon-based sugars stored in the wood moves up the food chain. The organisms store the sugars created during photosynthesis, but as they respire and when they die, the carbon is released into the atmosphere.

One note here on carbon sequestration: The soil sequesters 3 to 4 times as much carbon as all the terrestrial plants, including rain forests. Peat is especially important since it can sequester carbon for thousands of years. This is important because the more carbon sequestered means less carbon dioxide, our most abundant greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere and that is good for our only planet. (Read my article on peat moss.)

Winged sumac, a useful understory shrub

A small winged sumac in bloom, which
attracts a wide variety of pollinators.

Winged Sumac (Rhus copallinum) is a deciduous, compact, densely growing, colonizing shrub that is native to all of Florida and the eastern half of North America. It can grow to 10 to 25 feet tall and nearly as wide, although the ones in our yard are much smaller than that. They will grow in a wide variety of situations, but they do best in full sun or partial shade and require good drainage. 

This plant could be used in a hedge row with a variety of other shrubs and is a good choice for naturalizing at the edge between wooded and open areas. Keep in mind that it will be bare for a few months in the winter. It can spread quite some distance via rhizomes or underground roots, so keep that in mind when choosing planting sites.

White Wild Indigo

It planted itself in a location that's too close to
 the sidewalk, but I'll leave it there since they
don't transplant well.

White Wild Indigo: A beautiful perennial pollinator plant

White wild indigo (Baptisia alba) is a plant worth including in your pollinator garden. It is pollinated by large bees including bumblebees and carpenter bees. It's also a host plant for Wild indigo duskywing and Zarucco duskywing butterflies. The fruits are eaten by birds. While it's an important plant in the local ecosystem, it's toxic to humans and livestock.

It is best propagated from scarified seed. Once established, plants should not be moved, since they have a long tap root. They take several years to reach maturity but are long-lived, and often grows 2-3 feet tall, frequently wider than it is tall. It produces showy white flowers March-May, but is dormant in winter. Use it as a small shrub or background plant in a border located in full sun to partial shade. 

It is a tri-foliate legume and can thrive in a variety of poor soils including acidic to neutral clay, loam, or sand. It naturally occurs in a sandhill environment, so established plants can tolerate some drought, but never flooding. 

Ohio Spiderwort: a pollinator-friendly native wildflower

A small fly-like bee was pollinating this flower.

Bluejacket or Ohio spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis) is native to most of Eastern North America and to most of Florida. It attracts pollinators, especially bees. Each day, one or two flowers bloom in each flower head. They open early in the morning and then wilt in the afternoon. Each flower head contains twenty or more flowers and new flower heads are formed throughout the long season from early spring to late fall. There is a long blooming season.

There are three other species of spiderworts native to Florida: hairy spiderwort (T. hirsutiflora), longleaf spiderwort (T. roseolens), and zigzag spiderwort (T. subaspera). But the bluejacket has the largest native range and is the one that's most readily available from the native trade.

Spiderworts are monocots and are in the Commelina family (Commelinaceae), which includes 36 genera world wide, but only five occur in Florida. "Spiderwort" refers to the sap which dries into web-like threads when a stem is cut.

Florida's goldenrods

Goldenrods do Not cause allergies

The insect-pollinated goldenrods (Solidago spp.) with their beautiful flowers have erroneously been blamed for fall allergy season when it's the wind-pollinated ragweed (Ambrosia spp.) with the unnoticeable green flowers that are filling the air with pollen when the goldenrods are blooming. The ragweeds do not need to put any energy into creating beautiful flowers or sweet nectar because the wind will blow anyway. As I understand it, some allergy doctors test people to see if they are allergic to goldenrod pollen even though that pollen is too heavy and sticky to float in the air and there is zero chance of its getting into anyone's nose. 

A swallowtail butterfly is pale in comparison to
the very yellow goldenrod.

Ragweed, the source of the air-borne pollen that gives people hay fever.

Why talking about native plant landscapes is so important

Consumers are presented with this array of mostly
nonnative plants in full bloom to plant so their yards can
decorated with plants at peak bloom all the time.

Where are the native plants?

New homeowners and beginning gardeners find displays similar to this photo that I took at a big box store a few years ago. It's filled with mostly nonnative annuals in full bloom. Each tray is not too expensive, but after they fade in a couple of months, people are expected to come back to replace them with the next set. 

Examples in garden magazines and gardening TV shows with their instant landscapes imply that garden installations are events, and not ongoing projects that develop over the years.

Starry rosinweed is a star in Florida yards

Starry rosinweed is a star in your garden not only
for its beauty and long blooming cycle, but also because
of the wide variety of pollinators that it attracts.

Starry Rosinweed (Silphium asteriscus) is a member of the aster or daisy family, Asteraceae and is a wonderful choice for Florida's wildflower meadows and for pollinator gardens. It's a beautiful, tall, long-lived, drought tolerant, easy-to-care-for wildflower. (See below for more information on how it behaves in gardens and meadows.)

Botanically, the starry rosinweed is an outlier in the aster family. Yes, its flower head has the typical arrangement of disk florets in the center surrounded by showy ray florets that each have one outsized petal. 

In most aster family plants with this typical flower head arrangement such as sunflowers, only the tiny, cylindrical disk florets in the center produce fruits or seeds, while the petal-like ray florets around the outside of the center are sterile and produce no fruits. The starry rosinweed is exactly the opposite with its ray florets producing fruits and the disk florets being sterile.

Dill is a beautiful, easy-to-grow herb in Florida

Pollinators love dill flowers.

Dill (Anethum graveolens) is a fast-growing, cool-weather annual with a long taproot. It provides both a classic herb and a spice--the leaves are called dill weed, and used fresh or dried as a herb in salads or as a garnish, while the seeds are used as a spice for pickling or in potato and pasta salads. Dill is native to the Mediterranean region, but it's grown world wide.

The majestic dill flower heads can reach fourteen inches across. They attract a wide variety of pollinators, and importantly for organic gardeners, dill attracts the small parasitoid wasps that prey on tomato worms and other garden pests. 

All the above-ground parts of the dill plant are edible. The leaves and the seeds are most often harvested, but you can also eat the flowers and the stems. 

Taxonomic note: The Kew Garden's Plants of the World Online database considers dill (Anethum graveolens) and several other related species to be synonyms of false fennel (Ridolfia segetum). I have not found other organizations joining in on this lumping of species as yet, but there may be a dill name change in the future.

Hibiscus: Plants with the most beautiful flowers

A scarlet rosemallow (Muenchhusia coccineus):
 a Florida native

There are 432 Hibiscus species that are found worldwide, and with their beautiful flowers, many are grown in gardens and some are even used as crops. In general, the flowers are large and showy. (Updatre in June 2026: Some of Florida's native Hibiscus species are now Muenchhus, while some others are Sabdariffa.)

For example, see the scarlet rosemallow in the lead photo. Here there are five green sepals subtending five large red petals. The pistil, the female reproductive part of a plant, is attached to the center of the flower. The pistil is made up of a five-chambered ovary where seeds develop, the style that is a long tube between the ovary and five round stigmas where the pollen is absorbed. A stamen, the male reproductive structure, consists of the anther that holds the pollen, and a stalk called the filament. In hibiscus flowers, the filaments fuse into a tube that surrounds the style. Numerous anthers stick out from the filaments below the five stigmas at the top of the style. The prominent pistil with all those anthers is one reason the hibiscus flowers are so showy.

Green-eyes: beautiful and resilient Florida wildflowers

Florida greeneyes bloom nearly year-round and attract
many types of pollinators. Notice how showy the
disk florets are with their extra-long stamens
and their folded-down top edges. 

The greeneyes (Berlandiera spp.) are in the daisy family (Asteraceae) and have the typical flower head arrangement of this family with fertile central disk florets that produce the seeds surrounded by sterile showy ray florets that look and act like petals. They are perennials with a long tap root.

In the case of greeneyes, the flower heads consist of about eight bright yellow ray florets, each with a notched tip, surrounding a head of greenish-yellow tubular disk florets, which is, of course,  why they are called greeneyes. When disk florets open, they reveal maroon anthers and a long yellow stigma, and they smell like chocolate. 

The hand of the gardener in native landscapes

Plant more natives!

In 2013, a volunteer beautyberry shrub near the edge of the
lawn is surrounded by several water oaks.

Ecologists and environmental organizations have been urging people to plant more native plants, to build bird-friendly and pollinator-friendly habitat, and to do this by removing at least some of their lawn.

One prime example is Doug Tallamy's HomeGrown National Park where you can register your yard to be part of of this park by replacing at least half of the lawn with native plants.

This is great and I hope that millions of homeowners and other property managers take this step to build native habitat, but there are some important steps to take, especially in urban and suburban areas, to increase the acceptability of these native landscapes. Our yards and our community landscapes, even if they have a good portion of native plants are not wild spaces and will need some regular care. (Actually, I wrote a book on this topic. See below.)

Marigolds

Beautiful marigolds!

Inchworm by Danny Kaye

Inchworm, inchworm (two and two are four)
Measuring the marigolds (four and four are eight)
You and your arithmetic (eight and eight are sixteen)
You'll probably go far (sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two)

Inchworm, inchworm (two and two are four)
Measuring the marigolds (four and four are eight)
Seems to me, you'd stop and see (eight and eight are sixteen)
How beautiful they are (sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two)

Marigolds have been under cultivation for centuries

Habitat gardening

In natural areas, the soil ecosystem supports the plants,
which support the insects, which in turn support
the birds and other wildlife.

Florida's default landscapes

Most yards in Florida consist of highly maintained monoculture lawns, a few stand-alone trees, and a fringe of foundation plants around the buildings. This is the opposite of habitat gardening because typical Florida lawn care includes regular landscape-wide applications of insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and other poisons. Then since these pesticides are not good for the turfgrass, synthetic fertilizer is applied to keep it green.

This treatment damages the soil ecosystem (shown in the poster here), which plays an important role in keeping the plants healthy, which then support the insects and the birds. In addition, much of the lawn chemicals have rinsed through the soil or have been carried away with erosion to pollute our waterways causing too much algae growth and toxic dead zones.

Tall elephantsfoot, an easy-to-grow Florida wildflower

A Great Purple Hairstreak sipping nectar from tall
elephantsfoot flowers. The larval host for this beautiful
butterfly is mistletoe (Phoradendron leucarpum).

Tall elephantsfoot (Elephantopus elatus) is a perennial Florida native wildflower with leathery leaves that form a rosette around its central growing point at ground level (basal leaves) and it's this leaf arrangement that inspired both its common name and genus name, elephantsfoot and Elephantopus, because they form a dense circle shaped like an elephant's footprint. The plant produces one or more tall, hairy flowering stalks with hardly any leaves. 

It's a member of the daisy family (Asteraceae), but it's unlike many of the family members that have flower heads composed of both disk and ray florets like a sunflower (with the ray florets looking and acting like petals and the smaller disk florets arrayed in the center). The flower head for this species has only disk florets that are subtended by three hairy bracts, which define the shape of the flower head as a triangular. The florets are light lavender to whitish and last only a day. They don't bloom until late morning just when the pollinators are first becoming active. So if you're out early in the morning, all you'll see are the old flowers from the day before.