In 2000, the National Audubon Society launched BirdCast, a partnership with EPA’s Office of Pesticides Programs, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Clemson University’s Radar Ornithology Program, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and GeoMarine, Inc. to track songbird migration and encourage homeowners to manage their backyards as safe stopover habitat for migrants.
Audubon developed a Healthy Habitats initiative to support BirdCast, and began promoting its five healthy yard principles: reduce pesticides, conserve water, protect water quality, remove invasive exotic plants, and plant native plants. By fall 2001, Audubon was supporting this program with a new vice president position, and had renamed the program Audubon At Home.
At the national level, Audubon At Home initially focused on reducing residential pesticide use, and with funding from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS),
Environmental Protection Agency, Waste Management, and private donors, published outreach materials including books, posters, and brochures. For the past five years a national team has helped state Audubon offices and local Audubon chapters develop their own Audubon At Home programs and materials. In 2006, Audubon launched an online Healthy Yard Pledge to enroll homeowners willing to support healthy yard principles, and also launched a Birds to Help website to encourage local chapters and other groups to create habitat for harismatic umbrella species in urban, suburban, and rural yards and properties.
In 2008, Audubon Pennsylvania rolled out a new pilot Bird Habitat yard recognition program, focused specifically on what people can do to help birds on their property, with hopes that other Audubon state offices and chapters will eventually work together to take the program nationwide.
The following timeline highlights Audubon At Home achievements. The future of Audubon At Home will depend on how much support it receives from the education program within the national program offices, as well as the ability of Audubon state and chapter programs to promote it and work together to sustain each other's efforts. There is a lot more we need to do to create yards and neighborhoods that are good for birds and people, so the field is ripe for our efforts!
Audubon At Home Timeline
Spring 2000 Public launch of BirdCast
May 2000 10 Commandments for a Healthy Yard in Audubon Magazine
July 2000 Healthy Habitats program launched, director hired
Feb 2001 Audubon Guide for a Healthy Yard and Beyond (250,000 copies)
Jun 2001 “Habitat Hero” awards in Tampa, Seattle, San Antonio.
Audubon Guide for a Healthy Yard and Beyond (reprint 250,000 copies)
July 2001 Second Healthy Yards director hired
Sep 2001 VP of Audubon At Home appointed to expand Healthy Habitats program
Oct 2001 Audubon At Home (AAH) announced to chapters and state offices
Dec 2001 Audubon board incorporates AAH into strategic plan
Jan 2002 EPA grant to Audubon for Seattle Audubon workbook
Mar 2002 Habitat Heroes featured in Audubon magazine
Lawn Pesticides: An Unacceptable Risk (AAH and Audubon NY)
Jun 2002 Audubon joins NRCS Wildlife Habitat Management Institute
Audubon receives $75K grant from USFWS to support Urban Bird Treaty
July 2002 Reprint Audubon Guide for a Healthy Yard and Beyond (250,000 copies)
Sep 2002 Healthy Yard program becomes Audubon At Home (AAH)
Nov 2002 Healthier Choices: The Audubon At Home Guide to Healthier Pest Control
Jan 2003 AAH receives $500K NRCS appropriation
Audubon At Home in Seattle: Gardening for Life (10,000 copies)
Oct 2003 Audubon Ohio AAH program
Dec 2003 Audubon Pres. John Flicker spotlights AAH in Audubon magazine
April 2004 AAH receives second NRCS appropriation ($500)
May 2004 Audubon Society of Northern Virginia AAH program
Jun 2004 AAH and NRCS planning meeting at Aullwood Nature Center in Ohio
Oct 2004 John Flicker establishes national AAH advisory group
Dec 2004 Audubon Science office hires AAH Science Coordinator
Feb 2005 AAH receives third NRCS appropriation ($500)
Mar 2005 Publication of Gardening for Life in Southeastern Pennsylvania
Spanish Healthy Yard and Beyond brochure (150,000 copies)
Jun 2005 AAH reprints NRCS Backyard Conservation booklet
Colorado AAH book
Aug 2005 AAH ranchette programs in Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming
Sep 2005 Audubon Society of Northern Virginia book published
Dec 2005 AAH program manager hired in Communications department
Jan 2006 Audubon At Home strategic planning begins, four major goals established
April 2006 Healthy Yard Pledge launched, mentioned in John Flicker’s monthly column
April 2006 Invite Birds, Bats, and Butterflies poster series (750,000 posters printed)
AAH website with online materials to support poster series and pledge
AAH featured in poster session at AMNH bird conservation symposia.
May 2006 AAH presented to State Directors at annual meeting in Vail, CO
Jun 2006 AAH receives fourth NRCS appropriation
July 2006 AAH program manager position moved to Education department
Oct 2006 Audubon Pennsylvania and Audubon Maryland/DC AAH programs
Nov 2006 AAH presented at 4th North American Ornithological Conference (Veracruz, Mexico).
Dec 2006 Audubon prints Spanish edition of NRCS Backyard Conservation booklet
Aug 2007 Birds to Help website launched
Jan 2008 AAH in Arizona
Feb 2008 Audubon Birdscapes blog
Spring 2008 Audubon PA Bird Habitat Program launched
Sep 2008 AAH receives fifth NRCS appropriation
Nov 2008 Neighborhood and Community Bird Conservation Workbook (online launch TBD)
Mar 2009 My Yard eBird launched
A couple years ago, I scratched an itch on my leg and discovered a fully engorged nymph deer tick. A week later, my leg hurt where I had found the tick and I had a big bull's-eye rash there--the tell-tale sign of Lyme disease infection. I went directly to the hospital and got two weeks of antibiotics, and my tests came back negative for Lyme. Hopefully I found it in time and the disease didn't progress. This past Saturday I pulled another freshly attached deer tick nymph off my leg after a day of birding. Is Lyme disease a mild nuisance, or a perilous threat lurking in our backyard and neighborhood birdscapes?
A new film, Under Our Skin, looks at the controversy surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of chronic Lyme disease. While some authorities claim that Lyme is a symple bacterial infection easily treated by a course of weak antibiotics, others ascribe a wide range of chronic conditions to persistant Lyme infections. The film does a good job of describing the controversy with interviews of authorities on each side, as well as a look into the lives of those who suffer from what their doctors have eventually diagnosed as chronic Lyme disease.
Under Our Skin is a call for more research into the diagnosis and treatment of tick-borne diseases. For those of us interested in creating bird habitat, the threat of Lyme disease is an obstacle that prevents many from landscaping with native plants, creating bird habitat, or even venturing into the outdoors. Some communities are even banning the feeding of wild birds in an attempt to limit opportunities for deer ticks, which sometimes feed on wild birds, and are frequent parasites of rodents attracted to messy bird feeding stations.
While Under Our Skin does not address the issue of controlling deer ticks, or managing bird habitat in the face of this threat, it does provoke discussion of how important the Lyme disease threat can be, and is well worth watching. You may even consider hosting a screening in your Audubon chapter or other group meeting.
For those concerned about the threat of deer ticks and Lyme disease in backyard or neighborhood habitats should review the Center for Disease Control's recommendations for the prevention of Lyme disease, including especially using insect repellents and checking for ticks after outdoor activities. The CDC also recommends specific landscaping guidelines for creating tick-free zones around your home. You can still create wildlife habitat in your yard, but creating gravel or wood chip barriers between your habitat and more frequently used open areas can limit tick movements to areas where you won't go as often. Also, keep the area under bird feeders clean to avoid attracting rodents that may harbor ticks. Neighborhood deer control is another recommended way to limit deter deer tick infestations.
Deer ticks and tick-borne illnesses are a persistent threat, that can be limited by taking the recommended precautions and by vigilence and prompt medical attention if tick bites or infections are detected. We can not eliminate ticks from our shared environment, but as Under Our Skin makes clear through its look into the lives of chronic Lyme disease sufferers, an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of what is in this case often a very difficult cure!
The Audubon Society of Portland has a great program that protects a large Vaux's Swift roost while educating local residents about these unique birds. Check out a great review of this work at the new BirdFellow online journal. More details on the Audubon Society of Portland website.
After highlighting the problem here on Audubon Birdscapes last fall, there has been some good progress on this issue. Here's the latest from Stella Miller, President of Huntington Audubon.
Pretty exciting news here in New York!
The NYS Association for Solid Waste Management and the Federation of
New York Solid Waste Associations have pledged to reach out to each NYS
region and advise them on this issue. A NYSASWM board member just
happened to read the article on the topic in the latest edition of
Huntington Audubon's newsletter and was so moved by it that he brought
it to his board of directors. They then made the decision to act on
this. We are now in the process of issuing a joint press release, along
with NYS Audubon. Both organizations are eager to be the industry
leaders on this issue and next want to take it nationally!
For the full article, please see the conservation news page on www.huntingtonaudubon.org.
In 1996, birders found a few Purple Swamphens, a Eurasian marsh bird, at a pond in Florida. Ten years later, they had spread across several counties, and the State of Florida tried to eradicate these exotic invaders to protect the populations of native plants and animals. Unfortunately, the birds had a 10 year head start and the state has recently pulled back from its eradication efforts. After killing over 3,200 of the birds over more than two years, there are still 3,000 of them running around the Florida swamps, and as far as anyone can tell, they are here to stay.
In our own backyards, sometimes we have to manage alien invasive animals to protect the native wildlife. Feral or outdoor house cats kill a billion birds a year in the U.S. Starlings and House Sparrows bully Purple Martins and other birds, driving them out of favored nesting places. Feral Hogs can severely damage forests or streamside habitats. Creating healthy habitats does not mean harboring any and all species that come along. We have to make choices, and sometimes that means getting rid of invasive exotic species to protect the native species that would otherwise lose ground.
Purple Swamphen photo by Yvonne Ricard
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a set of
"management prescriptions" to help landowners manage their woodlots or forest for healthy populations of the Veery,
Swainson's Thrush, Hermit Thrush, Wood Thrush, and Varied Thrush.
The guidelines are written for
two types of land managers: those responsible for large landscapes,
such as public lands or entire states; and private landowners who
manage small blocks of forest.
If you have forest on your property, take a look at the recommendations in this booklet. You can order a copy from Cornell, or download a digital copy here.
Audubon and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have made it even easier to keep track of the birds in your yard or neighborhood with the new My Yard eBird website.
After marking your yard on a digital map, you can report any birds you see there and My Yard eBird will automatically keep track of their abundance throughout the year. You can also see what other birds people have reported in your local area.
Its fun, free, and a great way to keep track of the birds in your yard from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, or beyond! You can even enter old bird sightings you have laying around in old notebooks to create a historical record of all the birds you've ever seen in on your property.
Give it a shot and let us know if there are ways we can make this even more useful to you as we improve it in years to come!
As documented in this recent paper in Conservation Biology (Feb 2009), we still have a long way to go to make sure that our local planning departments are helping to preserve the birds and other wildlife that live in our neighborhoods.
Abstract:
Local
land-use policy is increasingly being recognized as fundamental to
biodiversity conservation in the United States. Many planners and
conservation scientists have called for broader use of planning and
regulatory tools to support the conservation of biodiversity at local
scales. Yet little is known about the pervasiveness of these practices.
We conducted an on-line survey of county, municipal, and tribal
planning directors (n =116) in
3 geographic regions of the United States: metropolitan Seattle,
Washington; metropolitan Des Moines, Iowa; and the Research Triangle,
North Carolina. Our objectives were to gauge the extent to which local
planning departments address biodiversity conservation and to identify
factors that facilitate or hinder conservation actions in local
planning. We found that biodiversity conservation was seldom a major
consideration in these departments. Staff time was mainly devoted to
development mandates and little time was spent on biodiversity
conservation. Regulations requiring conservation actions that might
benefit biodiversity were uncommon, with the exception of rules
governing water quality in all 3 regions and the protection of
threatened and endangered species in the Seattle region. Planning tools
that could enhance habitat conservation were used infrequently.
Collaboration across jurisdictions was widespread, but rarely focused
on conservation. Departments with a conservation specialist on staff
tended to be associated with higher levels of conservation actions.
Jurisdictions in the Seattle region also reported higher levels of
conservation action, largely driven by state and federal mandates.
Increased funding was most frequently cited as a factor that would
facilitate greater consideration of biodiversity in local planning.
There are numerous opportunities for conservation biologists to play a
role in improving conservation planning at local scales.
KEYWORDS
conservation
policy • habitat conservation • Iowa • land-use planning • local
conservation • North Carolina • urbanization • Washington
For a limited time this full article is available online here.
Osprey photo by Steven Kaplan.
Now you can get the latest info about how to create a healthy and bird-friendly yard on Facebook. Click here to join the Audubon At Home Facebook group.
Photo: Becky Malone
The Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society in California has its own Audubon At Home program website, featuring local resources and inspiration for creating a healthy and bird-friendly yard. They even have a habitat certification program for full backyard as well as small yards or even balconies.
They also run workshops to teach landowners how to wildscape their yards, and sponsor a local native garden tour (see below).
Sometimes our best efforts to do the right thing later turn out to have negative consequences. 20 years ago we all thought that buying and releasing ladybird beetles would be a great way to deal with some insect pests. While it took us away from poisoning the environment, often the ladybird beetles we bought and released were actually alien species from other parts of the world, such as the Asian Lady Beetle (Harmonia axyridis), which has been detrimental to native ecosystems by outcompeting native ladybird beetles (and also a nuisance when it swarms into buildings at the onset of cold weather).
The best bio-control of pests is probably to plant as wide a variety of native shrubs and other plants, which will support native predatory insects (including native ladybird beetles) as well as insect-eating birds, such as this Northern Mockingbird. Thomas Jefferson, who even had a pet mockingbird in the White House, later planted shrubs around Monticello to attract the lively mockingirds to his property as they expanded their range northward in the late 1700s.
We still have a lot to learn about the relationship between plants, insects, and birds--so do your own study by planting as many natives as you can. It will likely reduce the number of insect pests you have, and bring more lively songbirds and beneficial insects to your yard.
Photo: Northern Mockingbird and laydbird beetle by Tina Bush
Here's a Black Phoebe diving into a bowl of mealworms. Enterprising bird enthusiasts can even find ways to encourage and help birds that normally eat mostly flying insects.
Photo: Calvin May
Folks interested in showing the relationship between native plants and wildlife should checkout this recent study published in the journal Conservation Biology (Feb 2009)
Impact of Native Plants on Bird and Butterfly Biodiversity in Suburban Landscapes
KARIN T. BURGHARDT, DOUGLAS W. TALLAMY, AND W. GREGORY SHRIVER Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716-2103, U.S.A
Abstract: Managed landscapes in which non-native ornamental plants are favored over native vegetation now dominate the United States, particularly east of the Mississippi River. We measured how landscaping with native plants affects the avian and lepidopteran communities on 6 pairs of suburban properties in southeastern Pennsylvania. One property in each pair was landscaped entirely with native plants and the other exhibited a more conventional suburban mixture of plants—a native canopy with non-native groundcover and shrubs. Vegetation sampling confirmed that total plant cover and plant diversity did not differ between treatments, but non-native plant cover was greater on the conventional sites and native plant cover was greater on the native sites. Several avian (abundance, species richness, biomass, and breeding-bird abundance) and larval lepidopteran (abundance and species richness) community parameters were measured from June 2006 to August 2006. Native properties supported significantly more caterpillars and caterpillar species and significantly greater bird abundance, diversity, species richness, biomass, and breeding pairs of native species. Of particular importance is that bird species of regional conservation concern were 8 times more abundant and significantly more diverse on native properties. In our study area, native landscaping positively influenced the avian and lepidopteran carrying capacity of suburbia and provided a mechanism for reducing biodiversity losses in human-dominated landscapes.
Bottom Line: More native plants=more bugs=more birds in your yard.
Photo: Chestnut-backed Chickadee by Jane Emmet
Recently the Tucson Audubon Society held a series of Saturday and Wednesday workshops on Urban Wildlife Landscape Design. At $250 a head, about twenty participants, including landscape design professionals, homeowners, and municipal employees received instruction and went on field trips to native landscaping sites and a visit to a local plant nursery where their eyes were opened to a wide variety of native plants available in the Tucson area nursery trade.
Besides discussions of native plants, sessions covered rainwater harvesting and yard hardscape features, and how to provide for birds as well as reptiles and beneficial insects. Check out the course outline online here.
Photo Tucson Audubon Society.
With the latest peanut recall, are you wondering if it is safe to feed peanuts to wild birds right now? Round Robin, the blog of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has a good update on the connection between wild birds, peanuts, and salmonella. Here's their bottom line:
"The chance of you - or the birds in your backyard -
becoming sick from tainted peanut products is small, but real. It is
definitely not safe to feed birds any of the human foods included in
the CDC’s recall - you should throw those products away without opening
them. And it’s always a good policy to keep your bird feeders clean,
and to stay on the lookout for sick birds around your backyard."
See more details at Round Robin.
Steller's Jay photo: Marlene Ralph
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