They say the early bird catches the worm. For native songbirds in suburban backyards, however, finding enough food to feed a family is often impossible.A newly released survey of Carolina chickadee populations in the Washington, D.C., metro area shows that even a relatively small proportion of nonnative plants can make a habitat unsustainable for native bird species. The study, published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to examine the three-way interaction between plants, arthropods that eat those plants, and insectivorous birds that rely on caterpillars, spiders and other arthropods as food during the breeding season. Based on data collected in the backyards of citizen-scientist homeowners, the researchers arrived at an explicit threshold: In areas made up of less than 70 percent native plant biomass, Carolina chickadees will not produce enough young to sustain their populations. At 70 percent or higher, the birds can thrive.
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Debbie Hollander, of Arlington, Virginia, was similarly moved. In the first year of the study, her backyard was home to four chicks, only one of which survived to fledge. In the following years, there were no Carolina chickadee nests at all. “I always knew that native plants were important, but actually seeing these scientists walking around and counting caterpillars on the leaves really brought it home to me,” says Hollander. “I would never, ever plant anything now that’s nonnative.”
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“We often think about the areas that we live in as being lost souls for nature,” says Marra. “That’s not the case at all. Some of the last frontiers that we can think about restoring are these urban, suburban settings. There are subtle things that we can do in human-dominated habitats to try to make them better for wildlife, and it’s totally worthwhile to do”
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