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Planting Oaks for Birds
These trees are fully-stocked pantries for birds!
© Julie Falk
Oak trees are an important resource for birds finding insects to feed their young. It takes thousands of caterpillars from an oak tree to raise a single nest of baby birds. By planting an oak species native to your area, you can help ensure that birds are able to raise their young successfully.
Homegrown National Park® is a grassroots call-to-action to regenerate diversity and ecosystem function by planting native plants and creating new ecological networks. Learn how to plant native and get on the HNP map here.
BirdNote®
Planting Oaks for Birds
Written by Ariana Remmel
This is BirdNote.
[American Robin feeding young, ML 354739731]
This robin is making a delivery of tasty caterpillars to its fledglings. Like many songbirds, they rely on these insects to raise their young, says entomologist Douglas Tallamy.
Douglas Tallamy: It takes thousands and thousands and thousands of caterpillars to make one clutch of baby birds. And that's just to get it to the point where it fledged, is where it leaves the nest.
But habitat loss is making caterpillars and other nutritious insects hard to come by. So Tallamy co-founded an organization called Homegrown National Park® to help people bring biodiversity to their own gardens — which can be as easy as planting an acorn.
Douglas Tallamy: Oaks support more species of caterpillars than any other tree genus in the country.
Hundreds of butterfly and moth species start their lives as caterpillars foraging in oak branches, making these trees a fully stocked pantry for birds like tanagers, bluebirds…
Douglas Tallamy: Titmice, chickadees, cardinals, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Downy Woodpeckers, Pileated Woodpeckers, Magnolia Warblers, Hooded Warblers. Prairie Warblers, Yellow Warblers, Wood Thrushes and Hermit Thrushes. [fade out]
[Played under list: Northern Cardinal song, ML107279,
Magnolia Warbler song, ML 85248;
Yellow Warbler song, ML 231229761]
The list goes on!
Douglas Tallamy: So when you plant an oak, you're actually planting an entire community. You're creating an awful lot of life in your yard that wasn't there before you put that oak in. That life is called biodiversity.
[American Robin feeding young, ML 354739731]
To learn more about Homegrown National Park® and how to take part in their simple grassroots solution to the biodiversity crisis, visit BirdNote dot org. I’m Ariana Remmel.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. American Robin ML 354739731 recorded by L. Schrader, Northern Cardinal ML 107279 recorded by W. Hershberger, Magnolia Warbler ML85248 recorded by W. Hershberger, and Yellow Warbler ML 231229761 recorded by A. Spencer.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2022 BirdNote April 2022 Narrator: Ariana Remmel
ID # hnp-04-2022-04-11 hnp-04
Ariana Remmel
Writer NarratorSights & Sounds
