Overview:

By Karen Edgington
Each week, Signal Akron will help you in your gardening adventures with an excerpt from "The Root of It," a monthly newsletter from the Summit County Master Gardeners, Ohio State University Extension.

I live with a birdwatcher. His life revolves around life lists, trips to migration sites, and hours sitting, binoculars in hand, watching birds in our back yard. My job is to provide the habitat that will bring the birds he so enjoys. But gardening with birds in mind provides so much more than beauty and entertainment. 

Birds are weeding allies. Yes, they sometimes eat newly planted corn or bean seeds, and they may deposit weed seeds from other locales, but birds such as warblers, sparrows and finches consume vast quantities of weed seeds, eating up to 1/3 of their body mass each day. Because many weeds are prodigious seed producers, each plant setting thousands of seeds each season, we need this weeding assist.

Birds such as bluebirds, nuthatches, cardinals, chickadees, wrens, and orioles are voracious insect eaters and help prevent plant damage throughout the landscape. Cabbageworms, whiteflies, moths, cucumber beetles, aphids—the list of insects that birds help control is endless. We can also thank our feathered friends for the mosquito patrol they provide, and raptors, such as hawks and owls, for rodent control. Woodpeckers ferret out borers and other tree pests and their presence may be our first indication that trees are under siege.

Birds pollinate plants, slow heart rates, restore focus

Birds are an essential part of the food web, and can affect entire ecosystems by creating trophic cascades. In TCs, birds or other predators limit the concentration of their prey (in this case insects) to a degree that enhances the survival of the next lower level of the food chain. Powerful stuff. 

Some birds pollinate plants, a process called ornithophily. Ohio’s primary bird pollinator, the ruby-throated hummingbird, visits tubular flowers in the garden. Baltimore orioles are fall pollinators, relying on fruit tree nectar to supplement their diet, but in Ohio are usually en route south at that time of year.

Who can’t use a boost to their sense of well-being? Contemplating birds can slow heart rates, restore focus, and lower stress hormone levels. 

The beauty of their flight, the sweetness of their song, the captivating drama as they rear their young, and garden and health benefits as well.  Bring on the birds!   

Read more from the Summit County Master Gardeners:

You can also learn more from “The Root of It” newsletter.