The Supermarket in Your Backyard

By James Reddoch

Imagine your yard and garden as a supermarket where birds come to search the shelves for the foods they need to thrive and to raise their young. The entomologist David Leatherman offered this analogy in a recent article in Birding Magazine. If your yard is the supermarket, then the trees, shrubs, and plants are the “shelves” that support a host of insects, arachnids, their eggs, and larvae as well as seeds and fruits. All of this is available to avian shoppers. 

Watching to see which “shelves” birds are visiting in your yard, and then exploring what they find can deepen your understanding of the vast web of connections that exists between birds, plants, and insects. It will also provide insights that may boost both your birding and gardening skills. You may notice a family of chickadees slurping up aphids saving you from reaching for a can of pesticide. 

In my case, I was disappointed to recently find that an invasive pest called the emerald ash borer had infested the huge white ash in my yard. The only consolation I can find with the discovery of this tree-killing pest is that four species of woodpeckers have been taking turns digging out the immature grubs from the tree’s trunk and branches. I was also surprised to find undigested emerald green wing coverings from the adult beetles when cleaning up the droppings and pellets coughed up by the nest of eastern phoebe’s under my porch eaves. What is a loss for this ash and my yard has been a feast for some birds and their chicks. Hooray for woodpeckers and phoebes! It is too late for my ash tree, but maybe an army of these birds can slow the spread of destructive invasives like this. 

Here are a few other examples of birds which can be found in the Mahoosuc Land Trust’s Habitat Garden along with tips on the plants and insects they may be searching for on the supermarket shelves in your yard and garden.  

Gray Catbird - Listen for a cheerful, bubbly series of squeaks, whistles, gurgles coming from deep in the tangle of shrubs and vines. Catbirds improvise a unique song used to advertise their presence when they arrive in the spring from as far away as South America. Small fruits from a wide range of plants like honeysuckle, greenbrier, dogwood, and viburnum make up the bulk of its diet, but it also relies on ants, beetles, grasshoppers, caterpillars, lacewings, and spiders especially when feeding chicks.

American Goldfinch - The bright yellow of the males in their breeding plumage stands out, especially when they come to feeders or perch to pick seeds out of thistle or sunflower blooms. Goldfinches may stay in our area year-round and frequent grassy fields, cultivated lands, yards and gardens usually in groups. They eat a wide variety of seeds ranging from grasses or trees such as alder, birch, northern white cedar, and elm. Leave the deadheads from flowers like coneflowers in the fall and you will surely attract goldfinches. Note, however, they avoid cultivated areas where pesticides are in use.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird - This tiny visitor to gardens and yards weighs about the same as two dimes. It is a long-distance migrant from as far away as Mexico and Central America. Hummingbirds arrive in the early spring before most flowers bloom and have been documented using sap wells drilled into maple trees by yellow-bellied sapsuckers. The high sugar content from sap and nectar fuels their high-speed wing beats. However, they voraciously consume and feed their nestlings mosquitoes, gnats, small bees, aphids, insect eggs and larvae, as well as spiders. 

White-breasted Nuthatch - A year-round resident, this bird can be found in a wide range of settings from mature woods to backyards. It gets its name because it is often seen using its chisel-like beak to crack open a seed it has wedged in the bark of a tree trunk. It readily visits bird feeders. In addition to seeds, nuthatches forage on the bark of trees looking for insects, spiders, their eggs, and larvae. Watch for them hitching up, down and around tree trunks. They often perch with their head pointed down. Listen for their nasally “yank, yank, yank” calls. 

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Sources:

•The Importance of Native Plans and Insects Amid the Reality of Modern Bird Habitats, David Leatherman, Vol, 56, No. 2 April 2024 American Birding Association, Birding Magazine, pp. 18-32

•Birds of the World, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Photo Credits: © Steve Wolfe Photography