Make Your Yard a Home

Pale Purple Coneflower

The Sycamore Greenway is home to a huge assortment of bees, butterflies and other pollinators along its 2-mile stretch trail lined with blooming native flowers throughout spring, summer, and fall. But you don't have to go to the Greenway to see pollinators.

Are you making plans for your summer garden? Vegetables to plant, annuals to fill decorative pots? Why not commit to buying and planting one new species of native plant to help out our pollinator neighbors?

Gray-headed Coneflower

Maybe a Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), or the slightly less gaudy Pale Purple Coneflower (Echinacea pallida)? Both are attractive to humans and bees alike, and are tough. Or perhaps a Gray-headed Coneflower (Ratibida pinnata, my personal favorite), always crawling with a variety of bees collecting pollen from the tiny brown disc florets that cover the rounded head of the flower. All three can generally be found in garden centers, or ordered online from a variety of sources specializing in native plants (be sure to look for "plain" natives; fancy named cultivars may not be as attractive to pollinators).

Butterfly Milkweed

Another favorite is Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), a little more refined than its common cousin though just as tempting to Monarch butterflies and other insects that utilize milkweed as a host. Or the slightly more compact Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), similarly appealing but with distinctive orange flowers instead of pink.

Swamp Milkweed

I have all of the aforementioned plants in my backyard garden (my E. pupurea, unfortunately, is a white-petaled cultivar purchased when my enthusiasm for planting native flowers exceeded by understanding of how they function in an ecosystem), a small oasis surrounded by turfgrass in my little subdivision. I can attest to their attraction to a fascinating variety of insect life, and they bring (perhaps too many!) hours of pleasure surveying my miniature domain and all the tiny dramas that abound.

The great thing about prairie plants is that they are adapted to live in our hot, humid summers and thus don't require a lot of attention. Bees and other insects evolved to live alongside these plants. As I plan my garden for the summer, I will be looking for one or two new inhabitants to move in; observations along the Greenway are a great resource to discover which flowers I find are attractive, and which are most attractive to the bees (they are not always the same). Wild Quinine, Stiff Goldenrod, and Black-eyed Susan are all in the running. But how to choose? Surely I can find space to squeeze in three more plants!

It just take one to get started. If you have a square foot or so to spare in your yard, consider filling it with a new native flower to add resilient beauty and create habitat for pollinators on your property.

The potentials:

Black-eyed Susan

Wild Quinine

Stiff Goldenrod

The Purple People...uh...Tenant

I had a large and commodious box built and fixed on a pole, for the reception of Martins, in an enclosure near my house, where for some years several pairs had reared their young.

-John James Audubon 

John J. Audubon's Purple Martins from
Birds of America (Public Domain)

I confess have not devoted much thought to Purple Martins, those large, glossy-purple swallows that make their homes in the white synthetic gourds dangling from poles in large open fields near farmhouses and other human habitations. I know generally what they look like, and that they eat bugs, but beyond that they and I have not crossed paths (though I did see a distant dark blur that I assume was a Purple Martin at the fairgrounds, perched on a structure of the aforementioned synthetic gourds).

There is, apparently, a small and devoted culture of Purple Martin landlords across the eastern US, dedicated not only to providing housing for these beleaguered birds but also monitoring and assisting them throughout the breeding season. This weekend, I had the pleasure of joining many of these people from around the midwest as they turned out for the annual Purple Martin Workshop near Kalona (scheduled to precede the birds' arrival from their wintering grounds in South America). Alas, Purple Martins in our area are entirely dependent upon these human-built nests and have been for at least a century, perhaps longer (many Martin histories will describe Native Americans providing homes from hollowed-out gourds for the birds).

Fortunately for the Purple Martins, people since at least the early 18th century have been building homes for these birds, perhaps as a convenient method of securing insect control. Formerly cavity nesters that settled for second-hand woodpecker nests, Purple Martins quickly lost out in the birdie housing market due to a combination of low supply (snags and trees in favorable locations became hard to come by as people built their way across the continent) and intense demand (particularly from human-introduced toughs like starlings and house sparrows, which can violently outcompete many of our native cavity nesters).

Purple Martin nest "gourds"
on display at the workshop

Now, the Purple Martin relies entirely on humans to avoid extinction. They are particular about the siting of their homes: close to buildings but not too close; and a good distance away from trees. We must provide suitable homes, defend the homes from invasion by enemies both foreign and domestic (native birds like tree swallows may also attempt to make themselves comfortable in Purple Martin houses), and monitor the nests regularly to assist with managing mites and other pests to give the young Martins the best chance to survive and return next spring.

That is where the cadre of landlords comes in, these devoted souls who commit to checking up on their tenants every week or so throughout the breeding season (there is an interesting and longstanding relationship between Purple Martin houses and Amish/Mennonite farms). Like the volunteer bluebird house monitors, their job is a combination of caretaking and documentation, with a system of mentoring and support

It is a worthy effort to help ensure that these spectacular birds are able to survive in a world that has changed out from under their feet in an evolutionary eyeblink.

Sources/Resources:

• John J. Audubon's Birds of America: Purple Martin
• All About Birds: Purple Martin (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
• Purple Martins: The Bird That Relies on Human-Built Nests

Sounds All Around

Surveying my small patch of yard in a newish subdivision one chill sunny morn, I was momentarily disappointed to note the absence of any birds in view. No mourning doves, no goldfinches. Not even one of the house sparrows that shelters in a neighbor's shrub.

But the disappointment abated when I heard the cheery song of a cardinal in a distance, echoed by another from the opposite direction. Nearby, though unseen, I could hear the insistent, unmelodic chirps of those house sparrows. Overhead, the sweet twittering of an unseen goldfinch, and from the block behind me somewhere a mourning dove's graceful coo carried across the street.    

So much of nature can be observed and understood through sound. Along the Greenway, you may hear the constant chip call of cardinals long before you catch sight of them, maybe a trio chasingone another up and down along the trail--behaving very differently than a male perched high on a branch, singing.

In the spring and summer you might hear the glassy clinking of cricket frogs, the sustained trill of toads, or the throaty bellow of a bullfrog without ever catching sight of the amphibious crooners. The deeper buzz of a bumblebee stands out from that of a honeybee, and any buzz serves as a gentle reminder to slow down and observe the flowers as you pass. You will hear countless katydids as you stroll but rarely catch sight of one.

The symphony of nature is all around us, every day. It may fall silent momentarily, or it may ebb and flow in complexity as artists come and go throughout the year. But it is a constant reminder of the neighborhood we share with thousands of other species. How could one feel lonely amid so much life?