Opportunity Knocks (Part 1 of 3)

With all the depressing environmental news out there in the world, don’t we all want to do something that is positive? In that vein, I keep asking myself, “What can I do?”

There is something we are all capable of doing on our own timeline that not only benefits the wider world but can make our own lives better too. It can build community. It can beautify our surroundings. And it can bring birds home…literally.

I’m talking about reversing how we landscape our built environment. When we as a society make a shopping center, create a business park, put up apartment buildings, build a school or make a street of single family homes, we often scrape clean the plants and soil that existed before.

It has become our accepted habit to replace this former landscape with exotic plants from other parts of the world that we then sculpt into efficient shapes. Bushes pruned, leaves raked, grasses mowed and swept away. It may be green, pleasing to the eye, and efficient, but it is also a food desert for birds and wildlife.

In order to thrive, birds need plants they can eat or plants that feed their other favorite meal — insects. We can never put up enough feeders to feed all the birds. And during nesting season, almost all smaller birds including seed eaters, feed their young a diet heavy in caterpillars and insects.

What is the best way to make sure those birds have the cornucopia of caterpillars to feed their young? Change the landscape back to the native plants that have existed here for millennia. Birds benefit when the right plants are mixed into our built environment, providing both food and shelter for them. If a human family is living right next to a tree overflowing with food birds need, our avian friends will ignore the people and be about their business.

When we talk about habitat restoration, we think it has to be a “wild” place, but there are thousands of acres of potential habitat right in front of our faces, in our cities and communities that could be welcoming to birds and other wildlife. They need not be mutually exclusive. There are birds living in our neighborhoods now, but with a little help and a change of mindset there could be so many more..

As cities grew and expanded around the Bay, native plant communities were gobbled up, eradicated and replaced with non-native plants that fit a certain acquired, and in some places codified, aesthetic. We have become so used to that norm that we almost see native plants as being wrong for cityscapes. Nothing could be further from the truth. Native plants bring us seasonal colors, butterflies, birdsong, scented flowers, berries, nuts, and nectar in the form of ground cover, grasses, shrubs, vines and trees. There is ample diversity of form to make any yard or space beautiful for us and valuable for wildlife.

What if the membership of Golden Gate Bird Alliance (spread across San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties) replaced one third of the exotic plants in their yard (back yard, front yard or parking strip), and/or their apartment balcony, or, they convinced the owners of the apartment complex where they live to plant that space with native plants?

That would create a staggering amount of new food sources for struggling species.

The GGBA vision is “A world where birds, wildlife and all people flourish together.” 

What if GGBA members went to their local schools, dentist’s offices, churches, grocery stores, bowling alleys and gas stations and asked them to do the same? What if they went to city council meetings and asked for all city properties, including schools and parks to plant one third for the birds?

In the face of declining bird populations, what do we have to lose? 

Opportunity is knocking, will we open that door?

Jeff Manker is a member of the GGBA East Bay Conservation Committee, the Youth Advisory Committee and is a Board Member. He taught classroom science for 32 years including a high school ornithology class. He is on the Education Advisory Board for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and  serves on the Board of 100K Trees for Humanity and the Regional Parks Association. Even though it makes him sound really old, he has been chasing birds for 60 years now.