UVa’s Forgotten Pond a Reminder We Should Protect Nature

Lewis Mountain and the future Alumni Hall can be seen across University Pond in this turn-of-the-century photo from the Corks and Curls Alumni Yearbook, 1919.

An 1895 map of the University of Virginia shows the marsh (see arrow) where John Bowie Fernyhough and his birding companions regularly viewed Marsh Wrens. Courtesy of  https://www.jarretthousenorth.com/2014/06/26/1895-map-of-the-university-of-virginia-grounds/

ALL TEXT © Marlene A. Condon

In 1929, a letter written on Lynchburg (Virginia) College stationery was sent to people known to be quite interested in birds. The letter was to find out if folks would be interested in forming "an ornithological organization for the State of Virginia".

 

John Bowie Ferneyhough was one of these people, and he went on to become a charter member of the Virginia Society of Ornithology. Mr. Ferneyhough's handwritten book of lists made on bird walks around UVA and the immediate vicinity in the early 1900s was passed along to me by his great-nephew, Waller Wilson, of Front Royal, Virginia.

  

The first of what I plan to be several articles on the amazing information I've discovered via research based upon Mr. Ferneyhough's book has been published in The News-Virginian, the daily newspaper of Waynesboro. If you are interested, you can find it here:

 

https://newsvirginian.com/opinion/column/condon-uvas-forgotten-pond-a-reminder-we-should-protect-nature/article_d3b2360e-591e-11ee-8a3c-3b30f1ceadd1.html

 

Sincerely,

Marlene

 

 

[Is It Time to Halt Bird Banding?] published as “Bird-banding has failed to stem the tide of decreasing bird numbers”: A Letter to the Editor, Hudson Valley One, published August 30, 2023

 https://hudsonvalleyone.com/2023/08/30/policing-lawyering-up-winston-farm-and-more-letters-from-our-readers/

In a study published in 2014, researchers tracked Tree Swallows crossing the Gulf of Mexico from Louisiana south to their wintering grounds in the Yucatan Peninsula. They found that “although most days during autumn migration were characterized by unfavorable headwinds blowing to the northwest, migration over the Gulf mostly occurred on days with strong winds blowing to the south.” This bit of information is telling: It verifies that the energy requirements for traveling across a large body of water are so high that birds wait for strong southward winds to help carry them across. https://doi.org/10.1093/czoolo/60.5.653

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

Bird banding has been done for so long that bird researchers and watchers typically don’t give it much thought. Perhaps they should.

 

I visited a bird banding station once, and when I saw the intense fear in the eyes of the birds being handled, I had to leave and never wanted to revisit the experience.

 

Am I motivated by emotion when I call for an end to this practice? Absolutely! But there’s plenty of emotionless rationale behind my contention that banding should be discontinued, and it’s based upon physics, biology, logic, and empathy.

 

Physics (the science of the relationship between matter and energy) dictates that increasing the amount of mass to be carried over miles requires increased energy stores to carry it.

 

Logic (the science that deals with the principles of valid reasoning) thus suggests that banding must be detrimental. A migrant has evolved to add just enough fat to its body to provide the energy needed to carry its average weight across the Gulf of Mexico. Adding a band—which increases mass to be carried—means a songbird’s energy will be exhausted sooner. Even if a bird’s energy is not depleted until it is as close as a few inches from land, the result is disastrous because the creature will drown if it falls into the water. Songbirds don’t swim.

 

Empathy (the ability to identify with and understand another’s situation and feelings) tells you that birds are terrified when handled by humans who are their natural enemies (some humans, including scientists, still kill birds).

 

Bird-banding science began in America over 100 years ago. As a tool for preservation, it has obviously failed to stem the tide of decreasing bird numbers. Hence, there’s no reason to add insult to injury; these animals are struggling enough to survive in a degraded world. 

 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

Scientists diss the emotion I’ve acknowledged here as part of my motivation for calling for an end to the practice of bird banding. When they criticize someone’s sensitivity in this particular scenario, however, they are suggesting everyone should just ignore the trauma that banders induce in the animals they profess to care about. But banders are inflicting severe stress, which is just as detrimental to birds as it is to people. There’s no shame in experiencing a conscious mental reaction to the expression of dread obvious in the eyes of animals being handled by humans, so don’t let scientists intimidate you with such cheap shots. It doesn't speak well of them to try to stop folks from speaking out by putting them down for caring justifiably about wildlife.

 

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Two Articles Well Worth Reading

From the Conservation Sense and Nonsense website:

 “We use scientific studies and observation to explain why native plant ‘restorations’ in California are rarely successful.”

  

From Marlene: Although the primary focus of the Conservation Sense and Nonsense website is on the [mis]handling of so-called invasive plants in California, many articles are presented that take a wider view. I’m presenting here two links for articles that are well worth reading, no matter where you live.

 

The first article— “Talking back to nativism” —employs quotes from three authors who represent just a few of the many skeptics of “invasion” biology: Marlene A. Condon, author of this site (In Defense of Nature), Carol Reese (a retired horticultural extension agent in Tennessee), and the webmaster/author of the Conservation Sense and Nonsense website referenced above. This article includes excerpts from Dana Milbank’s Washington Post column of April 7, 2023, accompanied by commentary by the three skeptics.

 

https://milliontrees.me/2023/06/01/talking-back-to-nativism/

 

The second article— “Dana Milbank: ‘How I learned to love toxic chemicals’” —is written solely by the webmaster/author of the Conservation Sense and Nonsense website and is extremely well done. I highly recommend it. The reference is to the Dana Milbank Washington Post article of June 30, 2023.

 

https://milliontrees.me/2023/07/10/dana-milbank-how-i-learned-to-love-toxic-chemicals/

 

Ever so sincerely, Marlene

 

 Nativist Methodology Reveals Dearth of Supporting Evidence for “Invasive”-plant Ideology

The alien “invasive” Bradford Pear tree (Pyrus calleryana) often grows alongside native Eastern Redcedar trees (Juniperus virginiana) in disturbed-soil sites, adding diversity to the landscape that better provides for wildlife. While the redcedar and the pear both make fall fruits that provide food for birds in winter, the redcedar doesn’t provide flowers for pollinators in spring as the pear does. Nativists need to look at the big picture so they can grasp the value that so-called invasive plants add to our developed (aka “disturbed”) landscapes. 

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

Four years ago, I wrote an article entitled, “Ecologists Recognizing Value of Alien Plants”. It referenced an opinion piece signed by 19 ecologists (every one of whom possesses a Ph.D.) who disagreed with the nativist take (the policy of favoring native plants) on so-called invasive plants.

 . 

https://www.crozetgazette.com/2019/02/11/blue-ridge-naturalist-ecologists-recognizing-value-of-alien-plants/

 

The next month, three people signed their names to a letter blasting me for my article.

 

https://www.crozetgazette.com/2019/03/12/to-the-editor-the-blue-ridge-naturalist-not/#comments

 

Their letter perfectly illustrates the methodology employed by any group that supports a weak cause. To help you recognize the tactics employed by people to convince you to join a fight not well supported by facts, I will provide examples from the above-referenced letter to the editor. For efficiency, I will refer to the three letter writers as The Triad.

 

The first clue that people don’t have much to say in defense of their beliefs is evident when they immediately attack someone’s personal integrity and knowledge instead of simply supplying support for their side of the story. The Triad started off their letter by writing that “[my] bias and manipulative language displays itself in every paragraph as [I portray] ‘plant nativists’ and invasion biologists as extremists with an evil agenda that will cost you, the taxpayer, millions of dollars in unnecessary and wasted spending.”

 

In reality, I had written about a current and ongoing activity to support my contention that “Critical thinking is a must for deciding invasive-plant policy to avoid harming wildlife and wasting millions in tax dollars.” I wrote that, “In the name of ‘saving’ the environment from so-called invasive plants, a movement has sprung up to remove Eucalypt (Eucalyptus globulus) trees from California [even though these Australian trees] now serve as the most frequented overwintering sites for the western Monarch butterfly population.”

 

https://milliontrees.me/2013/11/01/monarch-butterflies-in-california-need-eucalyptus-trees-for-their-winter-roost/

 

Another clue that people are pushing a weak agenda is when they lie about their adversary. Thus, The Triad went on to write that I cited “as a scientific reference an eight-year-old Comment [sic] in the journal Nature by Mark A. Davis and others.”

 

No, I had made quite clear that the article was “an opinion piece [emphasis mine] signed by 19 ecologists in the journal Nature” in which they argue that “policy and management decisions must take into account the positive effects of many invaders.”

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/474153a

 

Often, people arguing a rather invalid point of view employ flimflam. They cite scientific sources that are fallacious, wrong, and/or misleading because those papers support their viewpoint.

 

“Condon appears to ignore and does not cite the vast amount of peer-reviewed literature on the damaging effects of nonnative plants. For example, recent research published by Narango et al., in the October 22, 2018, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science demonstrates that native plants are best for birds.”

 

Even if I were in agreement with The Triad, I would never cite this deceptive research that chose a forest-dwelling bird as representative of a species that can live in suburbia without human assistance, which it can’t. The scientists should have chosen a more-appropriate species, such as Northern Cardinal, American Robin, Gray Catbird, Northern Mockingbird, etc. Please see “Chickadee Chicanery” at this web site for a full exposé of this study.

https://indefenseofnature.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-carolina-chickadeegrasps-tulip-poplar.html

An American Robin, unlike the Carolina Chickadee, can find food in un-pesticided lawn grass, making it a suitable subject for study in suburbia to determine how well some bird species can survive among alien plants.

 

A ploy people often use when pushing a shaky narrative is overemphasizing the value of supposed facts that support their opinion. The Triad wrote that “Scientists have determined that our migrating birds require high-fat foods to fuel their southward flights in autumn. However, autumn olive berries are sugary sweet treats, the junk food of the bird diet. Smith et al. demonstrated that autumn olive fruits provide about half the nutrition of several types of native fruits, such as dogwood, at the time of year when North American migrating songbirds need fat, not carbohydrates, to fuel their long flights. (“Fruit Quality and Consumption by Songbirds during Autumn Migration,” Wilson Journal of Ornithology, March, 2007).”  

When I looked up this study, I found that it states that “Most common fruits [emphasis mine] on Block Island [where the study took place in Rhode Island during bird migration] contained primarily carbohydrates...and little protein...and fat. [emphasis mine]”

 

As the research paper’s authors were mainly speaking of native plants, this statement in no way supports the letter writers’ contention that the researchers demonstrated that Autumn Olive fruits were inferior nutritionally to native fruits—because most of the native fruits were primarily sugar (carbohydrates), too!

 

The Triad doesn’t understand the science of nutrition, which is “the assimilation by living organisms of food materials that enable them to grow, maintain themselves [emphasis mine] and reproduce.” (www.britannica.com/science/nutrition)

 

Sugar is a natural source of energy that’s useful for everyday activities. When migrating songbirds need to stop to rest and “refuel”, they need energy to hop around to find food, and Autumn Olive fruits fill the bill. These sugary fruits serve birds in the same manner as jelly beans (that are mostly sugar) serve a runner in need of glucose to continue exercising.

 

The research paper’s authors also state that “fruit selection by birds on Block Island was not simply related to differences in macronutrient composition between fruits...studies of wild and captive songbirds have shown that some species preferentially select high-fat fruits...or high-sugar fruits [emphasis mine]...”, which hardly implies that Autumn Olive fruits are “junk food”.

 

High-sugar fruits, such as Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata, seen here), provide energy needed to keep animals going about their day-to-day activities.

 

People will often accuse someone of wrongdoing as they themselves supply their own prevarication: “Condon mistakenly asserts that “nativists” (a derogatory term she uses for people who encourage planting only native plants in their gardens and in our natural areas) insist that all alien plants are problems and must go. [emphasis mine]”

 

That was not true. I wrote that, “Rather than critically analyzing each situation and dealing with it in the most appropriate manner, plant nativists (people who practice a policy of favoring native plants over nonnative) take the approach that demands removal of every plant designated as ‘invasive’ [all emphasis mine], no matter what function it is fulfilling in the local environment or how well it fills what would be an otherwise empty ecological niche.”

 

Also, I defined “nativist” in a way that literally describes the basic belief of nativism, which is hardly “derogatory”.

 

Nativists abhor Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica syn.Polygonum cuspidatum) despite the value of its blooms to pollinators, such as this Four-toothed Mason Wasp (Monobia quadridens) and numerous tiny bees. A so-called invasive plant, it has “stayed put” where I planted it decades ago. 

A sure-fire proof that someone doesn’t have a case is when they go off on a tangent that’s nonsensical: “While it appears that many nonnatives, such as Japanese knotweed, which Condon mentions in her recent article, provide shelter for animals, that shelter is not always useful and appropriate for many species. Take the bobwhite quail, for instance…that need shelter that allows them to move about quickly… [such as] clump-forming grasses whose structure offers ground-level spaces beneath dense, overhead cover.”

 

The Triad went off on a strange tangent here, since the point they make with bobwhite quail is nonsensical in the extreme. They are suggesting that somehow nonnative plants are supposed to fulfill shelter requirements for ALL animals, which, of course, is utter nonsense. Even those native clumps of grass they talk about are not going to shelter ALL animals.

 

When an argument is seriously lacking substance, people fall back on their credentials in the hopes that it will fool people into thinking they are experts: “Susan A. Roth holds a BS and an MS in Ornamental Horticulture from Cornell University and is the author of 10 gardening books.  William Hamersky holds a BS in Wildlife Biology from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and a MS in Biology from California State University, Hayward. Manuel T. Lerdau is a Professor of Environmental Science and of Biology at the University of Virginia and has a PhD in Biology from Stanford.”

 

Ms. Roth’s advanced degrees in Ornamental Horticulture in no way prepared her for dealing with the natural world because, until very recently, horticulturists mainly saw most wild critters as “pests” and native plants as “weeds”—all of which were to be killed if they found their way into one’s garden.

 

Mr. Hamersky’s degrees should have prepared him with a better understanding of how the natural world works, yet—based upon his signing on to this letter—he’s apparently unaware of the fact that environmental conditions determine where plants are found. Someone with real knowledge of the real world should be able to see there’s no such things as “invasive” plants, but rather environmental conditions that encourage these plants to do well in particular areas.

 

Professor Lerdau’s qualifications outrank those of Roth and Hamersky, which might fool people into thinking that certainly he must be someone you could trust. Yet, he signed on to a letter rife with unfounded accusations, insults, lies, and misleading arguments.  

 

Unlike the three letter writers who should be embarrassed by, and ashamed of, their letter to the editor of The Crozet Gazette, I can truthfully say that I can back up everything I’ve ever written.

 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

Use common sense to determine whom you can believe when people disagree about an environmental narrative. Who makes sense and who doesn’t? Who employs facts instead of insults? Who’s calm instead of angrily supplying emotional responses? If someone needs to tout a degree, is it a sign he doesn’t know as much as he’d like you to believe he does? And, most importantly, don’t buy into a false narrative just because a majority of people have done so. That’s how slavery and other evils have been able to persist in the world—people are afraid to swim against the tide lest they be severely criticized and perhaps embarrassed or even punished (as I have been by losing jobs). But sometimes, you must be brave and stand up against what you know is not right.   

 

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Dana Milbank (Washington Post Columnist) Should Perhaps Change His Name to Dana MilliVanillibank

For almost 40 years, my yard has hosted a mix of nonnative—some deemed “invasive”—and native plants. The abundance of wildlife it has attracted was such that I was able to write a book—The Nature-friendly Garden—based upon it.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

You may remember the 1990 scandal involving Milli Vanilli, the German pop-music band fronted by two “singers” who had never sung one note of their songs. When performing publicly, they had simply lip-synced the songs that had been sung and recorded secretly by another person.

 

Likewise, Washington Post commentary writer, Dana Milbank, hasn’t truly written his own thoughts regarding so-called invasive plants in his column of April 7, 2023. You could say he simply lip-synced concepts publicized by Doug Tallamy, entomologist-turned-activist.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/07/suburban-lawn-climate-change-biodiversity/ 

 

When Mr. Milbank posits that he’s “been filling [his] yard with a mix of ecological junk food and horticultural terrorists”, he’s channeling the kind of words Bringing Nature Home author Doug Tallamy loves to employ: Biased expressions that implant negative images in the reader’s mind so he will become yet another minion of this scientist. Nowadays you can’t read a garden or environmental column without being accosted with the same words or variations thereof, as if everyone has become a mouthpiece for Doug Tallamy, which I’ve never seen done more obviously than in this column by Dana Milbank.

 

The problem with all this parroting is that the basic message isn’t based on legitimate science or knowledge of the natural world (for a detailed exposé, please see “Chickadee Chicanery” at https://indefenseofnature.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-carolina-chickadeegrasps-tulip-poplar.html). There is also much repetition of mythical “facts” that are completely wrong (for a detailed explanation, please visit https://indefenseofnature.blogspot.com/2023/01/invasive-plants-friends-or-foes-marlene.html), placing their value on a par with gossip.

 

Still, following in the footsteps of numerous columnists before him, Mr. Milbank starts off denigrating “invasive” plants with false suppositions (that are highly likely to have come from Dr. Tallamy’s first book, a repository of misinformation from beginning to end):

 

“A few of the shrubs I planted were invasive and known to escape into the wild. They crowd out native plants and threaten the entire ecosystem. Our local insects, which evolved to eat native plants, starve because they can’t eat the invasive plants or don’t recognize the invaders as food. This in turn threatens our birds, amphibians, reptiles, rodents and others all the way up the food chain. [Emphasis mine because these statements are all untrue.] Incredibly, nurseries still sell these nasties — without so much as a warning label.”

 

Let’s dissect the Milbank statements above that I’ve written in italics:

 

·    “They crowd out native plants and threaten the entire ecosystem.” Read virtually any description of where you find so-called invasive plant species and you will find the word “disturbed”. This tells you the soil profile has been negatively impacted by people, animals, or weather, and usually means the topsoil is gone. Only very tough plants—known as colonizers—can grow in disturbed areas because the soil is nutrient-poor and is typically compacted. Consequently, these areas may fill with a mix of native and nonnative plants, or mainly one or the other—but every single plant is a colonizer that is working to rehabilitate the land for the benefit of the native plants that require topsoil in which to grow. “Invasiveness” is nothing more than a derogatory word used by people with contempt for alien-plant colonization. Conclusions: Alien plants can’t “crowd out” native plants because once the soil is disturbed and thus degraded, most of our native plants can’t grow there and thus are not there to be crowded out. As for “threaten[ing] the entire ecosystem”, to the contrary—alien colonizers are helping to restore it. 

·    “Our local insects, which evolved to eat native plants, starve because they can’t eat the invasive plants or don’t recognize the invaders as food.” This oft-repeated distorted premise comes straight out of Bringing Nature Home, in which Doug Tallamy deceptively writes about an “excellent demonstration of how restricted a specialist’s [an insect with particular food preferences] diet is.” Dr. Tallamy tells the story of Eastern Tent caterpillars on a cherry tree denuded of its own leaves but hosting a Japanese Honeysuckle vine. He writes that the caterpillars didn’t recognize the honeysuckle as food (sound familiar?). But, of course, they didn’t because this species of insect can only eat plants in the Rose Family, which does not include honeysuckle. The story is told in a perfidious manner, apparently to fool the uninitiated—the MilliVanillibanks of the world who fall for it, hook, line, and sinker, and then lip-sync it. What Doug Tallamy doesn’t tell the reader is that the tent caterpillars could certainly have eaten the so-called invasive Multiflora Rose, which I’ve documented in the photo below. Conclusion: Native insects did not evolve to eat only local (native) plants, but rather can typically feed upon dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of plants related to each other by family classification, even though they grow in other countries.

Because the Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora) is in the same family as the Black Cherry tree (Prunus serotina), it can feed our native Eastern Tent caterpillars.

Now let’s look at other italicized (by me) Milbank quotes from the same Washington Post column.

 

·    “If you want to save the planet, all you really need to do is plant a single oak tree.” The columnist then quotes researcher and author Doug Tallamy, referring to him as the “godfather of the native-plant movement”, who says, “You can plant one tree. You don’t have to get rid of anything else.” Mr. Milbank then tells us to “leave the rest of your plants alone, for now. Tallamy ultimately wants to cut lawn acreage in half, but allows that ‘there is room for compromise,’ and ‘Think of your noninvasive plants and cultivars as ‘decorations.’” So, cultivars are now seen by Dr. Tallamy as eye candy and useless to wildlife, but it’s okay for you to keep them in your yard. Yet in his first book he had a different view, writing with nary a bit of humility: “I predict that in most cases, cultivars of native plants should be fine” in answer to a supposed reader question of “Is it all right to use [showy cultivars] or will insects treat them like aliens?” This question, of course, is asking whether leaf-eating insects will be able to feed on cultivars. Apparently, this academician has changed his mind about his confident “prediction”. The truth is that Doug Tallamy’s entire line of thought represents the epitome of hypocrisy and the dearth of logical thinking that lies at the heart of the entire “invasive-plant” movement. On the one hand, Dr. Tallamy and his followers proclaim that so-called invasive alien plants are a problem because native insects cannot eat them, then they say without any sense whatsoever of self-awareness that it’s acceptable to keep the alien plants they and you like, even though insects supposedly can’t eat those non-invasive alien plants either! This insincerity represents an astounding demonstration of either immorality or stupidity (“showing a lack of good sense or judgment”).

·    And Mr. Milbank provides an example of just what I mean here: “Janet Davis, who runs Hill House Farm & Nursery in Castleton, Va., has a similar [to Doug Tallamy] message for the purists who make you feel bad about your blue hydrangea. ‘Don’t give me crap about something that’s not native but not invasive,’ she said. ‘I’m never going to tell you you can’t have your grandmother’s peony.’ Yet, consider this truism: “Invasive” plants are often spread far and wide by critters that take the fruits and either drop some or pass the seeds through their intestinal tract after eating and digesting the fruit.  Question: What is the difference between a plant being spread by an animal that has made valuable use of it and a plant spread by people as they plant yard after yard with “hydrangeas, azaleas and roses”—which Mr. Milbank decided to keep, despite saying they represented “ecological empty calories”? In other words, it’s not allowable for wildlife to “grow” plants with food value that has helped them to survive, but it's perfectly acceptable for people to grow plants solely to provide aesthetically pleasing “decorations” (the word employed by Professor Tallamy when permitting this contradictory situation).

·    Therefore, if you like your so-called invasive plants (as I do), why should you listen to Mr. Milbank’s advice: “If possible, you should remove the nastiest of the invasive plants if you have them: burning bush, Japanese barberry, Asian bush honeysuckle, English ivy, callery (Bradford) pear and a few others.” Do you think it’s fair for him to keep what he likes, but we can’t keep what we—and, more importantly, our native wildlife—like? 

My yard disproves Doug Tallamy’s thesis that properties with alien plants can’t support the caterpillars that birds (and other wildlife, such as the Four-toothed Mason wasp [Monobia quadridens] seen here) need to raise their young.

 

·    “Worst was my row of nandinas — ‘heavenly bamboo’ — along the foundation.” “You definitely want to remove it,” advised Matt Bright, who runs the nonprofit Earth Sangha, a native-plant nursery in Fairfax County. “Its cyanide-laced berries poison birds.” Please note Mr. Bright’s choice of words to describe Nandina fruits: “cyanide-laced [emphasis mine]”, as if the plant has evil intentions, deliberately adulterating its fruits to kill North American birds. This tactic is typical of the MilliVanilliBanks in the U.S. who want folks to perceive supposedly invasive plants as “bad” even though no evidence exists to support their accusations, especially in this instance. Mr. Milbank and Mr. Bright, who obviously supplied this information, have misspoken here. A study out of the University of North Carolina out of Chapel Hill, published in 2022, explains that Cedar Waxwings are the only birds that might be poisoned, and that’s only going to happen if someone grows so many nandinas that these birds can consume large numbers of fruits in a single feeding bout. If you grow just one or even a few plants, you are not going to poison waxwings. On the other hand, the author of the study points out that, “as distressing and regrettable as these cedar waxwing deaths are, they pale in comparison to the harm visited upon songbirds in the United States from other anthropogenic causes. Free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds annually (Loss et al. 2013), collisions with windows in homes account for another 159.1–378.1 million deaths (Loss et al. 2014a), and a further 89–340 million birds are lost every year to vehicle collisions (Loss et al. 2014b). Against this appalling carnage, deaths of cedar waxwings from N. domestica [Nandina] toxicity are a mere footnote [emphasis—everything in bold—is mine].”     (https://ncbg.unc.edu/2022/05/04/nandina-toxic-to-birds/) The above quote thus affirms my take on so-called invasive plants, which is that this entire issue plays no real part in the decline of insect and bird numbers. (https://indefenseofnature.blogspot.com/2023/01/invasive-plants-friends-or-foes-marlene.html) 

  

Lastly, I want to point out that the reason Dana Milbank is so gullible, believing everything without question that he’s told by “experts”, is because he obviously possesses very little gardening knowledge himself, as exposed not only by his plural of “genus” as “genuses” (the correct form of which is “genera”), but also by the “advice” he offers others. Obviously, Mr. Milbank is ill-qualified to even be discussing this issue in a national newspaper, but he continues:

 

“Don’t have a yard? You can plant a native viburnum, goldenrods, asters, sunflowers and pussy willows in containers on a balcony or patio.” None of these species, except the asters, is particularly suitable for container gardening.

 

“Most people buy their lawn plants from Home Depot, Lowe’s, Walmart, Costco and the like, which either don’t offer native plants or offer those useless, engineered cultivars masquerading as natives. I had thought the magnolias, azaleas, hydrangeas and viburnums I bought were natives (there are native varieties of all these) but they turned out to be either the engineered types or even Asian varieties.” What a surprising admission from a man whose vocation requires research! Nothing precluded this Yale graduate from simply looking up the scientific names of native plants that could be used in his yard.

 

The Azalea caterpillar (Datana major), the larva of a native moth, is a known (in horticultural circles) “pest” of nonnative cultivated azaleas, as seen here in my yard. In other words, the Asian plants Dana Milbank disses as “useless, Asian varieties” can and DO support some of our native caterpillars, making his (and Doug Tallamy’s) overstatement untrue.

Additionally, he “took a small step in the painful task of killing [his] beloved lawn. [He] used landscape fabric to smother about 400 square feet of turf. In its place, [he] planted a smattering of canopy trees (two white and two northern red oaks), understory trees (ironwood, eastern redbud), shrubs (wild hydrangea, black haw viburnum) and various perennials and grasses (Virginia wild rye, blue-stemmed goldenrod, American alumroot, woodrush, spreading sedge).” No seasoned gardener would plant this many large woody plants—especially four oaks that will ultimately become huge and shade out everything else—in such a small area! Dana Milbank is a plant salesman’s dream come true: a person trying to crowd in as many plants as possible without proper thought to the future needs of all these plants—space to spread out and grow into their natural form without being crowded and thus made susceptible to disease; enough room around them to obtain all the nutrients and water they need; and the ability to still get enough sunshine throughout their lifetimes.

 

“Right now, my seedlings look pretty sad. Where once there were healthy lawn and vibrant shrubs, there is now mud and scrawny sprigs poking from the ground every few feet. I put up chicken wire to keep the kids (and me) from trampling them. The carcasses of my invasive plants lie in a heap on the gravel.” This statement supports my contention that ridding your yard (and, in the case of government, natural areas and parks) of “invasive” plants destroys habitat, leaving our wildlife high and dry. Follow the advice of Doug Tallamy via Dana Milbank (and many others) and you make the environment far less hospitable to our wildlife by removing plants that supplied habitat NOW when our critters need it to survive.

 

Removing plants for development permanently takes away habitat and thus is far more of a problem for wildlife than so-called invasive plants, such as the Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) seen here, that DO support wildlife.

Wildlife can’t wait for the future growth of new plants, as these people think: “But in a couple of seasons, if all goes well, [Milbank’s] yard will be full of pollinators, birds and other visitors in need of an urban oasis. Years from now, those tender oak seedlings, now 6-inch twigs, will stretch as high as 100 feet, feeding and sheltering generations of wild animals struggling to survive climate change and habitat loss. I won’t be alive to see it. Yet even now, my infant oaks give me something the most stunning cherry blossom never could: a sense of hope.”  Mr. Milbank, obviously having bought into Doug Tallamy’s more-recent book, Nature’s Best Hope, should have welcomed “pollinators, birds and other visitors” with the full-grown specimen plants he already had, but he must never have looked for these organisms. My property is a mix of alien (including quite a few deemed “invasive”) and native plants, and my yard has always teemed with wildlife of every sort. (www.marlenecondon.com)

 

Although it may sound logical that native insects can only obtain nourishment from native plants they co-evolved with, the reality is that they can—and do—feed upon nonnative plants. Here, a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly is getting the nutrients it requires from a nonnative Glossy Abelia (A.grandiflora) in my yard.

 

“When it comes to the world’s biodiversity crisis — as many as 1 million plant and animal species face near-term extinction because of habitat loss ― I am part of the problem. I’m sorry to say that if you have a typical urban or suburban landscape, your lawn and garden are also dooming the Earth.” No, the Earth’s doom is approaching much more rapidly thanks to people like the ones mentioned in Dana Milbank’s column who believe erroneously that alien plants serve no function in our landscape, and so they destroy functioning habitat, often by adding pesticides (poisons) to the environment.

 

Media promulgation of the mythological idea of “invasive” plants is hastening the arrival of a world in which humans will not be able to live.

NATURE ADVICE:

Dana Milbank’s column makes clear he’s not someone who should be writing about the subject of nature-friendly gardening, and he’s certainly not the person you should trust for advice on this subject. He may work for a national newspaper, but he’s a cheerleader, rather than an informed, objective writer and gardener.

 

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Holed up in the Ivory Tower Too Long (A Discussion of a Recent Article by Researchers)

Light fixtures function as attractive nuisances to night-flying insects. Therefore, no more light fixtures than necessary should ever be employed to illuminate parking areas. In the parking lot shown above, light fixtures were placed closer together than needed for folks to safely navigate the area. 

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

On March 8, 2023, the Independent Media Institute published a paper, “5 Surprising Things That Could Be Preventing Your Yard from Serving as a Wildlife Sanctuary”. It’s credited to scientists Doug Tallamy of the University of Delaware and Daniel Klem of Muhlenberg College, and Jim Cubie, a consultant to the Muhlenberg College Center for Ornithology.

https://independentmediainstitute.org/earth-food-life/

 

While these researchers seem to think they are informing folks of things they probably haven’t thought about, the reality is that not one of the five “things” listed should come as a surprise to anyone because they’ve been talked about in the media for many years. This article proves that scientists in ivory towers are often completely out of touch with the realities of the everyday world. 

 

For example, the first action the authors suggest people take is to ban cats from the area. I myself mentioned predation by cats in my Daily Progress column as long ago as September 2000. More recently, in my blog post of January 26, 2022, I wrote that “The more people there are, the more cats there are. Cats take a tremendous toll on birds, as well as other critters.” I cited the American Bird Conservancy that has been ringing this bell for decades.

 

https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/

 

But the fact of the matter is that no matter how often it’s suggested to people, far too many cat owners will never make the effort involved to keep cats indoors, and they certainly aren’t going to do it for the benefit of wildlife.

 

Then there are the folks who maintain feral cat colonies and have convinced government to allow this disservice to wildlife. In law, cats (and dogs) are now viewed as if they are human, often with more rights than people! So, if Drs. Tallamy and Klem, and Jim Cubie think their list is going to suddenly bring about a change in human behavior, they are going to be sorely disappointed.

 

Second, these writers (while providing a shout-out to Dr. Klem’s new book, Solid Air/Invisible Killer: Saving Billions of Birds from Windows) discuss bird/window collisions. Almost two decades ago, in 2004, I wrote that birds would pay the price for the glass towers architects envisioned for the new World Trade Center to replace those that came down in the terrorist attacks of September 2001. I’ve written about numerous buildings that would kill birds—all to no avail because no one else clamors for consideration of our wildlife. So, the buildings go up anyway because, truth be told, most people just don’t care much at all about wildlife if it means they need to change what they desire.

 

Third, you are told “to manage pests without pesticides”. Wow, this statement from Doug Tallamy, who shares with readers of his first book, Bringing Nature Home, that he sprayed the “invasive” plants on his new property and has never truly discouraged people since from using these poisons. In fact, I feel he’s to blame for the tremendous increase in herbicide usage in this country—Rachel Carson’s warnings from her 1962 book, Silent Spring, be damned. By applying the phrase “biological pollution” to so-called invasive plants, he stigmatized these alien plants to encourage the uninitiated to take action. Yet these plants are quite useful in our environment (please see, “Invasive Plants: Friends or Foes?”—https://indefenseofnature.blogspot.com/2023/01/), and certainly better for our environment than the poisons people use to get rid of them.

 

Strangely, these authors then go on to suggest that people employ “safe and effective products with the active ingredient Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, or BTI for short. It’s deadly to mosquito larvae but harmless to all other living things [emphasis mine], including bees, butterflies, caterpillars, fireflies, dragonflies, and humans.”  Dr. Tallamy, an entomologist, surely knows that this statement is patently false.

 

BTI will kill insects that are closely related to mosquitoes. Since when is it okay to kill nontarget species? And anyway, the link these authors provided (above) takes the reader to a site selling mosquito dunks that are recommended for “rain barrels, bird baths, tree holes, elevator shafts, planter reservoirs, rain gutters, etc.”  Honestly? People should concern themselves with tree holes?! Isn’t Doug Tallamy the man who’s supposedly concerned about bird numbers dropping precipitously because of a lack of insect food?

 

But he’s okay with killing immature mosquitoes in the natural world where birds, salamanders, and reptiles could get sustenance from this food source. No one should encourage folks to try to kill off every mosquito out there by concerning themselves with tree holes and other such natural features that feed wildlife with mosquito larvae. Is it any wonder people don’t want ephemeral wetlands around, and poison or drain those that are nearby?    

 

Not to mention that people could be minimizing mosquito numbers without even using BTI dunks. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in still water where eggs remain moist and larvae that hatch out can feed on organic matter. Therefore, if a bird bath is dumped and refilled daily, or at least every other day, neither eggs nor larvae could survive.

 

Even minus mosquitoes, you should be practicing this hygienic maintenance of your bird bath so that you provide only fresh water for the health of any animals that drink from it. And roof gutters should be kept free of debris so that all water can drain away rather than pooling there.

 

Fourth, the researchers want you to turn off your outdoor lights because they “are a major cause of insect declines, particularly the moths that create the caterpillars that feed the birds.” If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably know I’ve been writing about this problem at this site, as well as for years in newspapers and my book, The Nature-friendly Garden, that was published in 2006. In the section, “Tips to Help Garden Wildlife”, I mentioned that “Many kinds of insects are disappearing [more than a decade before researchers started talking about an ‘insect apocalypse’], in part due to the prevalence of manmade lighting.”

 

Did Doug Tallamy mention this problem in his book, Bringing Nature Home, that was published a year later? No. He used a nighttime map of the United States (page 28, Advance Reading Copy) to make his point that a lack of native trees due to conversion of “natural areas to developed landscapes” was the explanation for ever-decreasing bird numbers.

 

He wrote that moths need native trees to produce caterpillars, rather than recognizing that we were losing the moths themselves due to the abundance of lights shining in that photo. Moths hanging around lights don’t survive to lay eggs; hence, no caterpillars for birds. This entomologist completely missed the more impactful significance of that nighttime photo.

 

The last two points made by these three writers—not mowing in the evening so as not to kill toads and raising the mower blade to mow over a Box Turtle—are rather nonsensical in today’s world and thus puzzling as to why they were included.

 

First, most people employ lawn care services that don’t send employees to cut grass in the evening anyway. Second, lawns these days—whether cut by homeowners or lawn care services—are cropped so short that toads and Box Turtles are highly unlikely to reside in such a barren environment. Even if a turtle showed up, the person mowing should be able to see it in such short grass. However, the probability of even seeing one of these reptiles that are native only to the eastern part of the United States is low because this species is much in decline.

 

Considering that the authors are decades late to the party themselves, it’s rather amusing that they would take aim at a “major wildlife organization [that] recently published a long article about the benefits of native plants, including detailed descriptions of how to select, buy and plant them...[yet] only the final closing paragraph mentioned protecting birds from window strikes—and this article was an exception.” 

 

They go on to say that, “Most articles promoting native plants say nothing about protecting the wildlife those plants will attract to your yard.” Considering that Professor Tallamy—who’s been preaching to the choir about growing native plants and eliminating alien ones (especially those deemed “invasive”) for virtually the entirety of his more-than-a-decade of activism—has only recently begun to bring up this subject himself, it’s rather ludicrous that he chooses to deride others.

 

Tallamy, Klem, and Cubie finish their article with, “We need to change the narrative so we aren’t leading our wildlife to death traps. If we don't plant and protect simultaneously, we have actually conserved little.” 

 

In other words, these scientists really believe they are the very first to recognize the “ecological traps” they’ve listed. Are they just egotistical, or didn’t they bother to search public media? Either way, this paper—in its condescending tone and presumptuousness—paints scientists in a very unflattering light. 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

Personally, I would take anything written by Doug Tallamy with a grain of salt. Though many people gush with adulation for this scientist, I’ve found his knowledge of the natural world (including his specialty, entomology) to be lacking. Consider that this article claims mosquito dunks are harmless to all other living things—when they most definitely are not—and that he’s an entomologist (someone whose career is studying insects) who did not recognize the extreme harm being done to insects by the excessive lighting shown in the nighttime photo he chose to use in his book. It’s a truism that when someone doesn’t possess comprehensive knowledge of the subject he’s discussing (in this case, nature-friendly gardening), he can’t possibly provide sound advice. In my opinion, Doug Tallamy’s woeful ignorance of the natural world in its entirety is why he’s been leading people down the wrong garden path, and he obviously is still doing so as he attempts to make amends for previous oversights.

 

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