Condon’s Corner

Feed the Birds, But Educate Yourself First

© Marlene A. Condon 2026 All Rights Reserved

Suet blocks help a variety of birds, such as this Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, to obtain the calories they need for survival. © Marlene A. Condon 

[Published March 31, 2026, by The Daily Progress, the daily newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia, and April 2, 2026, by The News Virginian, the daily newspaper of Waynesboro, Virginia.]

Over the years, wildlife professionals have frowned upon people who feed birds and perhaps other kinds of wildlife in their yards. The reasons for this attitude are many.

 These folks worry about the spread of disease when birds are constantly in close contact with each other. They also are concerned that folks will provide food meant for people that may be unhealthful to wildlife.  Additionally, these animals could then become habituated to humans and over time act aggressively towards people when they want food. If that situation occurs, the animals would then need to be killed. (Wildlife removal services must destroy critters taken away.)

Yet the reality is that birds and even wild mammals could use a bit of human help these days. You don’t need to look far to see that we have covered the land with office and apartment buildings, grocery and other kinds of stores, or houses with yards that are mowed and “cleaned up” so much that no natural foods exist for our wildlife.

Making your yard inhospitable to as many critters as possible should never be viewed as good because our environment depends upon wildlife to keep it functioning properly for our benefit. People often overlook this reality.

We need plant eaters to limit the numbers of plants so the plants will not be overcrowded and become diseased.  We require predators to limit the numbers of other kinds of animals, so they are not overcrowded, which also leads to disease. And we need a variety of plants to serve as food themselves for wildlife or to make seeds or fruits for critters to eat.

It’s not difficult for folks to assist wildlife, though. Most yards are landscaped with only beauty in mind, but choosing trees and shrubs that also support wildlife provides the additional interest of getting to view such critters right outside your windows! It’s not hard to find out which plants support wildlife; any local library will have a section of books on this subject. [The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating A Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People was written by me and I provided the photographs for it.]

 

Thus, we need to invite wildlife to our properties so our environment can function well, but we also need to help these critters to be safe while there, by—for example—limiting bird collisions with windows.

 

I once worked in a building with large office windows lining both sides and both stories of the workplace. The inside offices were small, so many of them ran down each side of the building, and each and every office had a very large window to bring light inside. Worse yet was the huge glass-way lining the walkway that led to the upstairs library.

Sky and trees around the building were reflected in all that glass, so it wasn’t the least bit unusual to find dead or injured birds on the ground alongside the building. The United States Geological Survey [USGS] estimates that “up to two billion birds are killed each year in the United States due to collisions with glass…”

https://www.usgs.gov/labs/bird-banding-laboratory/science/bird-window-collisions

According to the USGS website mentioned above, simple, inexpensive, and attractive ways exist “to help prevent any type of bird collision by making windows more visible to birds...For low-cost, temporary methods, individuals can make and hang a paracord bird curtain or create decorative patterns using tempera paint and stencils…”  Please visit the site for much more information.

 Also, the threat of cat predation on wildlife has continued for innumerable decades, but it shouldn’t be such a difficult problem to fix. It’s simply a matter of keeping cats indoors instead of letting them roam freely outdoors. It’s puzzling that people who supposedly care about their cats would insist that they should be allowed outdoors when the threat of their pet being run over and killed is extremely high. When I was growing up, neither cats nor dogs were expected to be kept inside, and indeed, several of the cats in our family were killed in just this manner.

 A little education would go a long way towards people knowing what human food is safe and healthful for wild animals to eat. For example, unwanted food (such as fat from cooked meat) needn’t be wasted. It could be put outside at dusk so that mammals won’t associate the food with humans. And regarding birds, the threat of disease at feeders can be dealt with by urging folks to clean feeders weekly, and to take them down for a week or more should disease present itself.

Feeding wildlife in our overbuilt environment can aid rather than harm these animals, but it’s extremely important that it be done properly. Please take time to learn how to best assist wildlife, so you can rest assured your efforts have been helpful, not harmful. 

 

 

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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