Tag Archives | native plants

Where Did All The Hummingbirds Go?

I was mixing gallons of sugar water with Anna’s Hummingbirds sucking it up as fast as I could make it just a few weeks ago. Where did they all go?

They went back to nature!

The local Manzanitas are blooming this time of year and, of course, the hummers prefer the real thing to sugar water.

During the spring and summer months, there are many native plants offering food for hungry hummers. Here are just a few.

California Thistle (Cirsium occidentale)

Female Anna’s Hummingbird at California Thistle

Red Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora)

Juvenile Male Anna’s Hummingbird at Red Yucca

Autumn Sage (Salvia greggii)

Female Anna’s Hummingbird at Autumn Sage

Hummingbird Sage (Salvia spathacea)

Female Anna’s Hummingbird at Hummingbird Sage

and my favorite, Woolly Blue Curls (Trichostema lanatum)

Female Anna’s Hummingbird at Wooly Blue Curls

You may have noticed a few other behaviors regarding the Anna’s Hummingbirds. In April, I had several instances of females landing in my graveled driveway and apparently consuming small particles of sand or other minerals from the gravel. According to Cornell’s “Birds of the World,” they are probably acquiring minerals for egg laying.

Getting back to the present, if you are lucky, you might find female Anna’s Hummingbirds gathering nesting material now, maybe in your yard or while out on a bird walk.

You can also provide natural cotton nesting material for them yourself, available at several outlets.

Again from Cornell Lab on the nest building. The inner cup is lined loosely with downy material (plant, feathers, hair). The walls are made of downy material including cattail (Typha), willow, underside of sycamore leaves, thistle, eucalyptus flowers, velvet groundsel (Senecio petasites), and small feathers. Binding materials are mostly spider webs and insect cocoon fibers, but also fibrous plant material and rodent hairs. Usually ornamented on the outside with bits of lichens, mosses, and dead leaves; occasionally bark, algae (Protococcus) or other plant materials, and paint chips. Nest materials are often stolen from another hummingbird’s nest. This is what the completed nest looks like, found at Turtle Bay Arboretum

Anna’s Hummingbird in the Nest at Turtle Bay Arboretum.

Obviously, if female hummers are gathering nesting material, it’s breeding time! Just last Saturday, on our outing to Lema Ranch, we observed the male’s incredible mating flight! This video is incredible! Isn’t nature amazing?

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Habitat Gardening in Fire Prone Landscapes

By: Adrienne Edwards & Rachel Schleiger

Destructive wildfires are becoming larger, hotter, and more frequent. Since 2000, an average of 7.1 million acres have burned across the US, more than double the average acreage that burned in the 1990s. In 2020, wildfires burned 10.3 million acres in the US, and roughly 60% was in California (> 4 million acres), Oregon (> 1 million acres), and Washington (> 700,000 acres). At the same time, more people are choosing to live adjacent to fire-prone wildlands. In California alone, at least 25% of our 11 million residents live in the Wildland / Urban Interface (WUI), where development meets or intermingles with undeveloped. One consequence of this development is an accelerating loss of native biodiversity through habitat fragmentation. The home hardening and defensible spaces that we need to create to live safely near wildlands can also lead to habitat fragmentation.

We can compensate for clearing and building in the WUI by including native plants and wildlife resources in our landscaping. Native plants and wildlife habitat in the human “built environment” effectively create wildlife bridges, or oases, to support pollinators and many of the species they interact with. In this talk, we will first briefly review home hardening and defensive space essentials for wildfire safety. In the remainder of our time we will explore characteristics, installation, and maintenance of native plants (keeping fire safety/readiness in mind) to mitigate for the negative impacts of habitat fragmentation. The wildfires we have been experiencing are traumatic; but we can use lessons learned to help communities become more wildfire ready and resilient, while supporting the native wildland habitats that we love.

Adrienne Edwards, PhD, is a botanist, plant ecologist, garden designer, and environmental consultant. She began her botanical odyssey in the Southeast, spent time botanizing in the Midwest, and since 2006 has lived and worked in northern California. With over 30 years of experience teaching, researching, and consulting, plants continue to inspire her passion. She is currently a faculty lecturer at California State University, Chico.

Rachel Schleiger, MS, is a plant ecologist who specializes in restoration ecology. She has lived in the Sierra Nevada Foothills most of her life. Her family and property survived the most deadly and destructive Western fire on record, the 2018 Camp Fire. Over the last 3 years, she has developed curriculum to teach about wildfire, both in-person and online through Butte College. She is currently a faculty lecturer at both Butte College and California State University, Chico.

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California Native Plant Sale

This annual 3-day plant sale will be held at the greenhouse/horticulture area of Shasta College. On Wednesday, April 11, we’ll be setting up and weeding from 2–4 pm, with the Members-Only Pre-Sale afterwards, from 4–6 pm. The Pre-Sale is for current CNPS members only, but you can join on the spot! The public plant sale will be from 8 am to 5 pm on Thursday and Friday; and 9 am to 3 pm on Saturday. We will be selling both quart-sized and our normal gallon-sized California native plants: shrubs, ground covers, and flowering plants. Please volunteer for a few hours to help out by calling or texting Margaret Widdowson at 916/752-0941 or Susan Libonati at 530/515-9247, or by e-mailing ShastaCNPSPropagation@gmail.com

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Plants for Birds

Cedar Waxwing

Cedar Waxwing on Toyon by Jay Thesken

After the long heat, the season for planting approaches. The local CNPS will hold its fall sale of native plants at the Shasta College Horticulture area on October 14, 8am-2pm. It may be an opportunity to dress up both your yard and the birds!

We only survive and flourish because of photosynthesis, the green-plant magic that turns solar energy into food energy. Without plants we would lack the wit to see a bird, as well as any birds to see. None would sing, or sprout a golden feather.

Praying Mantis

Praying Mantis

Fortunately, many plants survive our summer droughts and winter frosts. Trees, shrubs, forbs, and grasses provide a feast of seeds, nuts, berries, leaves, and nectar. Native plants support insects—caterpillars, leaf-hoppers, aphids, and more. Buckwheats, sages, coffeeberry, and toyon are among the many plants that support our pollinators—native bees, wasps, flies and beetles. The insects become food for so much of animate life, including our local fledglings who this month are fueling their first flights south.

Western Bluebirds

Western Bluebird Fledglings Waiting to be Fed

Many birds are strongly associated with oaks. Besides making nesting sites, oaks make acorns, which are devoured by jays, magpies, crows, ravens, turkeys, and band-tailed pigeons. Acorn woodpeckers store the acorns in rotting branches for winter dining. Lewis’s woodpeckers do the same, but meticulously shell and split the acorns first!

Acorn Woodpecker Granary

Acorn Woodpecker Granary

And oaks pass storms of insect energy on to hungry birds! Woodpeckers, titmice, and nuthatches dine on the beetles, ants, and spiders of the woody branches, and on the wasp larvae in oak galls. A stunning 534 species of butterflies and moths are known to lay their eggs in oaks, and those caterpillars feed orioles, warblers, vireos, mockingbirds, and bushtits. Bluebirds and flycatchers hawk the insects that take wing, and robins, sparrows, and towhees pick dinner from the detritus under the trees. Oaks are the crowning gem of many a lively yard!

Oak Titmouse with Insect

Oak Titmouse with Insect

Quail will roost in the oaks, but will gladly poke about at ground level in the thick protection of Ceanothus bushes, where foraging wrens and towhees may join them. Nearby lupines, after their bright show of blue flowers, will draw the quail out to dine on their nutritious seed pods.

California Quail Female with Chick

California Quail Female with Chick

The fruits from Coffeeberry, Toyon, and Elderberry attract robins, bluebirds, mockingbirds, waxwings, and nuthatches. Currants will also draw these berry-loving birds.

Goldfinches flock to sunflowers and thistles. Milkweed supports not just monarchs but eleven other species of butterflies and moths, too. Colorful grosbeaks dine on their seeds, and hooded orioles use the plant fibers to weave their nests.

Swallowtail On Western Vervain

Swallowtail On Western Vervain

Four species of hummingbirds are regularly seen in our area, and many flowers sustain them—woolly blue curls, larkspurs, penstemons, monkeyflower, fuschia, currants, and salvia. Some of these plants bloom through the winter, sustaining the resident Anna’s hummingbirds.

Anna's Hummingbird on Thistle

Anna’s Hummingbird on Thistle

For the adventurous, poison oak provides fruit and cover for quail, thrushes, sparrows, goldfinches, flickers, juncos, kinglets, sapsuckers, wrens, titmice, and a host of other songbirds. Don’t get carried away with toxic adventures, though. Nandina, known as heavenly bamboo, is a colorful but dangerous invasive that poisons birds with its cyanide-laced berries.

Gardening for birds is best done with a dose of indolence. Leave those dead-heads on the plant; they’ll feed the finches. Leave the leaves on the ground. Towhees and sparrows will breakfast on the bugs that turn them into mulch. Native plants are generally a great bet. Together with the birds they form a beautiful gift to yards all over. Enjoy!

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