Reading from Douglas Tallamy’s book The Nature of Oaks, The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees– The May Chapter emphasizes how birds depend on native plants producing caterpillars for feeding their young,
..”wherever we have … replaced the native plants that support insects with non-native plants that do not, insect populations, and thus the ability of migrants to balance their (migration) risk equation, have been devastated.”
He describes the skilled research that proves this over and over again.
At the end I read of the local research done (around 2011 and on), by graduate student, now PhD avian ecologist, Eric Wood, who conducted research with his students at Fort McCoy and The Kickapoo Valley Reserve on spring migrant warblers’ foraging behavior in trees, with an eye towards oaks and their flowering time, which is the peak caterpillar time, meaning bird food. Where is he today? Los Angeles!
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