As I have been "googling" away about the warbler bird and expanding my content knowledge in order prepare a fantastic lesson, I started thinking about the role that birds play in the ecosystem. As we know the ecosystem is a gigantic intricately designed system that would take more than one blog post to explain. So to make things a little more simple, I decided to focus on what role birds (not just warblers) play in the garden.
Long story short, birds eat BUGS! Now bugs are important to a garden as well, however pests can destroy entire crops. There are all kinds of pesky pests that creep into the garden and destroy the plants that you have worked so hard to keep alive. Some of the most common garden pests are beetles, aphids, larvae of various moths, flies and beetles, moths, vine weevil, caterpillars, and earwigs - just to name a few!
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| caterpillars |
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| beetle damage |
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| weevil |
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| earwig |
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| aphid damage |
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| larvae damage |
But I have good news...Birds eat these bugs! The yellow warbler in particular has a diet that is about 60% caterpillars. However, it (along with other birds) also eats moths, mosquitoes and some beetles. Birds are great natural pesticides to use in the garden. Warblers also eat berries so in order to keep them near the garden, plant berry producing plants. Birds often spread seed unintentionally as well. This can often bring a sweet surprise when the growing season comes back around. This year, our garden is FULL of sunflowers and we did not even plant seeds but the neighbors have a bird feeder next door.
Next time you hear a beautiful bird song, take a minute to be thankful that we are not up to our eyes in bugs!
Quite honestly, I never even thought about birds being big consumers of bug. I have several bird feeders in my yard, simple because I like birds and enjoy watching the different varieties that drop by to feed. I never even considered that by having the birdfeeders and attracting birds to my yard, I was ridding myself of some bugs in the process!
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