Fig Whitefly
Thanks To The Fig Whitefly, We’re Having White Christmas Seasons.
Like tiny clouds of snowflakes, the fig whitefly falls from a shaken branch. The overused ficus is now in decline due to this introduced relative of the cicada.
If I offered you a plant and said “try this as a hedge, it grows over ten feet a year, requires lots of water and fertilizer, has roots that stray far from the plant and may crack your home’s foundation ,” would you take it?
If not trimmed, it will reach 80 to 100 feet in height and width. Now you can add the 100 to 175 dollar quarterly visit from your local pest control company to control Ficus Whitefly to that scenario.
Several species of Ficus are invasive and require tax money to remove from our parks and private money to keep them out of our yards.
Only the strangler fig and short leaf fig are native to Florida and are a very important berry producer for our birds. If you must have a fig tree, plant one of these at least 50 feet from any structure.
Diversity: a mix of plants, rather than a monoculture, stops pests from building up in numbers and spreading to other members of its preferred species.
When one kind of plant is killed by a pest, especially an introduced pest like the Fig Whitefly, you don’t suddenly loose all of your cover at once.
Shrubs to replace ficus include the Simpson, Spanish, red and redberry stoppers. These, along with myrtle of the river, are in the guava family and yield small dark or red berries that the birds fight over.
Jamaica caper, marlberry, Walter’s viburnum and firebush have lovely flowers and berries. For wind and salt tolerance try indigo berry, blolly, myrsine, Florida privet, yaupon holly and saw palmetto.
Pineland privet attracts many butterflies when in flower. Marlberry and wild coffee are great in the shade. Wild coffee has beautiful red berries at Christmas time and it’s fun to bring cuttings of these indoors for the holidays. Rinse off the insects hiding among the fruit if necessary.
The plants that I am recommending are slow to moderate growers and can be kept low with yearly selective pruning. This job requires thought and is much quieter than the mindless drone of hedge clippers every month.
It is also safer and doesn’t use gas. Never box a hedge; it won’t produce fruit and looks… well, square. A mixed hedge with a textured appearance is more aesthetic.
Enjoy the Christmas season by shaking a ficus branch to create a blizzard of tiny Fig Whiteflies. Look at this as a great opportunity to replant your yard with natives.
In the long run it will be cheaper, quieter, safer, more attractive and you will have more birds and butterflies to enjoy.
Fallout of Migratory Birds
Changes in the weather can cause large numbers of migrating birds to land in our yards. This is called a “Fallout.”
Cold, rainy weather systems in the fall create winds that blow from the south to the north and force birds that are flying south to land. Birds need a tail wind to migrate and will wait for several days for the winds to change direction.
This is when we see many species of birds that are not here during the rest of the year and in some cases, ones that have been blown off course. These may not be seen until blown off course again in several years.
The cool, windy days of October may bring many migrating birds into our area. Look for a nice variety of wood-warblers, vireos, painted buntings, fly catchers and the hawks that follow and prey on them.
The female buntings are green and the males are red, blue and green. Many of these beautiful birds will remain until they migrate north in May.
I keep a feeder full of white millet near some bushes where the buntings can hide from predators and are protected from the wind.
You can now find these feeders at Target for only around twenty dollars. The wire squares keep out larger birds, hawks and squirrels, yet let the buntings through to feed.
It is also necessary to provide water for your local and fallout birds so that they can wash and preen their feathers which then provide better insulation from the cold.
This should also be near brush for protection, yet raised out of the easy reach or cats. Leave about a three foot area of cleared space around the bird bath that cats can’t hide in.
I connect quarter inch plastic tubing to a timer at the faucet, run it underground to the bird bath and then up a nearby shrub. Let it drip into the bath for a half hour each day to replenish the water and rinse away the detritus.
When I look at large areas of lawn, I just can’t help think of the berry and nut producing native shrubs and trees that could be planted there instead.
These would provide habitat and food for many migrating and local birds. Less lawn would reduce the use of fossil fuels by mowers, blowers and weed wackers and of course water use.
I strongly feel that our yards should be places that catch carbon and add water to the aquifer rather than the opposite.
Many migrating birds are exhausted after hours of flight and often die simply because there is not enough food available for them to build up their fat reserves and continue on.
Yet, there are many bird species that are increasing in numbers due to our efforts to provide feeders, nest boxes and better habitat. It is exciting to think of what is possible.
Watch the weather in the spring and fall and be on the lookout for large numbers of migrating birds that may be forced to land when a change in wind direction or foul weather forces them down.
This is a great time to get out your camera and take pictures. They make nice Christmas cards too
Fall Bird Migration
Millions of migratory birds are passing through Florida in October and November on their way to South and Central America. Go outside and listen for the chips, chirps, warbles and other funny sounds that they make.
The leaders of the migration passed through in September. These included the blue-gray gnatcatcher which could be heard in the trees with its high pitched “speee” call.
Hummingbirds, painted buntings, wood warblers, wrens, vireos, thrushes, hawks and eagles can be seen now. Many painted buntings, hummingbirds and some of the wood warblers and hawks will stay until May when they head north for the summer.
You must have a planting of at least ten native firebush in your yard to supply enough nectar for the hummingbirds.
The exotic “Compact” firebush from Central America has yellow-orange flowers and offers little to our wildlife. You will find this imposter in most box stores.
The leaves come off of the stem in whorls of four and five and feel rubbery. The native has three to occasionally four leaves to a whorl and has fine hairs, .
Native red salvia will provide nectar to hummers and seed for painted buntings and other birds.
Male painted buntings: a combination of red, orange, blue and green, always make my day when using our feeder. Go to BestNest.com and check out their “caged bird feeders.”
These are feeders surrounded with wire that the buntings can get through yet squirrels and larger birds can’t. Make sure that there are plenty of shrubs nearby for the birds to hide in.
To make your own feeder, buy a 12 inch wide roll of one inch by two inch welded wire for building cages and cut a length four feet long. It doesn’t matter which way the rectangles are oriented.
Now fold the piece in half and then fold the open ends toward the center so that you have four equal 12 by 12 sections. Unfold them into a square and clip the two free ends together.
I like the clips that you can get at feed stores for making rabbit cages. Now make the 12 by 12 pieces for the bottom and top and clip together so that you have a perfect 12x12x12 cube.
Cut out a six by six square in the middle of one side and make a door from another piece of cage wire and clip together the bottom of the door to the bottom of the opening.
You will have the hook at the top of the door so that when you unlatch it, it opens down and out of your way.
Make sure that you place a piece of hardware cloth on the bottom to keep squirrels from reaching up to pull over the saucer.
Secure to the top of a four by four inch post in a protected, shrubby location and pour some white millet (available online) onto a small pan or saucer. You may want to pour in just enough millet for the day so that rats don’t start showing up.
You may need to pinch every other square of wire in order to make the holes big enough for the buntings to get in more easily.
Add a little millet each morning or bring the feeder in at night to discourage rats until the buntings find you. This may take the whole season from October to May the first year, yet each year more will show up.
Eventually you will have indigo buntings visiting too. Don’t forget to plant many species of fruit and nut bearing native trees and shrubs so that other migrants like catbirds, vireos and brown thrashers will have berries and insects to eat.
A bird bath is needed to help birds keep their feathers clean for better insulation during the coldest months.
With the first cold front in October comes a wave of migrating raptors which congregate at Curry Hammock State Park in Marathon. They stay briefly before flying across the ocean to South and Central America.
Call 305-289-2690 before going to make sure the park is open. Just skip work and drive down for an unbelievable day of watching hawks, eagles and peregrine falcons so numerous that you may end up yawning by the hundreth one you see.
If you can’t get away, a simple walk around the yard before 9 a.m. can often provide more bird sightings than driving somewhere. If your property is the only one in the neighborhood with native plants- which provide food and cover- and a water source, the birds will crowd there.
On clear nights you can even hear the occasional chirps of birds flying overhead. These are often bobolinks.
“Birds of Florida” by Lone Pine Publishing International is an easy to use book for Florida birds only. It takes time to learn the warblers especially, yet each year you will get better at it. You will be amazed by the variety of birds that you notice in your own back yard and neighborhood.
Remember that insects provide a large portion of the calories and protein that birds need. Many insects are specific in what they eat and have not evolved to get around the chemical defenses of non native plants.
Although pretty, these plants offer nothing to local wildlife and might as well be plastic. If you have native wildflowers, the seeds are often eaten by a variety of insects which in turn are eaten by small spiders. Many songbirds eat these insects and spiders, so don’t tidy up until after November.
Get up early and walk around with your binoculars; the oaks are a good place to start looking. Try making a phish, phish, phish sound and see who comes over to investigate, hopefully not your annoyed neighbor or her cat.
Edible Native Plants
Wildlife Food That’s Safe For Humans
As a teenager, I learned about edible wild plants through Euell Gibbons’ books and trips to the nearby woods. My family and I enjoyed many fruits, nuts, greens and even mushrooms that I prepared for them. This was where my interest in plants started and continues to this day.
As your children grow older and understand not to put everything into their mouths, it might be a good time to show them which plants are not only attractive to birds, but can be eaten by humans as well.
I suggest reading the books by Euell Gibbons and Julia Morton. Never put anything into your mouth until you are sure of what it is. Always start with just a little.
Many parents are terrified when their child puts a berry into its mouth. The following is a starter list of native plant berries that your kids and the local birds will like and that I have eaten for many years. Make sure that you wash the fruit first and that sprays aren’t being used on them.
Cocoplum is used as a hedge and has sweet white or purple fruit. The nut inside has an almond-like flavor. Purple seagrape berries make great jelly and are hard to stop eating fresh off the tree.
Native mulberry, wild blackberries, wild grapes, persimmon, pond apple, simpson stopper, and native strangler fig fruits are fun to eat as they ripen in the yard.
The olive sized fruit of the satinleaf tree tastes like sweet prunes and will leave a wad of chicle in your mouth. This is the same gum once found in Chiclets chewing gum.
Other less tasty yet edible berries include beautyberry, wild coffee, marlberry, wild cherry, black ironwood; and white, redberry, and spanish, stoppers.
Even the one-inch fruits of the native saw palmetto are edible when black and juicy in September through November, yet have a funky flavor like sweet balsamic vinegar. I personally find them delicious.
Now you can make your yard into a haven for birds and a safe place for your kids to try new natural treats. Don’t forget some sweetened elderberry juice during the summer and persimmon nut bread at thanksgiving.
Again, try one berry the first day, then increase until you are confident it won’t give you a sour stomach. And don’t eat too many as even too many grapes will cause a stomach ache.
Dragonflies
Dragonflies… Our Guardians Against Mosquitoes And Other Pests.
The sound of crinkled cellophane fills the air in mid May as thousands of dragonflies emerge from local ponds and congregate in our yards.
The gold wing skimmer seems to be the most common. I enjoy watching them and get pleasure out of knowing that the one that just dove in at me is leaving with a mosquito snack.
Although many species of dragonfly are in danger of extinction, due to man made changes to wetlands, some are actually benefiting from the lakes, ponds, canals and wet ditches that we make.
Areas that fill with water for a few weeks don’t have large fish in them that eat dragonfly larva or those of amphibians. These “seasonal wetlands “are great places for our native frogs and toads to breed in for that reason.
You can make your pond, lake, canal or even the occasionally wet portion of your yard into a haven for wildlife, including dragonflies. Plant cypress trees along the edges and fill in with bulrush, pickerelweed, cord grass and other native vegetation for cover.
Female dragonflies lay their eggs in the soil or in plant tissue along the pond edge or in floating algae mats. They will also slowly drop them into the water or drop them while racing along the surface.
Too much algae which is fed by the runoff of over fertilized lawns covers beneficial submerged plants that provide dragonfly larval habitat.
The dragonfly larva develops underwater and eats tadpoles, small fish, and mosquito larvae. It then climbs out of the water onto an emergent plant where it sheds its larval skin, pumps out its wings and dries them.
A speed boat going by at this time can knock them into the water where they will drown. Muscovy ducks can also be a problem by eating the vulnerable emergents.
Most dragonflies are local, yet some of them migrate. Certain landscape features concentrate these migrants into dense swarms which are exceptional during the more populated fall migration. September is the best time to see these southbound migrations along the coast which they follow.
Next time you see dragonflies in your yard, it might be fun to learn their names and watch for interesting behavior.
The 1.7 inch eastern pondhawk; the male is light chalky blue, the female is green, may be following you and snapping up prey that you frighten into the open. Two males will cartwheel as they change leaders 12 to 14 times while rising vertically into the air.
I recommend Dragonflies through Binoculars by Sidney W. Dunkle. This book has excellent pictures and great information. Learning dragonflies is just another way to enjoy nature watching and is very exciting when you find rare ones in your own yard.
Concentrated Birds
Birds Concentrate Where Food Abounds
Our resident winter birds arrive from September to November. These include hummingbirds, painted buntings, and blue-gray gnatcatchers, several species of warblers, sharp – shinned hawks, kestrels, peregrine falcons, and even bald eagles. Florida bald eagles begin to nest in October.
In April, they and their young fly to the Chesapeake Bay for the summer. My wife spotted one over a Publix parking lot stealing a fish from an osprey; funny how no one else noticed.
Take a closer look at the familiar and you may be surprised by something new. Eagles often mix with vultures momentarily in the sky yet keep moving rather than circle.
The male summer tanager is red like a cardinal yet without the crest. Kingbirds, phoebes, flycatchers and shrikes often look like common mockingbirds. Good grief! I just looked out the window and saw a male rose-breasted grosbeak on the feeder. I never saw one of those here before.
Why are there so many birds in the middle of all this development? Simple, there is nowhere else to find the cover and food that our small rural community offers.
Many of our native grasses like the basket grass, Fakahatchee grass, and witch grasses along with wildflowers offer their seeds.
Nuts on the oaks, and berries on a wide variety of shrubs offer plenty to the new arrivals. Even the insect pests of the summer are being cleaned off of the vegetation by migrant birds.
The native firebush not only attracts hummingbirds to the flowers but is loaded with half inch berries that the other birds fight over. Hackberry trees offer tiny berries along with elderberry, southern red cedar, bloodberry, wild coffee, snowberry and Spanish stopper.
Bahama strongbark droops with clusters of half inch orange berries. Oaks, Florida elm, red maple, hickories, sweetgum and slash pine offer nuts and seeds while coontie offers the orange covering of its nut to blue jays and squirrels.
Let the leaves fall and lay around your trees and brown thrashers, worm eating warblers and other birds will be seen picking through the leaf litter for insects.
If there are any native shrubs in the area, the seeds will be dropped by roosting birds and you will have a free, natural looking planting under your tree. No need to decide what would look natural in this case.
In fact, much of our yard has planted itself from the seeds of our installed native plants being carried away by birds and squirrels.
Just get a start with a few wild coffee, marlberry, bloodberry, beauty berry and oaks and you will be surprised at how many seedlings germinate in favorable locations. It is rare to have to pull one up.
Cold Hardy Native Plants
The Extended Cold Spell During The Winter Of 2010 Was Rough On Many Exotics And Even Some Natives.
Native plants that are full of fruit, seed and insects for birds to eat are important after a cold snap. Beautyberry, marlberry, firebush, Florida elm, red maple, Spanish and white stoppers, Strangler fig, and the last slash pine cones bear their fruits and seed for hungry birds during the winter months.
It is a pleasure to watch the hummingbirds feed on the firebush flowers and the other birds eat the variety of native fruits on the property. Our bird bath is very popular too.
Many of our native plants range from the Florida Keys to Merritt Island. Florida privet, dahoon holly, wild lime, coontie, Simpson stopper, beautyberry and saw palmetto are very cold hardy and may not show any stress at all after a freeze.
Cocoplum, bloodberry, and orange Geiger are the wimps that may die completely if exposed to freezing temperatures for long. Most other natives can take short periods of below freezing temperatures and only have leaf burn to show for it.
Some of our natives are adapted to being burned by fire or frozen to the ground and look bushier and more beautiful than ever when they grow back.
Beautyberry, necklacepod, firebush, fiddlewood and wild coffee look their best if cut to the ground every few years. Early March is the best time to do this, just before new growth starts. Or, let a cold snap do it for you.
With the warm air of the Gulf Stream currents just off our shores, we are often spared the colder temperatures that the areas south and north of us endure. Everglades National Park had temperatures in the low 20’s in February compared the low 30’s in eastern Palm Beach County.
Cold hardiness is just one of the many reasons that I like our native plants. Planting a diversity of native plants will ensure that there are berries available all year long and that a cold spell doesn’t wipe out all of the food for our local and migratory birds.
This can happen when the few fruiting exotics are killed to the ground. And who wants their seeds spread across the landscape anyway?
Look for whistling flocks of cedar wax wings and clucking flocks of robins in our skies in the winter or early spring. They may be pushed south by a lack of food in North and Central Florida. They will both flock to a native strangler fig if it is in fruit.
Coastal Trees and Shrubs
We share some beautiful plants with the Bahamas, West Indies and other Caribbean islands. They include the gumbo limbo, wild coffee, paradise tree and other plants that arrived here thousands of years ago as seeds in bird droppings, being blown in by hurricanes and by floating across the ocean.
Natural coastal areas from the Florida Keys to Merritt Island are covered with these tropical looking plants. Actually, they are subtropical and can withstand temperatures of 36 degrees F or below.
It is hard to find plants that are better adapted to salt air, some saltwater flooding, long periods of drought and hurricanes.
Many of these plants have beautiful clusters of small, fragrant flowers that are followed by fruit in progression throughout the season. During bird migration, storms may cause a fallout of robins and cedar waxwings.
These birds will be grateful for the food that your trees and bushes provide. This is a good time to have marlberry, mastic, pineland and Florida privet, redberry stopper, pigeon plum, wild coffee and beautyberry in your yard offering their fruit.
None of these are poisonous to pets or kids; yet don’t make a meal of them as they may cause a belly ache.
My wife and I recently visited Key West for the first time in six years and were delighted to see native trees, shrubs and ground covers used in many of the landscapes.
They have a 70 percent native plant landscape requirement in new construction compared to Palm Beach County’s 60 percent. In the near future Key West will raise this to 90 percent.
The result is that hotels, parks, homes and businesses are more beautifully landscaped than anywhere else I have seen in South Florida since moving here in 1982.
There are columns of Jamaica caper, large groups of key thatch, beautiful wild cinnamon trees full of red berries, and masses of golden creeper, coontie, key lily, and silvery sea oxeye daisies used as ground covers.
Water use is minimal to none on these sites and there are plenty of berries for the birds. I even got buzzed by a hummingbird in town.
We can thank Cynthia Domenech-Coogle, the Urban Forestry Program Manager in Key West for her great efforts in introducing native plants to the public. It is amazing what one person can do to beautify a city and start a wonderful trend.
A good reference book for native plants is “Florida’s Best Native Landscape Plants” by Gil Nelson. Many of the plants that he mentions are found in our local native plant nurseries.
Check out the AFNN.org site to locate nurseries near you. Call them for what you want as the plants listed on the site are only a small picture of what they have.
Planting in the spring will give your plants the whole growing season to become established and you should start seeing berries by next year. Hand watering will use very little water to establish the plants.
There are a wealth of local native plants found along our coast that will give your yard a tropical look and provide local wildlife with food and nest sites.
Why settle for the tired look of impatiens and invasive clusia, podocarpus, Green Island Ficus, areca palms and Trinette that provide little wildlife value when you can have a yard full of birds and butterflies and other interesting insects like ladybugs.
Chimney Swifts
Chimney swifts spend most of their lives in the air catching mosquitoes, swarming termites, biting flies and other insect pests.
They arrive in late March and nest from May to August, returning to Peru in early November. Our only local swift increased in numbers and range as humans built houses with chimneys.
These chimneys replaced the holes in large dead trees that were the traditional nesting sites. Now chimney swifts are in decline because people screen them out of the chimney top because the sound of the chicks chirping can be loud for ten days.
Only one nest is built in each chimney and one clutch of three to five eggs is laid. This makes nesting sites very important because the swifts simply won’t double up somewhere else.
The half saucer shaped nest is made of small twigs glued together with saliva to the side of the chimney. A species in Asia makes its nest entirely of saliva which hardens and is collected by local people to export for birds nest soup. Ok, don’t think about it.
Just before migration, chimney swifts congregate in often large groups and may use your chimney to roost in at night. It is a beautiful sight to see hundreds of these birds returning at dusk as they twitter and dive-bomb insects near the entrance before settling in.
You can help swifts by removing barriers to your brick chimney entrance. Metal chimneys aren’t used, yet the best thing that you can do for almost immediate results is to build a nest box.
This is not easy and having a twelve foot tall wooden tower in your back yard may not be for everyone. Maybe they can be added to our local parks and common areas. Go to www.chimneyswifts.org for design ideas.
My neighbor has a brick chimney and we all get to enjoy seeing dozens of swifts hover around it each summer evening. It seems as if the mosquitoes are less of a problem too.
In European towns and cities, common swifts return by the hundreds at dusk to their chimney roosts. Few mosquitoes survive this attack and the sight of these speedsters is uplifting.
We can duplicate this in our area with nest boxes and hopefully reduce the need for aerial spraying for mosquitoes which of course also kills butterflies, and other beneficial insects.
Feral and Outdoor Cats
During our balmy Florida winters we have many avian residents that brighten our days. The chatter of wrens, the flash of hummingbirds and the beauty of painted buntings are some examples.
We try to welcome our guests with food, water and protection from harm. However, our neighborhood has attracted a problem that threatens our birds. This problem is feral cats.
There is some vacant land nearby that is slated for development, yet was put on hold due to the bad economy. This land has become an attractive spot for people to drop off their unwanted cats.
Someone has also started to feed these cats, making matters worse as the cats linger and multiply. I realize that this is a controversial subject, but this problem needs to be addressed by more people.
Feral cats live an average of three years and are killed by dogs, other cats, disease, cars and people. They spread rabies, feline leukemia and other diseases.
Over four billion song birds a year are killed by these cats. Indoor cats, by contrast, live an average of 14 years and lead safer, healthier and happier lives.
73 million cats have owners and 100 million or more are feral in the US. Cats eat small rodents, birds, and other beneficial wildlife, but they can’t kill large city rats, so there is no benefit to having them outdoors.
Following habitat destruction, cats are the greatest cause of bird extinctions worldwide. Even putting a bell on a cat won’t help because birds don’t associate a bell’s tinkle with danger.
Young fledgling birds fly slowly and spend much of their time hiding on the ground waiting for their parents to bring them food. During this vulnerable period 90 percent of these baby birds are killed within cat infested areas.
Feeding or neutering cats doesn’t stop their urge to kill. Feeding simply subsidizes an over abundance of these predators.
They can also cause great harm to quail and other ground nesting birds including shore birds which sleep on the ground and are easy to catch.
I recently noticed a feral cat stalking the painted buntings around our feeder. This cat comes from the local colony.
One of these cats was killed by a neighbor’s dog and others will be hit by cars or suffer other demises along with malnutrition and disease.
Keep your cat indoors. Provide it with toys and access to a screened patio. Your cat will be happy, live long and so will your local birds