native
Parrot Cove to the Rescue!
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This is a speech given by a citizen, Phil Weinrich, from the Lake Worth neighborhood called Parrot Cove. The neighborhood recently gave away nearly 800 native trees to be planted in yards throughout the neighborhood. Money for the trees was raised through annual "Holiday Home Tours". Guidance was given on how and where to plant for those who wished to plant them themselves and volunteers helped plant the trees for those who needed it.
PARROT COVE TO THE RESCUE!
You’re going to have visitors this fall. Lots of them! Some will stop briefly on their way through town. Others will stay for the entire winter. They’ll be tired and hungry and desperate for your hospitality.
You won’t have to cook or clean for them, or show them the sights. In fact, the only demand they’ll make on your time is if you choose to sit at your window and watch them.
They’re not mineral or vegetable; they’re smaller than a breadbox. They’re birds.
And you live right on their flyway . . . their migratory pathway between where they raise their families and where they go to spend the winter. They funnel through Florida by the hundreds of thousands, and a great many of them follow ancient, instinctive, patterns of travel utilizing the coast as a navigational aid, right through our Parrot Cove Neighborhood.
Many of the warblers, thrushes, orioles, tanagers, grosbeaks, hummingbirds, and other miniature migrants that pass through your yard have come from points as far north as Canada and the Arctic Circle, and the vast majority won’t settle in for the winter until they reach South America.
Up until just a hundred years ago or so, coastal Florida was a garden landscape of mangrove swamps and hammock forests that provided everything a weary traveler could as for . . . food, water, shelter. Parrot Cove is still a garden landscape with lovely trees and plantings and lawns. But without knowing the consequences, many of us have chosen trees, shrubs, and grasses for our yards that hail from beautiful, tropical lands in other parts of the world. The fact that they are not well adapted to our Florida soils and climate is an inconvenience that we know how to overcome by just applying some fertilizers and irrigation.
The fact that they are totally foreign to a native songbird’s digestive system is NOT something the birds can overcome. Just like a koala, whose digestive system can only derive nourishment from eucalyptus leaves, our tiny migrants can digest only those proteins for which they have matching digestive enzymes. They are unable to extract nutrients from the leaves, buds and berries of scarcely any of the plants we have chosen to grow in our yards (their flyway).
Imagine trying to take a long road trip, and all they provided at any gas station was bales of hay! Good fuel, but not for what you’re driving! Your yard is probably just the same . . .full of the plants that provide fuel for birds migrating through Polynesia or Southeast Asia, but not for the ones that live HERE!
To compound the problem, our choice of non-native landscape plants has also impacted the populations of insects the birds are equipped to digest. Bugs are high-protein foods for migrating birds, but the species the birds target are not to be found in non-native vegetation.
Now try to imagine a tiny Magnolia Warbler heading for the Tropics. He’s so tiny, you could mail him and his mate to California for the price of one stamp . . .and he’s got to put on enough fat to fuel his trip across the entire Caribbean Sea to South America. He finds endless acres of parking lots and rooftops and asphalt all along his traditional migratory route, and when he does find trees and shrubs, they are mostly ones he can’t eat, with bugs he can’t digest.
So who should come to the rescue? The good folks of Parrot Cove Neighborhood, that’s who! At our last Neighborhood gathering, the membership voted to establish a special tree-planting program to rebuild our hurricane-battered tree canopy . . .and the Tree Committee decided to place 100% of our emphasis on native species that are of special value to migratory birds!
In a nutshell, the Committee is working with a local native plant arborist, Carl Terwilliger, of Meadow Beauty Nursery, to obtain a varied selection of migratory bird-friendly trees for planting in Parrot Cove Neighborhood. Funds from the PCN treasury will pay for the trees, which will then be distributed to members to plant in their yards! Tree Committee members and the arborist will provide information about selecting and planting and caring for your tree(s), and neighbors will be on hand to help get the trees in the ground.
Not only will we be on the way to restoring our battered canopy, but at the same time we will be replacing it with the very trees our migratory birds count on for their survival! Yard by yard, our entire neighborhood will become a sanctuary (and re-fueling station) for wildlife in desperate need of our help. As we make our neighborhood a more beautiful place for ourselves, we will be embarking on a project with truly global conservation implications!
You’re going to have visitors this fall. Lots of them! Some will stop briefly on their way through town. Others will stay for the entire winter. They’ll be tired and hungry and desperate for your hospitality.
You won’t have to cook or clean for them, or show them the sights. In fact, the only demand they’ll make on your time is if you choose to sit at your window and watch them.
They’re not mineral or vegetable; they’re smaller than a breadbox. They’re birds.
And you live right on their flyway . . . their migratory pathway between where they raise their families and where they go to spend the winter. They funnel through Florida by the hundreds of thousands, and a great many of them follow ancient, instinctive, patterns of travel utilizing the coast as a navigational aid, right through our Parrot Cove Neighborhood.
Many of the warblers, thrushes, orioles, tanagers, grosbeaks, hummingbirds, and other miniature migrants that pass through your yard have come from points as far north as Canada and the Arctic Circle, and the vast majority won’t settle in for the winter until they reach South America.
Up until just a hundred years ago or so, coastal Florida was a garden landscape of mangrove swamps and hammock forests that provided everything a weary traveler could as for . . . food, water, shelter. Parrot Cove is still a garden landscape with lovely trees and plantings and lawns. But without knowing the consequences, many of us have chosen trees, shrubs, and grasses for our yards that hail from beautiful, tropical lands in other parts of the world. The fact that they are not well adapted to our Florida soils and climate is an inconvenience that we know how to overcome by just applying some fertilizers and irrigation.
The fact that they are totally foreign to a native songbird’s digestive system is NOT something the birds can overcome. Just like a koala, whose digestive system can only derive nourishment from eucalyptus leaves, our tiny migrants can digest only those proteins for which they have matching digestive enzymes. They are unable to extract nutrients from the leaves, buds and berries of scarcely any of the plants we have chosen to grow in our yards (their flyway).
Imagine trying to take a long road trip, and all they provided at any gas station was bales of hay! Good fuel, but not for what you’re driving! Your yard is probably just the same . . .full of the plants that provide fuel for birds migrating through Polynesia or Southeast Asia, but not for the ones that live HERE!
To compound the problem, our choice of non-native landscape plants has also impacted the populations of insects the birds are equipped to digest. Bugs are high-protein foods for migrating birds, but the species the birds target are not to be found in non-native vegetation.
Now try to imagine a tiny Magnolia Warbler heading for the Tropics. He’s so tiny, you could mail him and his mate to California for the price of one stamp . . .and he’s got to put on enough fat to fuel his trip across the entire Caribbean Sea to South America. He finds endless acres of parking lots and rooftops and asphalt all along his traditional migratory route, and when he does find trees and shrubs, they are mostly ones he can’t eat, with bugs he can’t digest.
So who should come to the rescue? The good folks of Parrot Cove Neighborhood, that’s who! At our last Neighborhood gathering, the membership voted to establish a special tree-planting program to rebuild our hurricane-battered tree canopy . . .and the Tree Committee decided to place 100% of our emphasis on native species that are of special value to migratory birds!
In a nutshell, the Committee is working with a local native plant arborist, Carl Terwilliger, of Meadow Beauty Nursery, to obtain a varied selection of migratory bird-friendly trees for planting in Parrot Cove Neighborhood. Funds from the PCN treasury will pay for the trees, which will then be distributed to members to plant in their yards! Tree Committee members and the arborist will provide information about selecting and planting and caring for your tree(s), and neighbors will be on hand to help get the trees in the ground.
Not only will we be on the way to restoring our battered canopy, but at the same time we will be replacing it with the very trees our migratory birds count on for their survival! Yard by yard, our entire neighborhood will become a sanctuary (and re-fueling station) for wildlife in desperate need of our help. As we make our neighborhood a more beautiful place for ourselves, we will be embarking on a project with truly global conservation implications!
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