On Saturday, October 4, 22 birders awoke before sunrise, loaded into vans, and began our journey from Northern Virginia to Cape May, NJ, our eyes set on this faraway destination perfectly aligned with the Atlantic Flyway, one of the four “avian superhighways” in North America.
Northern Virginia’s stream and river water quality is not great. Although agriculture is the largest contributor by far of nutrient and sediment loads in Virginia’s streams, rivers, and the Chesapeake Bay, urban and suburban stormwater runoff is the second-largest and the fastest-growing contributor to these pollutants.
Finding natives in commercial garden centers can be challenging. Plant labels, excepting those that Plant NOVA Native volunteers have already tagged in red as “Native,” rarely offer much information and use terms that can be confusing. Here are some definitions and tips to help you find exactly what the biodiversity of the region needs.
Now is the time to clean and fill the feeders to help birds make a living when other food sources are scarce. It’s also time to think about providing next year’s winter bird food by planting more native plants, including native grasses, wildflowers, and woody plants, such as shrubs, vines and trees, that provide sustenance all winter long.
Fall-fruiting native shrubs and trees not only provide nutritious, fatty berries for birds, but also display beautiful fall color. That’s not for our benefit: what’s called foliar fruit flagging is the way the plants signal to birds that fruits are ripe and ready for plucking—just in time for migration.
