for their offspring. “The thing is, we all love songbirds, and we don’t see them as much anymore,” Clarke says. “They need caterpillars. And so where do they find them? They find them on your backyard garden’s vegetables and on the larger fields of vegetables.” Veronica Bowers, founder and director of Native Songbird Care & Conservation in Sebastopol agrees with Clarke. “I can tell you that, in general, songbird populations are in decline, some species more dramatically than others,” Bowers says. “Even our most common species like dark-eyed junco and American robins are in decline,” Bowers says. “And the drivers of those declines all derive from anthropogenic causes like window collisions, free roaming cats and pesticide use. Loss of habitat is, of course, the larger overarching theme.”
Bowers explains that loss of habitat means loss of vital resources, meaning all the plant life that’s required to sustain insect life. Those same insects are necessary to sustain the health of songbird populations. “You have habitat loss on their wintering grounds and on their breeding grounds,” Bowers says. “And now we’re really starting to see the impact of climate change and how that’s reducing healthy habitats.” Bowers says many species of migratory songbirds aren’t able to adapt quickly enough to the changing climate. “We have species who are shifting their ranges in response to climate change,” she says. “There’s a lot going on, on planet Earth and in our immediate local area, that’s having significant impact on songbird populations.”
In order to create more habitat at her home in Sebastopol, Bowers looked to the native plants and trees that were growing in a protected parcel near her property. “There is Western hazelnut, black oak and live oak and there’s some willow growing back there,” she says. “There are some native plants and trees, and I noticed that there was a lot of bird diversity back along that creek.” Continues Bowers: “I really keyed into the species that we had occurring in that area, what their needs were, and then tried to replicate that on our property and kind of build on that already existing habitat corridor. We just extended it by virtue of planting native plants on our property.” Almost 25 years later, Bowers says they have 33 species of songbirds who nest on the property during the breeding season and over 100 different species of birds that occur throughout the year. “It’s primarily because we have created habitat,” she says. She says they’ve been hosting a bio blitz with their summer interns and the results have been impressive. “The bird diversity as well as butterflies, dragonflies, bees and all of our wonderful insect life that is here is because of our effort to create habitat,” Bowers says. “We’ve created habitat to sustain biodiversity here and e owe that to the foundation of mostly native plants.” For those curious about which native plants might be easiest to start with, or the ones that support certain species, Clarke suggests the California Native Plant Society’s website Calscape. Many local master gardeners, like Clarke, enjoy having Mediterranean plants like lavender growing in their
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March 2024
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