This is Bird Note.

One of the biggest threats to birds is the decline in biodiversity due to habitat loss,

and the traditional manicured lawn isn't helping.

Even birds who visit backyard feeders, like these black-cap chickadees,

need a healthy mix of seeds, berries, and insects,

often found on the native plants that we villainize as weeds when they grow in our lawns,

says ecologist Douglas Talamy.

We have more than 40 million acres of lawn in the U.S.,

which is the size of New England, and that's an ecological deadcape.

That means one of the easiest ways to protect birds at home is to grow native plants, says

Talami, who co-founded an organization called Homegrown National Park to help people transform

their lawns into havens for wildlife. I love people to stop looking at their yard as an isolated ecosystem.

It's part of a neighborhood.

And somebody who's got a sunny spot down the street, but no trees.

Okay, that's where the pollinator gardens go.

Somebody's got a giant oak and is overspreading two or three yards.

That's great.

That's going to provide a lot of resources for many of the houses in that

yard. So look at your neighborhood as an entire local ecosystem and see what the total resources are.

Reducing your lawn to make room for native plants is a small step forward.

But imagine if everybody did this. This is why we call the Homegrown National Park movement, a grassroots movement.

It's a call to action. To learn more about homegrown national park, start at our website,

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