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 a psychologist 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 deadscape.

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

Talamy, 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'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 it's overspreading two or three yards that's great

that's gonna provide a lot of resources for many of the houses in that

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.

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