This is bird note.

This Robin is making a delivery of tasty caterpillars to its fledglings.

Like many songbirds, they rely on these insects to raise their young, says entomologist Douglas Talami.

It takes thousands and thousands and thousands of caterpillars to make one clutch of baby birds.

And that's just to get it to the point where it fledges, where it leaves the nest.

But habitat loss is making caterpillars and other nutritious insects hard to come by.

So, Talami co-founded an organization called Homegrown National Park to help people bring biodiversity to their own gardens,

which can be as easy as planting an acorn.

Oaks support more species of caterpillars than any other tree genus in the country.

Hundreds of butterfly and moth species start their lives as caterpillars foraging in oak branches,

making these trees a fully stocked pantry for birds like tanagers, bluebirds.

Tipmice, chickadees, cardinals, red belly woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, pilliated woodpeckers, magnolia warblers, hooded warblers, prairie warblers, yellow warblers, wood threshes and hermit threshes.

The list goes on. So when you plan an oak, you're actually planning an entire community. You're

creating an awful lot of life in your yard that wasn't there before you put that oak in.

That life is called biodiversity.

To learn more about homegrown national park and how to take part in their simple grassroots solution to the biodiversity crisis,

visit birdnote.org. I'm Ariana Revel.