Credit: Jim Wright
Great column by Jim Wright in today’s Record on Mill Creek Marsh! Read it here.
Mill Creek Marsh in Today’s Record
Daily Archives: January 28, 2016
Don Torino’s Life in the Meadowlands: Plant a Birch, Save a Bird (and some Butterflies and Moths Too)
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- Pine Siskin feeding on birch catkins in Losen Slote, Little Ferry
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- Red-polls feed on birch tree catkins at Losen Slote, Little Ferry
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- Gray birches at Mill Creek, Secaucus
Robert Frost wrote in his poem “Birches” that “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” As much value as birch trees might be to your exercise regime, they are one of the most beneficial trees you can plant to help wildlife.
Seeds produced by the “catkins,” or seed clusters, attract many bird species such as our State Bird, the American Goldfinch. In fact, if you were to take a catkin and tap it in the palm of your hand, you would see many tiny seeds very similar to the commercially available thistle or nyger seed used for finch feeders. Besides our goldfinch, irruption birds such as Redpolls, Purple finch and Pine siskins relish the tiny seeds that are important to their survival.