FIrst Wednesday Taking Care of Wildlife Challenge: Fall Bird Migration: Keep Bird Baths Full and Turn Off Your Outdoor Lights

PLEASE!

 Wowzer, look at the number of birds who flew over Tennessee earlier this week. Tennessee is experiencing a drought right now so water is essential. Food helps, too. While you're thinking about birds, please turn off your outdoor lights at night!

And, Davidson county statistics!

Over 39 Million birds flew over Tennessee overnight on Monday of this week...and millions more will continue migrating south through November.

Birds migrate south as winter approaches because insects and other foods are dwindling. They're traveling to areas that have food and nesting. Some birds stay put because they can find adequate food and water, others are traveling anywhere from a hundred miles to several hundred. The birds that are being monitored by Bird Cast are long-distance migrators. "They typically move from breeding ranges in the United States and Canada to wintering grounds in Central and South America. It's an arduous journey and over 350 different species of North American birds are long distance migrators." (source)

 

Nuthatches don't usually migrate from middle TN. They are frequent visitors to bird feeders

Migration is a natural phenomena that happens every fall and spring. Their journey is physically taxing and the lack of adequate food and water supplies along the way, bad weather, exposure to predators and the ever increasing danger from colliding into lit up buildings all add to making this journey hazardous.

Here's what we can do to help birds during their arduous journey

 

Provide food

Fill your garden with native plants that attract insects that birds will need or have seeds that birds eat both provide needed fuel. Plant these: sunflowers, purple coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, and various asters, goldenrods, and native grasses like Big Bluestem and Little Bluestem. For birds that prefer nuts, plant native oaks, hickories, and hazels. Leaving these plants standing with their seed heads intact through fall and winter provides a crucial food source for migratory birds.

Provide fresh water

Make your windows obvious, especially the big picture windows. Windows are reflective and confuse birds. Add decals, paint spider webs, stripes or designs, this will keep birds from colliding into them when they stop at our feeders. 

Go lights out at 11pm to 6am during migration (spring and fall)

Become an advocate: Work to get your community involved in turning off their outdoor lights from 11pm to 6am every night. 

Join local groups advocating for birds and other critters: Bird Safe Nashville, Nashville Urban Bird, The Nature Conservancy of Tennessee, Tennessee Environmental Council

Investigate where migrating birds might be staging near you. For years Purple Martins have been roosting in the trees in downtown Nashville. I didn't see their roosting site in August and really missed seeing them. The photo below is from September 1, 2025

 

 

Sept 1, 2025 downtown Nashville

Providing Food for birds is a year round gardening commitment

Because we get a lot of joy from observing them in our gardens, Michael and I feed the birds and provide water year round. I garden for wildlife so the garden has been designed with critters in mind. In fact, nearly every plant has been chosen with birds, insects and other critters in mind. My native shrubs provide food, nesting and shelter for mammals and birds, as well as being a host plant to butterflies, moths and other insects that keep my wildflower garden thriving. Native plants are also a haven for tasty insects which so many migrants, particularly the Warblers need for fuel. 

I hope that there's enough food in the garden for hungry migrating birds that stopover; if not, there will always be supplemental seed and suet in feeders and water in the bird baths and raised ponds. Biologists refer to places as “stopover” habitats, areas where birds stop to rest, eat, and seek shelter from predators. Some stopover sites are so large they can even be called “staging areas” because so many birds come together to rest and then continue their migration. One of the most famous staging areas around the world is along the Platte River in central Nebraska, where more than 500,000 sandhill cranes gather in a spectacle of migration! (source) That's on my "got to see list".

 Water is essential to migrating Birds.

 My garden has been crispy from the heat dome that sat over middle Tennessee for weeks. 100˚ days and no rain were devastating for the garden. We asked John, the owner of The Woodthrush, what we could be doing for migrating birds. He said that water was super important for migrating birds. We are keeping our birdbaths topped up with clean water for our resident and visiting birds. 

 

 

Here's a little bit more about birds and water that you might like to know.

Birds need water just as much as they need food. The birds that live and visit our garden need dependable water to survive. Each day, an adult bird needs to drink enough water to make up 5 percent of its body weight to replace the water lost from waste removal, respiration and evaporation. Water performs a number of important functions: bathing, to clean feathers and remove parasites. They get some of their water/moisture from the insects and fruit they eat, but, they need to drink water every day. 

 

How we can provide water:

• Bird baths. Place them near cover so birds can hide from prey. Place in shade so water stays fresh. Change water often. I heat mine all winter so there is water for birds when it's freezing out.
  
• Place water dishes on the ground since many birds prefer drinking water like this.
  
• If you have the resources a pond or stream would be ideal.
• Raised bed ponds with a way for birds to safely drink.
  
• A shallow galvanized container with rocks for birds to perch on works well, too.
  
• Misters, water wigglers, and drippers invite birds to come to bird baths and natural pools.
  
• When desperate for rain, as we've been lately, I turn on an over head sprinkler and watch the birds fly in and out of the water. It's magical, they arrive the minute the water is turned on. It makes me happy and takes care of many of the critters. I do it for the birds post.

 

Migrating birds need this very important thing to happen, too.

Birds that migrate or hunt at night navigate by moonlight and starlight. Migratory birds depend on cues from properly timed seasonal schedules. Artificial lights can cause them to migrate too early or too late and miss ideal climate conditions for nesting, foraging, and other behaviors. It can also cause them to be attracted to illuminated building where they can collide and die. (source) 

Collision hazards for birds come in many forms and can affect many types of birds. In fact, nearly one billion birds collide with glass in the U.S. alone each year. Most of these (preventable) fatalities happen at homes and buildings shorter than four stories tall. Please make note of that fact...Birds are in danger of our lit-up homes, not just sky-scrappers, wind-turbines or towers.

According to research scientist Christopher Kyba, for nocturnal animals “the introduction of artificial light probably represents the most drastic change human beings have made to their environment.” 

“Predators use light to hunt, and prey species use darkness as cover,” Kyba explains. “Near cities, cloudy skies are now hundreds or even thousands of times brighter than they were 200 years ago. We are only beginning to learn what a drastic effect this has had on nocturnal ecology.” (source)

Migrating Purple Martins 2024

One last thing.

This is my plea to you all. Please turn off your outdoor lights from 11pm to 6am every night.  I wish you would consider turning off your eave lights, tree up-lighting and porch lights every night, but if not always, please, turn them off during bird migration. For more information about the effects of artificial lighting on all living creatures go to my post First Wednesday Challenge: Every Day Needs A Night.

Thank for reading, xoxogail

 PS. Birds you might not recognize could be stopping by to nosh at your feeders and take a dip in your water features. To help you id them I recommend the  Merlin Bird Id.

 

 

Gail Eichelberger is a gardener, Tennessee Naturalist and nature writer in Middle Tennessee. She loves wildflowers and native plants and thoroughly enjoys writing about the ones she grows at Clay and Limestone. She reminds all that the words and images are the property of the author and cannot be used without written permission.

Wildflower Wednesday: Fleischmannia incarnata, Worth A Second Look

Pink thoroughwort, our Wildflower Wednesday star, is struggling in the intense heat but, by golly it hasn't died! 

 

It prefers a moist environment and it's been anything but moist this past month in middle Tennessee. I discovered it in my garden about ten years ago. It looked like  Conoclinium coelestinum/Blue Mistflower, but, the flowers were less numerous and pink, plus it was practically laying on the soil and  blue-mist flower is upright with sturdy red stems. 

 

I'm never surprised to discover a new native plant in this neighborhood or even in my garden. Plants frequently appear, either having gone unnoticed or because conditions were favorable for growth of seeds in the soil seed bank. 

Wildflowers and other Central Basin natives grew with happy abandon in the forested woodland where this garden now stands. In the 1940s and early 1950s a neighborhood was carved from the woodland and houses were built. Homeowners came and went, while the wildflowers grew quietly on the woodland edge. Forty plus years ago, my husband I bought this house and that I fell head over heals in love with the wildflowers that bloomed that first fall and spring. The autumn memory of blue clouds of ex-asters that were covered with bees and butterflies still makes me smile. 

The woodland remnants in my backyard and side yards were where I discovered the beautiful wildflowers that have become my gardening soulmates: False Soloman's Seal, Spring Beauties, Purple phacelia, Rue Anemone, Trout-lily, False Garlic, Blue-eyed Grass, Wild Sweet William, Sweet Betsy, Goldenrods, Blue Mistflower, Frostweed and those many white and blue ex-asters.

Long time readers might remember that I built this garden around those native beauties, so, finding  Fleischmannia incarnata back then was a wonderful addition to the mixture.

source: Alan Cressler

 Fleischmannia incarnata is a North American species of flowering plant in the Asteracea family. It is native to the United States from Florida north as far as Virginia, Ohio, and Illinois, and west to Texas and Oklahoma and even Arizona. It's found growing in moist woodlands, thickets, marshes, and along streambanks. In optimal growing conditions, it can reach 6 feet tall, but, in my garden it's a low branching sprawler. It produces numerous flower heads in a flat-topped array at the ends of the stems, each head has about 20 pink or whitish-pink disk flowers per head. There are no ray flowers.

The leaves are opposite, widely spaced at nodes, and triangular shaped; they remind me of Nepeta. They're softer to the touch than leaves of Blue Mistflower, which is another way to tell them apart.

leaves are described as catnip like!

It has an airy, loose limbed attractiveness and is a good partner for Eupatorium serotinum, both are found in moist shade. It's not unusual to find it sprawling against neighboring plants in a lax fashion. Training it on a trellis might help show off it's pretty flower faces to the world.

Foraging bees are frequent visitors. Skippers hover around it, doing their lovely mating dances. It doesn't appear to be a host plant for butterflies, but, if anyone reading this knows otherwise, please let me know. Birds feed on the dry seed heads, so leave the plant standing over winter.

 

Source

 Here's why I think you should bother to try to locate and grow pink thoroughwort in your garden.

• It's a late season, low maintenance native flower that supports pollinators and birds
• Native to the southeastern United States and west to TX, OK and AZ 
• It thrives naturally in woodland edges, moist thickets, and average garden soils
• Deer resistant
• Fragrant blooms
• Lovely colored flowers 

 The particulars

Botanical name: Fleischmannia incarnata
Common Name: pink slender thoroughwort, pink thoroughwort, pink boneset
Herbaceous perennial
Native Range: In the USA: AL, AR, AZ, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MO, MS, NC, OH, OK, SC, TN, TX, VA, WV. May even be found in upper midwest states

source

 

Tennessee Range:

Size: 12 in. - 6 ft. | 30 cm - 1.8 m, low branching growth habit, sprawling. 

Bloom Time: Aug–Dec. depending upon where you garden

Bloom Description:Inflorescence - Flat-topped panicles of heads at branch tips and flower heads with disc florets and no ray florets. Flowers are fragrant.

Best Plant Description: In appearance it is reminiscent of a tall, gangly ageratum with pale pinkish florets and catnip-like leaves.

Sun Light: Shade, Partial to Full Shade

Water: Prefers moist soil

National Wetland Indicator Status: FACU+ FAC

 Maintenance: Low, as long as it is not allowed to dry out.

Propagation Methods: From seed; direct sow outdoors in fall or direct sow after last frost.

Seed Collecting: Allow seedheads to dry on plants; remove and collect seeds.

Comments:Woodlands, thickets, moist soil, roads, ditches, stream banks, bottomlands, swamps, depressions, cedar glades and if your lucky in your garden.

Wildlife value: This plant is attractive to bees, butterflies and/or birds (seeds). Doesn't appear to be a butterfly host plant, but, it is an excellent nectar source.

Commercially available:  Beaufort, SC nursery, Lone Star Nursery in Austin, Rewild Memphis


xoxogail

Welcome to Clay and Limestone's Wildflower Wednesday celebration. WW is about sharing and celebrating wildflowers from all over this great big, beautiful world. Join us on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Remember, it doesn't matter if they are in bloom  and, it doesn't matter if we all share the same plants. It's all about celebrating wildflowers. Please share your wildflowers on your favorite social media site. Share to help educate others.

Gail Eichelberger is a gardener, Tennessee Naturalist and nature writer in Middle Tennessee. She loves wildflowers and native plants and thoroughly enjoys writing about the ones she grows at Clay and Limestone. She reminds all that the words and images are the property of the author and cannot be used without written permission.

First Wednesday Taking Care of Wildlife Challenge: Scoop The Poop

Did you know that studies show that roughly 28% to 40% of dog owners admit they do not always pick up their pet's waste. When questioned they list a bunch of not particularly good reasons for not scooping the poop. One person told me it was natural therefore it was okay not to pick it up! BTW, it's not natural!

Don't be like them, pick up your dog's poop! 

Here's why!

• Yes, dog poop is bad for the environment and is classified as a dangerous pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency.
• It could contain harmful parasites, pathogens and bacteria that can be transferred to people and other pets. Dog poop is a common carrier of nasty things like heart worms, whipworms, hookworms, roundworms, parvovirus, giardia, salmonella and E. coli. 
• It can be washed into the storm drains and local waterways because it's untreated, creating excess nitrogen and phosphorus that feed suffocating algae blooms.
• It's not a fertilizer! Their waste is overly acidic and harmful to grass and local ecosystems.
• In cities the problem is compounded by rats and other rodents. Dog waste is often a leading food source for rats in urban areas. Rat urine and feces have been linked to a number of diseases that can easily be passed to humans, including leptospirosis, typhus, and salmonellosis. (source)
• It's the considerate thing to do. 

 Here's what we pet owners can do.  (source)   

• ALWAYS carry poop bags with you whenever you are out and about with your dog. Take more than you think you will need…you never know.     
• PICK IT UP! Every. Single. Time.     
• Tie the bag closed and toss it in the garbage. Dog poop CANNOT go in compost or yard waste bins. I repeat, DO NOT compost dog poop! 
• Don't drop the bag on the side of the rode to pick up later...You won't remember! 
• Pick up poops in your yard weekly (more often is better and definitely before a big rain). Rain won't wash it away.   
• Hire a dog poop collection service. Yes, this is real, and they exist in many cities and counties. They do it so you don’t have to.

 

Dear Readers, None of us enjoy picking up poop but we do it because it's the right thing to do for the environment, for wildlife, for other pets and for others.

xoxogail 

 

 

Take the Taking Care of Wildlife In Our Gardens Challenge

The first part of this challenge is to do something, even lots of things, each month that support the critters living in our gardens. Gardening with native wildflowers, shrubs and trees that make sense for our ecoregion is a good place to start or continue (as the case may be). Plants and their pollinators are a classic example of mutualism: they have coevolved through evolutionary time in a reciprocal beneficial relationship. This is also true for other critters that visit and live in our gardens. 

Activities that increase our knowledge of the natural world are equally as valuable. Helping others learn about nature is included. Golly gee whiz, there are so many things you can do. 

The second part of the challenge is to post about it somewhere: Your blog, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or even your neighborhood listserve. Wouldn't an article in the local paper be a coup for nature! Why post it? Because positive publicity is needed to educate our friends, neighbors and communities about how important even the smallest changes we make as gardeners can be for pollinators, birds, insects and mammals, including humans, that live all around us. 

Why now? My neighborhood is changing. Yours might be, too. Every day an older home along with many (if not all) of the mature oak, hickory, maple, Eastern cedar and hackberry trees are cut down. Insects, birds, even mammals lose their home site and food supplies when we lose trees. During construction soil is compacted by bulldozers, trucks and piles of debris cause runoff; surface runoff that can carry pollution to streams and rivers. It's important that our neighbors and our community have information about how important trees are to our ecosystem. Trees contribute to their environment by providing oxygen, improving air quality, climate amelioration, conserving water, preserving soil, and supporting wildlife.

In place of the "bee lawns" composed of Claytonia, Salvia lyrata, Ruellia humilis, fleabane, Western Daisy, Violets, self-heal, clovers, native grasses (in my neighborhood it's poverty oat grass) and sedges, they're being sodded with non-native grasses. These monoculture turf lawns contribute nothing environmentally. Here's what we lose when our diverse lawns are replaced with pristine turf grass:

• Gone are the lightening bugs.
• Gone are the ground dwelling/nesting native bees.
• Gone is the habitat for insects, spiders and other critters. 
• Gone is plant diversity. 
• Gone are trees that provided for hundreds of moths, butterflies and other insects.
• Gone are the nesting sites for woodpeckers, hummingbirds, Chickadees and other birds. 
• Gone is a healthy foodweb.

We can't stop the progmess, but, maybe we can make a lot of educational noise and help our new neighbors see the value in providing for critters and ultimately helping the environment. xoxogail

Gail Eichelberger is a gardener, Tennessee Naturalist and nature writer in Middle Tennessee. She loves wildflowers and native plants and thoroughly enjoys writing about the ones she grows at Clay and Limestone. She reminds all that the words and images are the property of the author and cannot be used without written permission.