Helping the Birds – and Ourselves – Live Healthier Lives

By Michael Gold

The birds are back in town.

Blue jays, cardinals, orioles and other birds not named for baseball teams, such as meadowlarks, tree swallows, red-winged blackbirds – millions of birds – have been arriving in Westchester since late February and will continue to come in through June.

They have flown thousands of miles, always at night to avoid predators, from South and Central America, over the Gulf of Mexico.

The ruby-throated hummingbird is one of those birds flying across the Gulf. This bird is the size of a thumb, making its effort an incredible athletic feat unrecognized by us. Sandpipers, seen recently in Croton Point Park, are on their way to Hudson Bay in Canada.

Waterfowl started coming in February and March, said Anne Swaim, executive director of the Saw Mill River Audubon, based in Chappaqua. Orioles, wood thrushes and scarlet tanagers, which winter in Venezuela, arrive in May. By mid-June, fly catchers and other bug eaters will be here.

“It’s a pretty amazing thing, this movement of birds,” Swaim pointed out.

These fascinating creatures can use our help. Three billion birds have been lost since 1970, Swaim said.

“We can tell how healthy a habitat is by birds,” she explained. “They’re an early warning system.”

A variety of culprits have contributed to this massive loss. Pesticides, for example, are bad for the birds and bad for us.

“Pesticides are a disaster,” Swaim said.

Pesticides kill insects, depriving birds of food for their babies. Insects are a high-protein source of food for newly-hatched birds. No insects, no birds.

“We’ve got to stop with the pesticides,” Swaim said. “They can cause cancer, even in pets.”

Toddlers crawling and walking on lawns are also in danger.

“Organic pesticides are bad, too,” Swaim said. “They still kill insects.”

“There’s a connection to pesticide chemicals and health,” Swaim pointed out. “Many are endocrine disruptors and can cause cancer.”

Our endocrine systems help us grow and give us the energy we need to live.

For those concerned about ticks but don’t want to use pesticides, the Centers for Disease Control recommends building a three-foot-wide barrier of wood chips or gravel between your lawn, patio and play area and wooded areas, helping restrict tick migration.

Herbicides, which kill weeds, have been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. They kill plants that harbor insects.

“Keep in mind that killing weeds eliminates host plants for insects (and flowers for pollinators), and that fewer insects mean less of the food that birds need to raise their young,” states the website www.birdwatchingdaily.com.

Swaim recommends places such as shopping centers get rid of those big black rat poison boxes to help avoid poisoning birds. Rat poison boxes kill owls, eagles and hawks. Recently, in Croton Point Park, an eagle and red-tailed hawk were found sick after ingesting rat poison, Swaim told me. The eagle died, but the hawk lived. If a bird eats a rat that has consumed rat poison, this can poison the bird, too, and possibly kill it.

Fertilizers are also bad. Birds may mistake fertilizer for food.

“The fertilizer’s chemical content can damage the digestive and nervous systems of the birds, which can kill them,” according to the www.bondwithyourbird.com

website. Toxic vapors emitted by fertilizers can harm the birds as well, the website states.

To attract birds to your property, Swaim recommends planting native plants and shrubs, such as serviceberry, bayberry, winterberry, spice bush and viburnum. These all attract insects, which attract birds. For instance, viburnum draws attention from a wide variety of butterflies, leaf hoppers, bees and ladybugs, Swaim explained.

Provide a water fountain for birds, too, she said. They can cost as little as $14. Birds need water to clean the dirt off their feathers. The water helps them fluff up their feathers, so they can fly.

“You can buy a solar bubbler to move the water around,” Swaim said.

The bubbler prevents the water from stagnating; stagnant water attracts mosquitoes. Another, cheaper idea is to dump the water and refill your fountain every day.

To provide a shelter for birds, buy a nesting box or hut. This can attract eastern bluebirds, house wrens and other birds.

Another way to help birds is to turn down house lights at night.

“Lights confuse birds,” Swaim said.

Because birds navigate using the night sky, “they can become disoriented by bright artificial lights and skyglow, often causing them to collide with buildings or windows,” the National Audubon Society website states. So, “turn off your exterior decorative lighting and extinguish pot and flood lights. Spotlights should be on motion timers. Turning off bright lights helps birds move within minutes.”

Birds will thrive if we give them a healthier environment. We will too.

For further information about how to help birds, visit the Saw Mill River Audubon or National Audubon websites.

Pleasantville resident Michael Gold has had articles published in the New York Daily News, the Albany Times Union, The Virginian-Pilot, The Palm Beach Post and other newspapers.