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Looking for garden mentors
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 | | Haploa confusa moth |
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We're looking for people who would like to help fellow Wild Ones members design their habitat gardens. (No physical labor, just brain power!). If you'd like to be a mentor this year, contact me.
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Birds and Beans
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 | | Our coffee choice helps determine his fate |
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Coffee beans, that is! What's the connection? Many of the birds we enjoy in the summer (catbirds, hummingbirds, orioles, and many others) winter in Central America.
Of course, long ago, they would have been wintering in the rain forest, but then people started to grow coffee. This still was a viable proposition since coffee grows best in the shade, and shade coffee plantations are very similar to virgin rain forest.
This changed in the 1970s. Industrial agriculture converted shade coffee plantations to sun coffee plantations, making them biological deserts for wildlife. They're an economic and environmental disaster for small-scale farmers, too.
You can help both the birds and the farmers
by buying Fair Trade, Organic, Bird-Friendly coffee. A new brand called Birds and Beans doesn't just claim they're good for birds, they are certified to be so by the Smithsonian's Migratory Bird Center.
A health bonus for us
As Rodale reported:
"On full-sun coffee plantations, a highly toxic chemical called endosulfan is used; the chemical has been banned in the E.U. and other countries (though not the U.S.), but is still allowed in many coffee-producing nations.
Another plus of shade-grown coffee: One study found that it has higher antioxidant levels.... "(O)rganic and shade-grown blends had about 15% higher levels of antioxidants than regular coffees."
It can be purchased online or locally at Wild Birds Unlimited in Fayetteville. (And if you buy it there, please mention you saw it here!)
Read more about this issue:
* Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center
* Shade Coffee Campaign
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| Free Resources | 
| There are many community education and teaching resources available free from the Onondaga Environmental Institute about Onondaga Lake and Onondaga Creek.
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Greetings!
 | The elegant merry bells or bellwort
(Uvularia grandiflora) |
We're starting the New Year right with a program on Gardening with Native Perennials by Ellen Folts of Amanda's Garden. Ellen is one of the handful (so far) of plant nurseries working to preserve native species, which are crucial to preserving a healthy world for our children and grandchildren. (And Amanda's Garden has been our faithful sponsor from the beginning.)
Date and place: We'll meet at our usual location on Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 2:00 pm at Le Moyne College Library in the Special Activities Room on the first floor. (Directions) Come and bring a friend. Our meetings are free and open to the public.
Snow cancellations: We've canceled our monthly programs due to weather only twice in nine years, but just in case... If it's bad weather, before trudging off to our program, check your email and our website homepage.
Poster for Spring programs available: If you have a place to post it, we'd appreciate it. Just download the .pdf file and print it out. Thanks! Reminder: Save Saturday morning on April 2, 2011 for our HGCNY's first workshop, being held at Baltimore Woods Nature Center. We're pleased to have Carolyn Summers, author of Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East, as our presenter. Since the book's publication, she's been in great demand for presentations and has been given excellent reviews. We're delighted that she's coming to central New York! Enjoy the last few weeks of winter! Janet
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Steep drop in four bumble bee species is a wake-up call
 | | Bumblebee pollinating a blueberry |
An excerpt from Xerces.com:
Populations of four common species of bumble bees have declined by up to 96% in North America. And not only have the populations gone down in number, but their geographic ranges have also become smaller.
For the most part, long-term research and funding has focused on commercially raised honey bees and their decline, termed "colony collapse disorder" for lack of a clear understanding of its cause. The honey bee industry has the backing of lobbyists, almond boards and much U.S.D.A. funding due to its multibillion-dollar economy.
"...For the vast majority of our bumble bees, we have no knowledge of what their populations are doing at all because nobody's out there looking at them," Thorp said.
Meanwhile, declines in England have been well-documented, where there is much more readily available information about the distribution, diversity and abundance of bumble bees.
Bumble bees are especially important because they are robust animals and able to withstand cold temperatures, meaning they are the primary bees in tundra regions, Cameron said. Bumble bees also have long tongues, allowing them to pollinate long-tubed flowers.
They also pollinate plants important to humans - tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, blueberries and cranberries - through a behavior called "buzz pollination." When a bumble bee buzzes at a specific frequency near the flowers of these plants, the plants' pores open in response.
Read the whole article...
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Your participation in the Great Backyard Bird Count Feb. 18-21 is one piece of the puzzle that helps scientists get the big picture about changes in bird populations.
A great family activity!
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 I own the land
From Planting Noah's Garden by Sara Stein
pp. 16-17
I own the land. How strange a notion! The perception of ownership isn't shared by any of the creatures who live on the land, or from it, or cross over it. I own the plants, but not the relationship by which their roots are nourished, or their flowers pollinated, or their seeds dispersed. I own the dirt, but not the living systems that maintain it. Yet ownership gives me license to harm all these things that don't belong to me. ...
Conservation departments, nature preserves, the very law of the land, can't protect your lot or mine. It's up to us to do it of our own free will because we understand that the land is not our own but only in our keeping.
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