Wild Ones LogoHabitat Gardening
in Central New York
    Issue #45 - February 8, 2011
 
In This Issue
FREE Webinar on converting lawn
Words of Wisdom: Environment and Health
Use your computer's idle time
Ten best woody plants
Top 9 squirrel interventions
Options for Converting Lawn to Natural Areas
FREE Webinar Feb. 23
Woods in Your Backyard
This webinar will be presented by Jonathan Kays, author of The Woods in Your Backyard: Learning to Create and Enhance Natural Areas Around Your Home.

Check out the short video.

Learn more and register for either Webinar session:
Feb. 23 noon to 1:00 pm
or
 Feb. 23 7:00 - 8:00 pm
Words of Wisdom: Environment and Health
Pussy willow
Pussy willow (Salix discolor) after the gray catkin "flowers"
"The most fundamental message is for people to remember that the environment is not just something that they visit on weekends or during their summer vacation- that the environment is all around us, that it is in us and we are in it, and that it profoundly influences our health."

~ Dr. Philip Landrigan Director, Children's Environmental Health Center, Mt. Sinai Medical Center

Your computer's idle time can help the world

Solar energy

Solar energy in Syracuse

Grid computing joins together many individual computers, creating a large system with massive computational power that far surpasses the power of a handful of supercomputers. Because the work is split into small pieces that can be processed simultaneously, research time is reduced from years to months.

Besides work on finding cures for diseases, your computer can work on a clean energy research or on a prairie project.

 Find out more at BOINC and World Community Grid. [NOTE: I've used both on my computers for years with no problems.] 

Join HGCNY!

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Becoming an official member of HGCNY is easy: just join Wild Ones! When you're a Wild Ones member, you're automatically an official member of HGCNY.
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Greetings!

Toad singing
A springtime event worth writing about
We're pleased to welcome back retired SUNY-ESF Professor Andy Saunders. This year he'll present The Art of Nature Journaling: Growing Wise and Gardening Green, which will reveal some of the values and satisfactions of nature journaling. The program will examine some significant historical outcomes of keeping a nature journal and reveal a few of its better known practitioners. The program will include some practical suggestions for anyone unacquainted with nature journaling who would like to try their hand at the process.

Date and place:
Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011 at 2:00 pm at Le Moyne College Library in the Special Activities Room on the first floor. (Directions) Our meetings are free and open to the public.

Snow cancellations: Just in case... If it's bad weather, before trudging off to our program, check your email and our website homepage.

Reminder: Save Sat. April 2, 2011 for our 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

GBBC

Your participation in the Great Backyard Bird Count Friday through Monday February 18-21 is one piece of the puzzle that helps scientists get the big picture about changes in bird populations.

Last year, people submitted 97,300 checklists, and they're aiming for more than 100,000 this year. The information is used to compare how bird populations may be changing. The event is fun, free, and requires no registration.
Pussy willow
Pussy willow (Salix discolor)
Ten Best Woody Plants
HGCNYers know that native plants are best for wildlife, but some native plants benefit wildlife more than others.

Carole Brown of Ecosystem Gardening lists the ten best woody plants and the top 10 herbaceous plants for your habitat garden. She also notes some of the lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) that use these plants and gives some other tips.

The top three of the top ten woodies:
Quercus (oaks), Prunus (cherries and plums), and Salix (willows) top the list. Remember when choosing any plant to use the whole botanical name, genus and species.

To be most valuable for wildlife make sure you choose a native species. For example, even some familiar plants such as the weeping willow
(Salix � sepulcralis) are NOT native. Pussy willow, on the other hand, is a native Salix (S. discolor).

Bonus: If you bring pussy willows inside to force, keep them in water and they'll grow roots for a new shrub you can plant yourself or give away.

The top three of the top ten herbaceous:
Goldenrod (Solidago), aster (Aster), and sunflower (Helianthus) are top choices.

Bonus: If you plant the cultivar 'Lemon Queen' (H. annuus), an annual sunflower, you'll be all set to participate in the Great Sunflower Project, an interesting citizen science project that will help assess our nation's bee population.

Check the Ecosystem Gardening (links above) to find out what the other Top Ten plants are.
Squirrel at feederTop 9 Squirrel Interventions
  Birdscope, Cornell Lab of Ornithology's newsletter, reports that their Facebook fans contributed the following strategies for deterring squirrels from raiding bird feeders (with varying degrees of success).
1) Baffles: Using paint can lids, CDs etc.
2) Elevation: Putting feeders up high or even on a retractable clothesline.
3) Isolation: Hanging feeders far from trees or other jumping-off locations.
4) Lubrication: Greasing feeder poles. The Lab does NOT recommend this method! If birds get into the grease, it impairs their waterproofing and insulation.
5) Combinination: Using many tactics together.  

6) Altercation: Having large dogs in the yard. The Lab notes that even though cats may scare squirrels away, too, cats themselves are a major threat to birds.

7) Innovation: Feeders with built-in baffles, counterweighted tray doors etc.  (They report, though, that squirrels can be equally as innovative.)

8) Separation: Set aside a separate feeder for squirrels and another for birds.

9) Capitulation: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em and feed them both.

 

The Lab has more helpful ideas about squirrels and other problems. They also have a free .pdf file you can download specifically about squirrels on that page.