Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 14:32:13 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rick Sussman Subject: Food for Thought (regarding weeds) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, As a follow up to a post from earlier in the week regarding birds eating tearthumb berries, and the introduction of invasive aliens in general, I offer this "letter to the editor" from the new issue (October 2001) of ABA's BIRDING magazine. Credit goes to: Doug Tallamy, Professor of Entomology, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware. "Terry Rich's excellent article emphasizing how Cheatgrass is destroying the sagebrush ecosystem highlighted several of the problems that exotic plants impose on our native birds. An important consequence not mentioned is that non-native plants are devastating the terrestrial food chain. Most native insects cannot eat the alien plants that are invading our natural areas and, with mankind's help, have almost entirely displaced native plants in tens of thousands of square miles of suburbia. Because there are fewer insects each year for birds to feed their young, exotic plants are joining habitat destruction as a leading threat to breeding birds in North America." And in an unrelated article regarding managed deer hunts in area parks in a Montgomery County newspaper this week (The Gazette,Wed., Oct 3, 2001, p. A-4) Rob Gibbs, naturalist with MNCPPC, stated that deer are driving away other species by reducing the food available for other wildlife. "Birds feed on insects, which feed on leaves--no leaves, no insects, no birds" Gibbs said. "Deer impacts are an important reason why bird populations are dropping." As they say in a radio ad for some church, not a sermon, just a thought! Rick Sussman Ashton,MD warblerick@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================