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Our cavity-nesting birds are running out of places to have babies. Here's how you can help.

Making It Grow Radio Minute
Provided
/
SC Public Radio
Making It Grow, hosted by Amanda McNulty

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Our state’s population is skyrocketing, with people moving for milder weather and to enjoy beaches and mountains and beautiful country in between. But as fields and woodlands become neighborhoods, our cavity nesting birds are running out of places to have babies. If you can safely leave dead branches or even a dead tree on your property, you could end up with at-risk birds happily cohabitating with you. Woodpeckers can excavate a nesting spot and that site will then be used by screech owls, kestrels, or more than fifty other cavity-nesting birds. If you have a smaller yard, you can put up nesting boxes not only for birds but for the declining but important bats as well. My hometown of St. Matthews is full of houses for those aerial acrobatic purple martins.

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Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.