Birds are having trouble finding enough caterpillars to raise their young.

Hello, I'm Amanda McNulty of Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. The late Rudy Manke, naturalist extraordinaire, often talked about how a certain animal or plant was recycled, that is, when it was eaten. Well, caterpillars are the best food to be recycled into baby birds, and caterpillars can only eat the leaves of certain native plants. Even birds that are seed eaters as adults have to search for caterpillars when feeding their young. With landscapes dominated by perhaps lovely but non-native plants and safe escaped invasives like privet, birds are having trouble finding enough caterpillars to raise their young. In the past 30 years, we've lost 3 billion nesting birds in North America. Professor Doug Tallamy, author of Nature's Best Hope, says if we consciously add larval food source native plants to our landscape, we can change this scenario.