Ed, I have been thinking about this a lot recently, too. The Audubon Society has lists of native plants that are especially helpful to birds: http://nc.audubon.org/bird-friendly-plants That's the NC chapter, but there's a search box on the page for other states. A google search for "help pollinators" brings many links to useful information on beneficial plants and other garden considerations.

Hooray for common sense among the 535 people in Congress. How many people do you know who have ever visited ANWR? How many will ever go there? We heard this same crap in the 1970s when the North Slope oil fields and the Trans-Alaskan pipeline were developed. How has the North Slope oil fields negatively affected Alaska and the animals there? The concern about caribou migration was overcome by putting the pipeline on stilts. Was the Exxon Valdez oil spill caused by developing the fileds and the pipeline or was it caused by a drunken ship captain? The pipeline has automatically shut down several times just as it was designed when there was seismic activity or a loss of pressure. The biggest pipeline oil spill was caused by sabotage from a tree-hugger. Conservation and progress can co-exist. I will be the first to agree that all personal vehicles should be required to get a minimum of 30 mpg. Honda created a low emissions gasoline engine with a spherical head several years ago. What happened to it? Why can't we run cars on clean running one cylinder motorcycle engines which generate electricity? If you tree huggers would go after the car makers, give up your SUVs, 8 cylinder car, if the celebrity tree huggers would give up their limousines, we would all be better off. I drive a 15 y/o small pickup truck that still gets 27 mpg after 265K miles. I can't get another p/u which gets that kind of mileage and my city doesn't have much of a transit system. Let's push for change but let's use common sense.

I read somewhere that the weather is messing with the birds migration this spring. Thursday I had two indigo buntings in my yard and about two dozen RT hummers. Friday I saw three orioles, a couple of cardinals and two Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks! Also what appeared to be a summer tanager. Great birding season right now!

All birds, besides a few urban birds, are or will soon be declining. Along with just about every other living thing on the planet. For every increase of one person there is X amount of living things that will die. Someone mentioned the decrease in a bird population, such as an Indigo Bunting, although their local habitat was still intact. You have to remember that those types of birds have to migrate down to Central America and back, 2 one way trips a year. If there is a loss of habitat or food anywhere along that path, it could be very bad for them. Although, people are against hunting, the truth is that agriculture kills more animals than a hunter would kill in a lifetime. I'm not going to condone deer hunting one way or another, this is just an example: Say a hunter walks into the woods and kills a deer, nothing else was disturbed. He will get 50 to 100 pounds of food, only one animal killed. To get that much food through agriculture, one would have to devastate the land, cut down all the trees and use pesticides or some other means that would rob the "pests" of food. Eventually, the use of fertilizers, which run into the water supply and kill even more animals by doing that. I bring this up because it is what many migratory birds are encountering along the journey. All animals need every ounce of energy we can muster up to help them.