The pile of leaves in your garden bed may seem messy, but it is a lifesaver for the birds in your yard. Before grabbing your rake this spring, there is something very important to know about the timing of your cleanup, and why waiting for a specific temperature is more important than you may think.
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As winter comes in, and food starts running low, your garden turns into a vital habitat for wildlife. The dead stalks, fallen leaves, and what some may consider debris provide vital cover and food for birds that winter-over. Natural shelters like these are extremely important for the survival of cardinals, juncos, sparrows, and even the occasional hummingbird who gets caught in late season snaps.
Your garden beds’ layers of organic material build a microhabitat that insulates insects, seeds, and even birds, to help them survive the winter. Undisturbed garden beds provide a bird feeding station that doesn’t need to be refilled!
Garden beds that are filled with dried leaves and debris can also help provide cover from predators. With ground cover, hawks and outdoor cats cannot easily spot small birds. Birds that feed on the ground will find it easier to survive the winter with cover, rather than becoming exposed to predators and getting eaten.
Cardinals Rely on Ground Cover in the Cold
The northern cardinal is one of the most popular backyard birds. Early spring clean-ups pose a special risk to these birds. As ground-feeders, northern cardinals spend a lot of their time scratching through leaf litter to hunt for seeds and insects. When snow covers their feeding areas, the relatively snow-free zones under dense vegetation and garden debris become critical feeding areas.
When temperatures hit near the cardinals' survival limit of about 5°F, they face every increasing challenges. During extreme cold cardinals have to eat more calories to stay warm, however, extreme cold actually slows down their digestive systems. This means cardinals need access to food sources that are high quality and plentiful, which your unmulched garden beds can provide.
Cardinals enjoy sifting through the leaf litter in garden beds while searching for overwinter insects and larvae. This litter contains numerous seeds from the last growing season. When this litter is cleared away, it removes a vital food source for the cardinals at a critical time. When leaf litter is removed, it can literally affect the cardinals ability to survive late winter cold snaps and have the energy to breed.
Hummingbirds Use Warmth to Signal Their Return
While planning for your spring-cleaning activities, hummingbirds are the last thing that cross your mind, but it is important to remember that these tiny migrants are very sensitive to temperature and habitat cues. Most of the plants that attract hummingbirds, such as cardinal climber vines, wait until the soil reaches a constant temperature above 50°F to start germianting and growing actively. When you clean garden beds too early, you are removing the insulating layer that allows the soil to warm up and supports early blooming plants that hummingbirds need.
Migrating birds arrive in early spring very tired because of the difficult weather conditions that are often out of their control and could result in sudden snow storms. The birds enter a state of torpor when nighttime temperatures drop during their migration; this is similar to a controlled form of hypothermia and helps them save energy. The birds have to access flowers that will help restore their metabolism and body temperature because the process is extremely fast.
How do you help keep hummingbirds healthy? You've left your garden bed intact from winter. The self-seeded annuals and early-emerging perennials will offer the first nectar sources. You wait to clean away debris and plant stalks because insufficient shelter will be created just as hummingbirds arrive. Old plant debris provides the shelter for early insects that hummingbirds need for proteins. Given that temperatures remain above 50°F, your garden will be ready to support hummingbirds as soon as they arrive.
Seeds and insects are camouflaged by the litter
The leaves and stems of your winter garden beds may hide a whole ecosystem that is surviving the winter. For example, insect eggs, dormant seeds, and countless invertebrates create a larder that sustains birds during the winter months.
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From November to April, Cardinals are most likely to eat seeds and buried insect pods. Cardinals have strong and conical beaks that are adaptively designed for both cracking open seeds and prying through leaf litter. During the winter, Cardinals can forage for food for 90% of the available daylight. An undisturbed garden bed provides the most food sources while other habitats can remain undisturbed for long periods of time.
Providing insulation keeps the temperature of the soil less varying. This protects overwintering insects like native bees, beetles, and moth pupae. Many of these insects are vital for spring bird populations, not only for insectivorous species, but also for the seed-eater species like cardinals. They feed their nestlings almost exclusively on soft-bodied insects and caterpillars. When you preserve the debris of your garden in winter, you are not only protecting current birds. You are also ensuring the presence of enough insect protein for feeding healthy chicks in spring.
Here’s what’s hiding in that leaf litter:
- Seeds of coneflowers, sunflowers, and other native plants that attract birds
- Ladybugs and lacewings are two beneficial insects that overwinter.
- Chrysalises and cocoons of native bees that will pollinate your garden
- Pupae stages of moths and butterflies that will be crucial nourishment for the nestlings
- Spiders and other invertebrates that constitute the foundation of the food web
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If you clean your garden beds too early in the spring, debris removal is not the only thing you do. You change the habitat structure that makes your yard suitable for birds, such as cardinals. Cardinals are very particular and will only settle in an area that has a good cover of dense shrubs and thickets as well as ground cover. While they will go to a food source, to make your yard a breeding territory, a cardinal needs to find sufficient food, water, shelter, and nesting availability.
Spring yard cleanups will be removing important layers of habitat that wintering cardinals, juncoes, chickadees, and similar birds have been using. This is disruptive at a critical time when birds are beginning to establish nesting territories and start evaluations on site availability. Yards that appeared neat and tidy in February will become quite inhospitable in March if the cover is removed.
Providing adequate winter shelter for birds will support sheltering birds migrating along the flyway every year. Birds are known to have strong spacial memory, allowing them to remember which yards provided shelter and food the previous year. If they come to your yard which provides shelter too early in the spring, they will remember this and avoid your yard. In this way, birds will begin to overlook your yard in the spring during migration.
This is very important if you want to get cardinals to be year-round visitors to your yard. These birds do not migrate, so they are judging your yard every month. They look for winter shelter, spring nesting sites, and summer food sources and if your neighbor has all of these year-round cardinals will leave.
Wait for Steady 50°F— Here’s Why It Works
The 50°F threshold has some basis in actual biological activity of plants and animals. There is a consistent temperature at which many processes begin occurring. When daytime temperatures rise above 50°F consistently, and nighttime lows no longer dip into freezing temperatures, important changes begin in your garden which make cleanup less disruptive.
Finally, warm temperatures in the soil trigger seed germination and the active growth of perennial roots. As such, when you rake away the winter debris, you will most likely uncover green shoots that provide immediate cover and food. This gradual change allows birds to adapt their foraging patterns.
In addition, the rising temperatures increase the activity levels of insects. The natives bees come out of their cocoons, butterflies begin to fly, and the first caterpillars start to appear on the fresh leaves. Birds also undergo changes in diet as they shift from consuming seeds and inactive insects to active prey. Cardinals and other species spend less time looking for food in the litter on the ground, and more time actively collecting insects on the leaves and in the air.
At this point in time, some of the first flowering native plants like Columbine, Corals Bells, and Salvias are starting to bloom. These temperatures provide food sources for hummingbirds and other nectar feeders, and as a result, they become less reliant on the winter debris microhabitats. The cherished vines and climbing plants like the Cardinal Climber will start to grow; once the appropriate soil temperature is reached, these climbers can grow several inches a day.
Once you start maintaining a steady temperature of 50°F, you are cleaning up during a time when birds are less stressed. They do not have to struggle to get through cold nights anymore, their food sources are becoming more varied, and they are moving into the highly energizing breeding season. Your clean-up becomes a seasonal shift instead of a crisis removing essential resources.
Easy Methods to Schedule Your Clean Up
It’s one thing to decide on a clean-up day for your garden and quite another to do it while being mindful about the birds that make their home there. With a little patience and planning, you can have a clean garden and birds that are content. To begin, check you the local weather services every day in the early part of Spring. You are looking for a consistent weather pattern and not just an appearance of warmth for a week. For example, wait until the nighttime temperatures consistently stay above 40°F and the daily highs are in the 50's for a week.
It is better to begin your work gradually instead of doing it all in one weekend. Start with the areas of your property that are closest to your house or that are most visible from your windows, and postpone the edges of your property or more naturalized areas for later. This allows the birds to adapt and locate new foraging areas as you work.
Here’s a bird-friendly cleanup strategy:
- Rake carefully so you don't disturb the bulbs and perennials that are about to sprout, which birds will use.
- Especially underneath shrubs and along fence rows that are cardinal feeding areas, try to leave some leaf litter.
- You can leave dead flower stalks for a couple more weeks if they aren't diseased. They may still have seeds or beneficial insects.
- For continuous cover, create a brush pile in a corner of your yard with larger debris.
- Keep nutrients in your garden ecosystem by composting leaves and plant materials on-site instead of bagging them up.
- Until you see new green growth at the base, hold off on cutting back ornamental grasses.
You might notice some activity from cardinals and ground-feeders. If you notice some birds in the area, keep the spot cleaner for another week or two, as the birds still need the area for their habitat. Please make some compromises and keep some pathways and highly visible areas cleaned, but hold off on the larger naturalized areas until later spring.
While a "clean" garden may sound appealing to some, it may be doing the birds a disservice. Many of the best habitats for birds look a little unkempt, with a diverse collection of layers. Gardens with leaf litter and dense undergrowth will attract more birds than those that look tidy and have been pruned a lot. Areas where you encourage cardinals and other ground feeding birds to come should also have patches of cultivated mess.
We appreciate your patience! Your yard is now a smooth transition into spring and will continue to support our feathered friends throughout the winter. You will most likely discover cardinals in your yard, and as the season changes, expect to see a variety of hummingbirds. It's likely that your yard will have a greater diversity of birds than it did in winter. The garden bed that you left messy during the winter will now be a foundation for a successful season of bird watching in your backyard!
Happy birding!
