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not again with the tallow trees!



On Sun, 26 Jan 2003, Nathan Dias wrote:
>
>  Since most of our
> Camellia Sasanqua flowers got fried by the freezing
> weather, the Orioles have switched to eating a lot of
> Tallow berries.  -- I know non-native invaders, those
> Tallow trees.

They're worse than that! In case you missed the little detail the last
time I posted about this, as well as Johnny Randall's talk at the Carolina
Bird Club winter meeting, Chinese Tallow Tree supports NO insect life. As
they spread and crowd out native plants, as they are doing devastatingly
in northern Florida and somewhat slower in coastal South Carolina, migrant
insectivores like warblers and vireos are left foraging in lifeless
wastelands.

There are dozens of native tree and shrub species that produce winter
fruits which are eaten by orioles, waxwings, and other birds, *and* host
lots of caterpillars which feed insectivorous birds the rest of the year
when the fruit is out of season. Beautyberry, Persimmon, various species
of Holly and Viburnum, Red Cedar Wax Myrtle, all kinds of others...

People can stop pretending that these trees are good for birds; they are
NOT. If I keep hearing about it, I'm going to go into the Texbirds archive
and start forwarding information from there to here about it. Trust me, I
haven't even *begun* to swamp anyone with e-mail about this!

Good birding, but it'll get better if we get rid of all the Chinese Tallow
Trees,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/