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Re: not again with the tallow trees!



This is a bit off-topic, but I'll add a backyard birds note to make it all better...

Since hearing about the Chinese Tallow Tree and checking out images on the Web, I was racking my brain thinking about where I might have seen one, and concluded that I'd not seen one yet. Where could they be hiding? As I sat in my car one day, pondering this in a kind of mommy-daze in the Duke School Lower School (Durham) parking lot, I lifted my eyes and saw hundreds of white berries leering at me through the windshield. Turns out there are two Chinese Tallow Trees on the property! I've since reported these invaders to a woman who is interested in the landscaping at the school. I hope we can get them taken out.

Backyard last few days was just chock-full of the usual suspects. Must be the cold weather, but seems like suddenly there's three times as many as usual. Got Carolina wrens, brown-headed nuthatches, downies, bluebirds, goldfinches, white-throated sp, finches, titmice, chickadees, robins, yellow-rumps, cardinals, mourning doves, etc. The insectivores are really going after the suet (also has dried insects in it). Just the usuals, but all that activity makes the heart sing. Even saw the sapsucker again after an absence. Red-bellied woodpecker's been drilling on our wood siding, and my 5-year old says it means he wants more suet in the feeder!

Cheers,
Paula Mangiafico
Durham, NC

--On Sunday, January 26, 2003 11:44 PM -0500 "Joshua S. Rose" <jsr6@duke.edu> wrote:

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/