Landscaping for Wildlife: the Birds and the Bees and Beyond

Landscaping for Wildlife: the Birds and the Bees and Beyond

with Mark Faherty, Science Coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary

Where: APCC’s Koppel Center
482 Main St (Rte 6A), Dennis 02638

Mark will talk about the birds and the bees and his experiences gardening for wildlife both at home and at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay sanctuary, where he oversaw a complete redo of the pollinator garden and other outdoor spaces, adding hundreds of native trees and shrubs. He’ll cover the most important cultivated and wild plants to focus on to benefit birds, butterflies, bees and other wildlife, as well as what plants work or don’t work here on Cape Cod, land of hungry rabbits and annual droughts. He’ll also address other yard maintenance issues, like what does “leave the leaves” really mean, are all pesticides bad, and whether non-native plants are really “junk food” for wildlife.

About the speaker: Mark Faherty has been the science coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary since 2007 and has led birding trips for Mass Audubon since 2002. While his current projects involve everything from oysters and horseshoe crabs to bats and butterflies, he has studied primarily bird ecology for the last 20 years, working on research projects in Kenya, Florida, Texas, California, Arizona, Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest. He has also become obsessed with the diversity of native bees here on the Cape over the last several years and thinks you should too. Mark’s Weekly Bird Report airs each Wednesday on WCAI, the Cape and Islands NPR station. He also co-hosts Bird News, a monthly call-in show all about birds, on WCAI’s The Point with Mindy Todd.