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Insects Are Essential
Insects sustain our ecosystems, and they need our help!
Insects sustain our ecosystems, as a food source and pollinators of 90% of all plants. But their numbers have dropped by half in the last 50 years, so it is now critical to help foster insects. One concrete way to help is to grow native plants that provide food and shelter for insects like caterpillars. Growing such plants directly benefits birds and helps insects keep the natural world ticking.
BirdNote®
Insects Are Essential
Written by Bob Sundstrom
This is BirdNote.
[Wood Thrush song in background, followed by Nashville Warbler song]
A tiny Nashville Warbler flies to its nest, a fat caterpillar clamped in its beak. Nearly all of North America’s smaller birds, from this warbler to chickadees to thrushes, raise their young on insects—especially insect larvae like this juicy caterpillar.
[Rose-breasted Grosbeak song]
Insects sustain our ecosystems, and not just as a food source. They also pollinate 90% of all plants. And without plants at the heart of the food web, life on earth would simply collapse.
Though insects are small, easily overlooked, and often vilified, most are beneficial. But their numbers have dropped by half in the last 50 years, so it is now critical to help foster insects. One concrete way to help is to grow native plants that provide food and shelter for insects like caterpillars.
For example, in the Eastern United States and Midwest, buttonbush supports 18 different species of caterpillars and also provides food for birds in the form of nectar and seeds. Growing such plants directly benefits birds and helps insects keep the natural world ticking.
[Rose-breasted Grosbeak song]
For BirdNote, I'm Mary McCann.
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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Ariana Remmel
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Nashville Warbler ML 250158611 recroded by M Medler. Rose-breasted Grosbeak ML 248683961 recorded by J McGowan. BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2021 BirdNote March 2021 / June 2023 / July 2025
Narrator: Mary McCann
ID# garden-13-2021-3-16 garden-13
Resources:
https://www.nwf.org/Garden-for-Wildlife/About/Native-Plants
https://www.audubon.org/plantsforbirds
Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature’s Best Hope. Timber Press, 2019
Quote from E.O. Wilson, “The Little Things That Run the World.” Conservation Biology 1 (4); 344-46
Bob Sundstrom
Writer