Why and How to Support Brown Thrasher Habitat With Shrubs!

What we do in our yard matters to wildlife. Brown thrashers are the Georgia State Bird yet have declined 40% in the last 50 years. They need dense shrubs for cover, shelter, and to build their nests which are rarely higher than 7 feet off the ground. Every year brown thrasher babies are born in my neighbor’s shrub border that runs the length of my driveway just feet from the property line. The row is a mix of non-native shrubs that don't support the native insects that are foundational to an ecosystem, yet they’re mature shrubs and still offer birds and other wildlife some habitat support in the way of shelter, cover, and nesting sites.

Every May brown thrasher fledglings appear in my yard! I believe at least some of them are born in my neighbor's shrub border which is a few yards from where this cute little brown thrasher fledgling was following his mother on my sidewalk last May.

Brown thrashers don’t see property boundaries and consider both my rewilded yard and my neighbor’s dense shrubby area part of their habitat. It's their home.  

Last spring my trail camera caught a brown thrasher couple courting and mating.

Shortly after that it showed a brown thrasher collecting nesting material.

In early summer the sweetest image of a fledgling brown thrasher being fed by a parent popped up in the same spot!

I often see brown thrashers aggressively thrashing about in my leaf covered rewilded yard foraging for insects.

On hot sunny days I often see brown thrashers sunning on top of shrubs, dense vines, low growing trees, and the ground. This brown thrasher is sunning in my neighbor's shrub border in the middle of the summer.

Habitat loss and fragmentation are top reasons for the 30% average bird decline in the last 50 years. This happens with natural land use changes from urbanization and industrial agriculture. Habitat degradation is also a contributing factor for bird decline and often comes from destructive residential landscaping practices including shrubs that are trimmed weekly, meatballed, severely pruned, or removed and never replaced, making yards what Nancy Lawson of the Humane Gardener aptly calls "undergrown".

This yard is well maintained by conventional standards, but it's far from a healthy ecosystem and offers little wildlife habitat support in the way of food sources, cover, shelter, or safe nesting sites that won't be trimmed into submission and cleaned of natural matter each week.

For the last 20 years I've watched the quality of wildlife friendly habitat in my own neighborhood decline from lush and abundant to sparse and lifeless. Homeowners who lightly pruned their shrubs once or twice a year now hire mow and blow crews to show up every week of the year. From my yard, I can hear the systematic ecosystem destruction in yards all around me - first comes the high-pitched buzzing of the hedge trimmers and lawn edgers, then the intense humming of the commercial lawn mowers (on plots less than1/3 an acre!), then the ear shattering roar of multiple gas-powered leaf blowers.

Week after week the shrubs are trimmed before the 200mph gas-powered leaf blowers "clean them out". Imagine being a bird trying to nest in these dense shrubs? Until a few years ago, this home didn't have a weekly mow and blow crew wrecking havoc on wildlife trying to survive.

In urban areas like mine, the reduced shrub cover is contributing to fewer birds like thrashers who depend on shrubs. A home with mature landscaping was once highly desirable, yet yards are now intentionally bare and inhospitable to birds or any other wildlife as trees are limbed up, topped off, or thinned out, and shrubs are pruned into submission, cut down to the ground every year to keep them short, or removed and replaced with ecologically problematic dyed mulch or invasive landscape plants such as liriope or English ivy.

If we focus on the function, not the look of this well cared for neat and tidy yard, it's easier to describe how landscape choices can help or harm the ecosystem. The monoculture of grass doesn't support wildlife and has no weeds so it's soaked in pesticides, the groundcover to the right is invasive liriope, there are no native plants to support insects, the shrubs are meatballed, and don't have any natural matter on or around them so they are hostile to bird's building nests in them, and there aren't any mature shrubs or trees for birds or other wildlife to seek cover or shelter in.

In late November my neighbor who I have a good relationship with severely pruned part of the thrasher shrub border. He was kind enough to ask my advice last spring about when not if to cut them back. I showed him a couple nests in them and suggested he wait until fall to cut them - after nesting season was done and there wouldn't be any fledglings in those shrubs. Hopefully the section of shrubs not cut is enough for thrashers to return to nest in this spring. Many of my neighbors aren’t even hard pruning their mature shrubs but removing them without replacing them which is not good for the immediate bird population. This is the first winter I haven’t heard or seen any thrashers or Eastern towhees, another bird who also nests in shrubs or small trees and has lost over 50% of their population in the last 50 years. I’ve only caught a few glimpses of cardinals who are typically common visitors to my yard.

Every year I see fledgling Towhees in my yard, like this darling little baby that my trail camera captured last summer. Towhees are a bird in decline. They nest in shrubs fairly low to the ground so offering safe shrubs is a great way to support towhee habitat.

One upside to my neighbor’s intense pruning is it’s an opportunity for me to add some native shrubs and small trees in and around the bare sticks where there were nine-foot shrubs. My neighbor is okay with the idea and I’m hoping there’s enough light and time for a native “shadow shrub border” to grow while the non-native shrubs rebound (or not🤞😉) from the severity of the pruning. I’ve already planted native blueberry (Vaccinium), one-flowered hawthorn (Crataegus uniflora), false indigo bush (amorpha fruticose), shining fetterbush (Lyonia lucinda), coralberry (Symphoricarpis orbiculatus), common wax myrtle (Morella cerifera), and sweetshrub (calycanthus floridus). I may add a couple more small shrubs to ensure some sort of success. About four years ago, the previous neighbor was okay with me adding a native redbud (Cercis canadensis) at the end of the shrub border. The tree is about 8 feet tall and will get more sun now that the shrub border has been cut. Next to it is a slower growing four-foot American holly (Ilex opaca) and a thin border of native grasses, sedges, and flowering plants.

The one-flowered hawthorn or dwarf hawthorn (Crataegus unoflora) I added to the shrub border hosts 119 species of butterflies and moths where I live according to the National Wildlife Federation site that ranks native plant according to this metric. Thorny trees and shrubs offer birds protection from predators.

The following consideration can help when adding shrubs to support brown thrasher habitat:

Make a living fence, mixed shrub border, thicket, or hedgerow with a native shrubs and/or small trees. This will support other birds who nest in low shrubs such as Eastern towhees and Northern cardinals.

  A hedgerow is a living fence that restores biodiversity even in small urban or suburban yard by offering wildlife habitat including shelter, cover, nesting, and food for birds, pollinators, and other wildlife throughout the year. There are plenty of native shrubs to choose from for a short hedgerow.

The berries and nectar from native shrubs along with the insects that have coevolved with them also serve as a food source for birds. This matters because 96% of terrestrial birds feed their babies insects. Caterpillars are the most nutritious food for birds and the insect more often fed to baby birds.

Caterpillars are foundational to an ecosystem. Adding native shrubs to the landscape supports a high abundance and diversity of caterpillars.

Think about the structural complexity of the landscape and create a natural, multi-layered habitat with native plants. This means having a green mulch of living plants at the ground level, a dense community of flowering plants, sedges, and grasses in a variety of heights, and a variety of shrubs, understory trees, and canopy trees.  This kind of living landscape offers all the food, shelter, cover, and nesting sites thrashers need for survival and reproduction.

A multilayered and abundant living landscape supports a healthy ecosystem where wildlife and people can coexist.

 It may take years for new native shrubs to offer the same kind of habitat support that a mature non-native shrub does. This is the only situation I can think of when my suggestion would be to not remove non-native shrubs if they’re not invasive privet or any other plant that will harm the local ecosystem. Slowly transitioning to native shrubs can look different depending on the situation. This may mean adding native shrubs somewhere else in the yard and cutting back or removing the non-native ones as the natives become large enough to replace them. I don’t want to encourage non-native plants in any way, yet the reality is most people need to factor in the time and cost of transitioning their landscape to support wildlife. Removing mature non-native shrubs may mean birds will look for nesting real estate elsewhere.

Throughout the year birds seek shelter and cover in my neighbor's shrub border that parallels my driveway - including brown thrashers.

Plant native shrubs that fit the space they’re in and let them express their full form so they don’t need to be constantly pruned to be shorter.

If space is an issue, don't plant tall shrubs then spend years trying to keep them short. Plant shrubs that are naturally the height you want them. For example, native coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus) is a thicket forming shrub that only grows 2-4 feet tall and offers cover and shelter for wildlife, the tiny flowers attract native bees, wasps, and other pollinators, and is a host plant for a few native caterpillar moths including, the clearwing hummingbird moth.

Be mindful and thoughtful about pruning shrubs. There's usually no reason for ritualistic pruning in spring just when birds are looking for nesting sites.

Every season huge piles of shrub cuttings appear on the curbs in my neighborhood. The pruning is typically done out of habit, not necessarily for the health of the shrubs.   

I’m focusing on shrubs which are vital to brown thrashers. Supporting natural processes in place using ecologically aligned landscaping choices and practices also supports a welcoming thrasher habitat and helps create a healthy ecosystem where all wildlife will thrive. Basic ways to add habitat support include:

Add a water source for wildlife that is kept clean and refreshed all year long.

Brown thrashers prefer water sources on the ground like this larges saucer. It looks like the squirrel decided not to mess with the thrasher!

Leave organic matter on the property – such as leaving the leaves, stems, stalks, seedheads, tree nuts, twigs, pinecones and bits and pieces of natural matter on the ground for wildlife and to decompose back to nourish the soil.

Dried stems left standing all year naturally break down over time. They offer low perches for birds to forage for insects on the ground - like this brown thrasher eyeing something yummy!

Make a brush pile to provide shade in summer, warmth in winter, cover from predators, nesting sites, and a food buffet of insects and small critters.

Brush piles are essential habitat for birds including this sweet and awkward brown thrasher fledgling and his parent!

Keep cats indoors. Outdoor cats are considered an invasive species and are not part of the neighborhood ecosystem. They have an oversized negative effect on neighborhood wildlife where they have a 70% chance of successfully killing in open areas.

The only wildlife my indoor only cats Moo and Merlin hunt are on my computer screen!

Keep skies dark at night by

💡Installing downward-facing fixtures

🌑Turning off lights at night

🏃‍♀️Using motion sensor & dimmers where light is needed

🪟Closing shades at night

💡Using warm-colored bulbs over cool white LEDs.

🌳Not using ornamental lighting to up light or downlight trees.

This video was taken on a walk one night in my neighborhood. It gives tips for reducing light pollution where we live. The darkness at the end is the front of my home.

Don't use violent landscape tools such as gas-powered leaf blowers that are often blown into shrubs to remove leaves. Those 200mph wind can also destroy nests and any wildlife seeking shelter and cover in the shrubs.

Gas-powered leaf blowers disrupt and destroy wildlife habitat! This video also shows the shrubs that were cut back.

Stay far away from yard pesticides including lawn fertilizers - we need to make our yards an insect nursery!

THIS is why we want to keep our yards pesticide free! I watched a brown thrasher couple foraging on a neighbor's lawn and my only thought was that this lawn doesn't appear to have any "weeds" so it's probably treated with toxic lawn chemicals. The pair was foraging during nesting season and any insects they find in this lawn will be fed to baby brown thrashers. We need advocate for change and tell everyone we know why it's so important to use healthy land care practices and how to do this!

 Note: There are no affiliate links in this blog – I enjoy the freedom that comes from speaking my mind and elevating those helping nature in some way. The highlighted text throughout the post might be references, details, explanations, worthy organizations and businesses, or examples that I think might be helpful 😊