Urban Native Greens

Urban Native Greens (UNG) is a community science initiative that explores links between urban sprawl, plants and invertebrate assemblage, avian health and ecology, and connections to public health in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The relationship between native plants and their co-evolved insect resources has gained increasing attention. Many initiatives in the region are promoting and planting native plants to enhance biodiversity and improve storm-water management, sequester carbon, reduce heat-island effects, increase community aesthetics, and restore habitats. 

UNG is designed to connect with these initiatives and activities provide the opportunity to expand partnerships to help answer ecological questions and recruit regional participation in improving habitats for birds in the built landscape.

Urban and suburban habitats with increasing diversity of native plantings and green spaces have been demonstrated to increase bird diversity and abundance, breeding outcomes, and survivorship. Still, these ideas need to be more deeply explored, especially in the southeastern United States, where urban sprawl is rampant. 

Urban Native Greens collects data through several community-engaged science components: 

A team of experienced bird banders across several organizations in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi are working with community scientists, native plant societies, community leaders, and undergraduate and graduate students to test hypotheses around the benefits and costs of pesticide use and native plantings. Certified bird banders capture birds to collect blood, fecal, feather samples, and individually color-banded to be resighted by community scientists. These data will provide the samples needed to evaluate avian blood-borne diseases, diet breadth (through fecal metabarcoding), body condition, and bird survivorship.

Color Band Resighting

Each site where birds are color-banded is visited once a month to survey for color-banded birds. Color-band resighting focuses on adult birds’ survivorship. Adult birds must balance their needs to survive with the needs of reproducing and passing on their genes to the next generation. By uniquely marking birds with an identifiable combination of bands, we can track individual birds over the course of their life. 

Nest Monitoring

The sites for nest monitoring include a variety of public and private green spaces along an urban-rural gradient, representing variations in the intensity of pesticide use, native plant diversity, and small-and-large scale habitat connections. 

How to Participate

If you are interested in monitoring bird nests or assisting in resighting color-banded birds, you can participate in the UNG program. Community scientists are trained in safe methods for monitoring nests and tracking breeding success. They document clutch size, nestling survivorship, and fledgling success, as well as collect fecal samples from nestlings. Training is also provided to document resights of color-banded birds to estimate bird survivorship.

Consider adding your yard or local green space to the project, or you can sign up to be a nest monitor at an already established site. The Little Rock Audubon Center and Pascagoula River Audubon Center are two such Audubon sites participating in the project.

Sponsor organizations: UC Berkeley, LA Office of State Parks, Audubon Delta, Louisiana State University

Project scientists: Sabrina Taylor, Erik Johnson, Jeff Roth, Tyler McClintock

Partner Organizations: Louisiana Bird Observatory (Baton Rouge Audubon Society), Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, Woodlands Conservancy, Purple Martin Conservation Initiative, Acadiana Native Plant Project, LSU AgCenter 4-H Club

Funders: Audubon Delta, BSCS, Mosaic Company Foundation, Coypu Foundation