Gardening for Wildlife and Opportunities for Citizen Science

Gardening for Wildlife

Several areas at Marquez attract butterflies and birds including the Native American Garden, the butterfly garden, some plants planted by LAUSD in the re-landscaping and some areas on the upper yard.  The landscaped area by the auditorium seems to have the most birds and the fewest squirrels. A resource for involving your students in this topic is from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology http://www.birdsleuth.org/investigation/.  Bird Sleuth has some ideas for citizen science projects. Another resource is the National Wildlife Federation. www.nwf.org/en/Garden-for-Wildlife.   

The Habitat Network, www.yardmap.com, helps people to map their outdoor spaces and see how inviting they are for wildlife. This could be done at school or home.

Activities to make a school more welcoming can include bird feeders, water, more plants for food and shelter. What are you interested in doing? What birds do you see near you?

We are adjacent to the Santa Monica Mountains and should have more birds visiting our campus.

Resources for native plants include Theodore Payne www.theodorepayne.org, Audubon www.audubon.org,  and Las Pilitas Nursery www.laspilitas.com. Some natives that we have at school include poppies, monkey flower, deer grass, yarrow, oak tree, white sage, black sage, purple sage, hummingbird sage. We'll be planting ceanothus, redbud and more in the coming months.