Another Reason to Plant a Tree? For The Animals!

Planting a tree offers more than just a little oxygen, a lot of shade and the chance to filter out some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Like that isn’t enough, when you plant a tree, you also create a home for some of Mother Nature’s creatures, great and small. What am I talking about today, you wonder? The birds and the bees, my friends! I am talking about planting a tree and providing a home and more for animals of all sorts actually. It isn’t just humans that benefit from tree planting. Many insects, birds and mammals in Ontario rely on trees for one reason or another. Just take a look!

MORE REASONS TO PLANT A TREE: For the Animals!

When you plant a tree, you…

• offer a nesting site for robins, hummingbirds, warblers and ospreys
• create a place for raccoons to sleep and forage for fruit, insects, and other small birds or mammals to eat
• benefit skunks, as they also forage for insects in trees
• large trees provide perch sites for hawks, eagles and vultures
• offer a source of food, rest and nesting sites for squirrels
• larger cavities provide homes for woodpeckers, owls and martens
• provide smaller cavities for nesting site for wrens, nuthatches, titmouse, swallows and chickadees
• offer a source of food (via blossoms) for honey bees
• create a source of food and shelter (for dam building) for beavers
• benefit rabbits, as they eat bark from young trees & soft plants and grasses found underneath them
• caterpillars make trees home, as well as use leaves for a food source
• innumerable insects find trees home and a food source, themselves then becoming a food source for other birds and small mammals
• provide shade for surrounding plants underneath trees, like ferns, mosses and other shade tolerant plants, which in turn provide sustenance for deer
• even benefit some bears, as they will sometimes use large cavities for dens

So why not get out there and plant a tree today! The animals will thank you and so will the folks at CLC Tree Services.

Don’t forget to register your tree at the Million Tree Challenge while you are at it! London’s legacy to the future can be found in our identity – The Forest City. London can and should be among the best-treed communities in Canada, but we need to step up our efforts. Everyone needs to contribute, to create the greenest and healthiest London ever. London’s Million Tree Challenge calls on Londoners to plant one million trees over the next ten years. To kick this campaign off, we begin with a three-year goal of planting one tree for every Londoner. So stay tuned to our website, blog and Facebook Fan Page to hear about upcoming promotions in our association with ReForest London and the Million Tree Challenge. Get planting!