Looking for shrub suggestions to attract America Robins to our yard. Looking for berry/food producing plants. Site is part sun to full sun, depending on height of Shrub and season, zone 8.
mountain ash = Rowan tree. Any berry bearing tree, Cotenester/Holly as already mentioned any fruit tree I think. http://www.learner.org/jnorth/search/RobinNotes4.html Apparently Robins don't build nests with twigs or in trees but will nest anywhere. I.e old boots lol Terracotta pots, crevices.
Holly, cotoneaster and European mountain ash are all weeds in this region. Over 60 kinds of cotoneasters have been noted popping up wild in Seattle. To help native birds without helping them disperse foreign origin shrubs and trees that they happen to like, plant native trees and shrubs. The fruits of a black hawthorn (acquired as Crataegus douglasii but appearing to be the more locally prevalent C. suksdorfii) planted here soon disappeared after ripening this year. I've seen robins all over a planting of one of the west coast native Sorbus (one of the shiny-leaved ones like S. californica) at the Seattle arboretum, stripping them long before most, if any of the foreign species in the same area (Brian O. Mulligan Sorbus Collection) receive anything like the same level of attention.
Weed, weed, My lovely Cotenester a weed..gasp! ...And Holly too..dear me. ..And Mountain Ash which our birds rely on for winter is also...a...weed...shocking Ron B! I have a jolly good mind to eat dinner now lol
You are in Britain, and not here. In turn some North American native species introduced to the Old World have become pests there.
As you say I am in England Ron, Nice trees too when the berries are on...all three. The cotenester I have trying to cover an ugly dry stone wall...its working its way along now. I never owned a Holly and my rowan just never seems to get a move on.
Very few of those seen here, outside of collections. I. aquifolium, on the other hand has flooded some local parks and numerous other sites with its stiff, prickly progeny: "In the Seattle area, it comes up wild all over, reaching up to 60 feet tall. It is now so abundant as to be weedy, unlike any other holly cultivated here" --Jacobson, Wild Plants of Greater Seattle - Second Edition (2008)
In the New Jersey pines and surrounding areas Ilex opaca also "comes up wild all over". It's a slower growing native. I think it's pretty much treasured and a few cultivars have been selected from these wild stands eg 'Jersey Princess' 'Dan Fenton'. I. aquifolium is used as a thrifty landscape filler around here. Once established it grows like crazy, drops litter year round and produces enough berries to feed multitudes of robins.
