Insects as a source of food
Insects are a very important food source for many birds, as well as for frogs, toads, bats, and even other insects! Because I don't use pesticides (which kill beneficial as well as undesirable insects), insects are available for birds to eat. At the same time, since birds, toads, and beneficial insects quickly eat them, we have very few insects left to bother us - dragonflies aren't nicknamed "Mosquito Hawks" for nothing! You might even want to add a Toad Light - a light less than 3 feet high - to attract insects for your amphibians to eat. We're trying a few of the low solar lights for this purpose, but I don't know if they're bright enough for that purpose.
Leaf litter is a great place for some creatures to find food. Birds such as white-throated sparrows, for example, love to search for insects in the leaves. It's great fun to watch their little dance to unearth insects. Robins also find it a good place to find worms, which tend to congregate under this kind of stuff. (Of course, leaf litter is great for the soil, too, and it's a great way to dispose of your fall leaves instead of having them trucked to the landfill!) Toads probably like this area, too, but since they are nocturnal I don't see them as often.
Logs are also a good place to find insects. I covered the return pipe from our pond with a variety of old logs. Some are old firewood logs and some are logs people put out to the curb. I assume that they will be an increasingly good source of insects as they begin to decompose. I've always found decomposing logs to be fascinating!
I enjoyed watching this black and yellow argiope spider for a couple of weeks. He's sometimes called the "writing spider" because of the white strip he "writes" in his web. Of course, he's looking for insects as food and was quite successful. I think this was a good spot because it was just above the wildlife pond and so there were lots of little insects there. He would repair the web each day. I became quite fond of him and grew accustomed to seeing him as I went out the garage door each day. Unfortunately, he himself became insect food, I suspect, because one day I went out the door and there was no trace of him.
You can get a better picture of the size of the spider next to this common green darner dragonfly. I was happy to have the spider there, but I was hoping he wouldn't capture my dragonfly! He didn't, but he did get a few bees. It was fascinating to watch how quickly he darted over when the web jiggled. He wrapped up his catch just as a butcher wraps a piece of meat - only much, much more quickly!
I think this yellow warbler was getting a lot of little insects among the clethra and milkweed (Asclepias incarnata "Ice Ballet"). He was working among these bushes for quite a while.
