With the holidays looming ahead, it's that wonderful time of year when the catalogs start crowding our mailboxes. These catalogs may appear innocuous enough and provide some enjoyment, but as I recently learned, it is at the expense of some of our favorite backyard birds.

A recent story broadcast by NPR's National Geographic Radio Expeditions took me to the Boreal Forest of Canada. This is a far away place from where about five billion birds migrate each fall after raising their families. They head south to our backyards and forests - some to spend the winter, some just passing through. Birds like the White-throated Sparrow, as well as vireos, warblers and flycatchers - all born during the previous summer in Canada's Boreal Forest - come here and provide us with a reason to venture out on cold, dark mornings in hopes of catching a tantalizing glimpse of their fragile beauty. And what on earth does this have to do with catalogs in our mailbox? Well, as I learned on my radio expedition, the Boreal Forest is being carved up at an alarming rate for oil pipelines and logging, and its birds are declining. If they cannot breed in the Boreal then our backyards and forests will be bereft of their colors and songs. The logging is mostly for paper to make newspapers and catalogs and the United States is the largest consumer of this paper.

• Freshwater Wetlands
• Temperate Deciduous Forests
• Coastal Environments
• Deserts

During the 2000 school year Laura Dax Honda's class at the Manor School in Fairfax not only studied the Audubon Adventures kit, they took action to care for birds and their environment. Their call to action started with the swallows nesting under the roof of the school buildings. During a heat wave last June, most of the baby swallows died due to rising heat from the hot walls and asphalt below their nests. Ms. Honda's class buried each baby in a newly planted butterfly garden. Local wildlife groups could not offer a solution to solve the problem. Not content to stand by and watch more babies die this summer, Ms. Honda wrote a grant to Marin County Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program asking for funds to create a swallow habitat. She was awarded a $2000.00 grant to cover the costs of wood, hardware and soil, thus proving that it never hurts to ask!

With her grant and some help from Fairfax Lumber (who provided materials at cost along with donated soil and delivery), and using her husband's design, Ms. Honda was ready to put her plan into action. The plan? To build some planters (filled with native plants) and misters along the base of the building wall, just below the nests, to eliminate the heat waves that rise up from the black asphalt straight at the swallow's nests. Building started in February 2001, with the help of parent volunteers, and continued for several weekends. Two more grants have been submitted in hopes of raising funds to cover the costs of more native plants and birdbaths. This past summer, only four baby swallows perished during the hot months! The success of the project received coverage in many local newspapers.