Species and functional groups the catalog supports

A tassel-eared squirrel of southwestern ponderosa pine forest that lives on the tree almost year-round: inner bark and buds in winter, seeds and pollen cones in season, and underground fungi through the growing season. It builds twig nests in ponderosa crowns rather than caching cones in middens, so it rarely leaves the pine type at all.

The African (double-banded) carpenter bee is a large Afrotropical bee in which females are black with two pale yellow or white bands across the thorax and front of the abdomen, while males are uniformly greenish-yellow. It occupies habitats from moist coastal fynbos to dry savanna across sub-Saharan Africa. Females are solitary nesters, excavating tunnels in dead wood or pithy stems and provisioning each cell with a pollen-and-nectar mass. The species is a generalist floral visitor and an important pollinator of legumes and many other garden flowers throughout its range.

The American bumblebee is a large, long-tongued bumblebee that nests at or near ground level in tall grass, with annual colonies that fly roughly May through September and forage as broad generalists across grasslands, fields, and open habitats. Queens, workers, and males gather nectar and pollen from many plant families, with documented use favoring sunflowers, clovers, goldenrods, and boneset. Once the most commonly recorded bumblebee in the United States, it has declined roughly 89 percent in relative abundance, so a diverse, season-long succession of native bloom directly supports a species now in serious decline.

Small seed-eating songbird that feeds heavily on composite-flower seeds in late summer and fall - especially Echinacea, Rudbeckia, sunflower, and aster seeds. Goldfinch is the canonical reason NC State Extension's standing advice for these plants is 'leave seed heads standing through winter.'

The loud, territorial red squirrel of boreal and montane conifer forest, and the eastern counterpart to the Pacific coast Douglas squirrel. From late summer it cuts green cones before they can open and stockpiles them in a midden, a damp mound of stripped scales at the base of a tree where the cones stay shut and the seed keeps through winter. One squirrel defends one midden, and says so constantly.

Abundant, widespread thrush that splits its diet seasonally: earthworms, insects, and other invertebrates dominate in spring and summer, while soft fruits become the primary food in late summer, fall, and winter. Robins consume a wide range of native fruits including chokecherry, hawthorn, dogwood, serviceberry, and mulberry, and they disperse seeds across the landscape as they move in winter flocks. The species nests in an open cup, typically on a horizontal tree or shrub limb, so fruiting trees and shrubs serve as both food and nest structure in a garden.

The amethyst sunbird (Chalcomitra amethystina) is a large sunbird in the family Nectariniidae, with males appearing largely glossy black but showing iridescent amethyst-purple on the crown and throat in good light; females are streaked brown with pale eyebrows. It is native to sub-equatorial Africa, occurring across 19 countries from Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo south through Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and into South Africa. The species feeds on nectar from a wide range of tubular-flowered plants including Aloe, Strelitzia, Leonotis, and Protea, and supplements this diet with insects (including emergent termites) and spiders gleaned from foliage. It is an important pollinator in southern African garden and bushveld habitats, and its range has expanded with the spread of wooded suburban gardens.

A pale blue woodland azure whose caterpillars feed almost exclusively on the flower buds of black cohosh. It flies in a single brood timed to that bloom, so the butterfly is only present where mature stands of its host grow. That makes it a specialist tie rather than another generalist nectar visitor, and it is local and uncommon wherever that rich-woodland understory has been lost.

The baldcypress sphinx is a narrow host-use hawkmoth whose caterpillars feed on Taxodium, especially baldcypress. The brown adult is easy to miss, but the larval relationship is garden-relevant wherever baldcypress is planted as a wetland, pond-edge, or floodplain tree. Supporting it means keeping Taxodium foliage available and avoiding broad insecticide treatments during the caterpillar season.

Migratory songbird of open deciduous woods and edges whose summer diet is dominated by insects, especially caterpillars (including hairy and tent-forming species many birds avoid), making it a meaningful predator of leaf-eating larvae in the garden. It supplements that protein with soft fruit and visits flowers and sugar-water for nectar, so fruit-bearing native trees and shrubs such as mulberry and cherry draw it in. It weaves a distinctive hanging pouch nest near the drooping tips of tall deciduous trees.

Eastern North American swallowtail whose larvae feed exclusively on plants in the carrot family (Apiaceae) - parsley, dill, fennel, carrot foliage, and native rue-anemone - plus a handful of Rutaceae. The "parsley worm" is the canonical garden-discovery moment introducing people to specialist host-plant ecology: a single small herb planting can host a multi-year resident population. Adult females are darker than males and mimic the toxic pipevine swallowtail; both sexes nectar on a wide range of native and ornamental flowers.

Small, year-round resident songbird of northern North America and a familiar feeder visitor. It is an insectivore through the breeding season - parents feed nestlings almost entirely on caterpillars and other arthropods gleaned from foliage and bark, which is why the keystone native trees that host the most caterpillars (oaks, cherries, willows, and aspens/cottonwoods) directly determine how many chickadees a landscape can raise. In fall and winter it shifts to roughly half plant matter (seeds and small fruits) and caches food in bark crevices for later retrieval. A cavity nester, it excavates or enlarges holes in soft, rotted snags and readily uses nest boxes.

The brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) is a long-lived Palearctic butterfly of the family Pieridae, among the longest-lived of any butterfly species at 10–12 months as an adult. Males are a distinctive sulphur-yellow; females are pale greenish-white - the leaf-shaped wing outline providing camouflage when at rest with wings closed. Adults emerge in late summer, feed heavily to build fat reserves, then hibernate through winter, reappearing as one of the earliest butterflies on the wing each spring. In gardens across Europe, brimstones are attracted to buddleia, red valerian, thistles, and teasel, exploiting deep tubular flowers with their notably long proboscis.

The brown-eared bulbul (Hypsipetes amaurotis) is a medium-sized passerine, about 28 cm long, with grayish-brown plumage and distinctive brown ear-coverts, belonging to the family Pycnonotidae. It ranges across the Russian Far East, northeastern China, the Korean Peninsula, Japan, Taiwan, and south to the northern Philippines. In autumn and winter, when insect activity is low, it feeds on fruit, seeds, and the nectar of camellia (Camellia) flowers, becoming dusted with pollen in the process and acting as a documented winter pollinator. Gardeners in Japan and Korea growing Camellia japonica may attract this bird, which is one of the few pollinators active during the plant's winter bloom period.

The buck moth is an eastern North American saturniid whose dark, spiny caterpillars feed communally when young and mature into solitary oak-feeding larvae. Adults fly in autumn, often around the first deer-hunting season in parts of the East, which gives the moth its common name. In gardens and restoration plantings, the support action is simple but large-scale: protect native oaks and tolerate some spring caterpillar feeding so the adult moths can complete their fall flight.

A large, common European bumblebee whose queens are among the earliest to appear in late winter or early spring. Short-tongued, adaptable, and highly generalist, it uses gardens, parks, farms, and countryside habitats, working open flowers and often becoming winter-active in mild cities where winter-blooming plants are available.

Small white butterfly whose caterpillars feed on cabbage-family plants and related mustards. In vegetable gardens it is the familiar imported cabbageworm: ecologically a real Brassicaceae herbivore, practically a pest that turns cabbages, kale, broccoli, and watercress into larval food unless gardeners manage crops with netting, hand-picking, or other low-toxicity controls.

The Cape sugarbird is a long-tailed, decurved-billed passerine endemic to the fynbos biome of South Africa's Western and Eastern Cape, where it is one of only a handful of birds confined to this biodiversity hotspot. Breeding males carry an exceptionally elongated tail that can reach two to three times their body length. As a specialist nectarivore of the protea family (Proteaceae), it is a primary pollinator of many Protea species, visiting up to 300 flowers a day and carrying pollen on its bill and face between inflorescences; it also forages nectar at pincushions (Leucospermum) and other fynbos flowers. Gardens within the Cape Floristic Region that grow flowering proteas and pincushions will draw sugarbirds.

The Cape weaver (Ploceus capensis) is a stocky, 17 cm, yellow-and-orange weaver bird endemic to South Africa, Lesotho, and Eswatini, where it inhabits open grassland, fynbos, coastal thicket, and farmland near water. It is omnivorous, feeding on seeds, fruit, nectar, and insects. It functions as a primary pollinator of aloes across its range and is the main native pollinator of Strelitzia reginae (bird-of-paradise): birds perch on the spathe, triggering the third petal to open and deposit pollen on their feet as they probe for nectar. In gardens, it is most likely to appear where aloes, red-hot pokers, or bird-of-paradise are in bloom.

The Cape white-eye is a small, gregarious garden bird of southern Africa, easily recognized by its bright white eye-ring and yellow-green plumage. It is a dietary generalist, taking insects, nectar, soft fruit, and small grains, and is documented visiting aloe inflorescences and other tubular flowers in gardens and natural habitats. As an incidental pollinator and seed disperser it contributes to the regeneration of indigenous plants, while its insect-gleaning provides natural pest control. It thrives in a wide range of wooded and suburban habitats and readily uses gardens planted with indigenous nectar-rich species such as aloes.

North America's largest native moth (Saturniidae), with a wingspan of five to seven inches. Caterpillars are broad feeders on the foliage of native deciduous trees and shrubs - documented hosts include maple (Acer), cherry and plum (Prunus), birch (Betula), apple (Malus), willow (Salix), and many others across more than twenty plant families. Adults lack functional mouthparts and a digestive system, so they do not feed and live only about one to two weeks, devoting that time entirely to reproduction. The large caterpillars and pupae are also a substantial food source for breeding songbirds.

Sleek crested songbird that travels in flocks and feeds heavily on small fruits. Serviceberry, blueberry, and winterberry are all important late-spring through winter food sources; the bird is famous among gardeners as the species that strips a serviceberry tree clean in one afternoon visit.

The citrus swallowtail, or Christmas butterfly, is a large, strong-flying swallowtail widespread across sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar, and parts of the southern Arabian Peninsula. Its caterpillars feed on plants in the citrus family (Rutaceae) - native trees such as Clausena and Zanthoxylum as well as cultivated citrus and garden rue - passing through several generations a year. Adults visit a wide range of garden flowers for nectar and thrive in cultivated and disturbed habitats, including suburban gardens, wherever Rutaceae host plants grow.

A montane corvid that harvests pine seeds with a dagger-like bill, carries them in a pouch under its tongue, and buries them in thousands of small caches it relocates months later from memory. The caches it does not recover germinate, which makes the bird a primary disperser for several western pines rather than only a seed predator.