create a backyard habitat for wildlife

I’m in my new apartment and gradually assessing the gardens and what I can do with them. I’ve been given the green light to design what I want since it was mostly burrs and overgrown shrubs when I moved in. I won’t add plants until next year, but I’ve done a few portable things.

A bird bath is on my back patio and I keep it filled and clean. I also put up a shepherd’s hook outside my living room window. It has a mesh feeder full of safflower and black oil sunflower seeds, a “sock” of niger thistle seeds and a tube feeder of songbird mix (sunflower, millet, etc).

For two weeks, all I had on the feeders was chipmunks. They would climb the pole, stuff their cheeks as fast as they could and then go stow the seeds in their nest. I had a pair of them emptying the feeder every couple of days. That’s several pounds of seed per day! When I added the tube feeder, I also added a chipmunk baffle. I cut the top and bottom off a 2-liter bottle and then slit it up the side. I fit it around the pole, taped it on and watched to see what would happen. The chipmunks climbed the pole and up into the bottle, but couldn’t reach the feeders. Success!

Or so I thought.. They took to climbing the brick on the side of the house and then leapt from my windowsill to the feeders. There were some major wipeouts with little rodent limbs flailing in vain to grab the feeders, but they eventually figured out that jumping from above the windows worked most of the time.

Now that the feeders are moved out of chipmunk jumping range, they have given up and the birds are able to visit without being harassed. I have been getting nuthatches and chickadees during the day (a pair of each) and a pair of cardinals at dusk. I can almost set my watch by them and they are only a couple feet from where I sit by the window. My goal is to add a set of feeders outside my kitchen and office windows as well, but my shepherd’s hooks are with my parents. Next time I visit, I’ll bring them home with me and set up the rest of the feeding stations. I have nothing but shrubs and trees and a fence along once side of my apartment, and most of my windows face this private strip of habitat. It’s really a big part of what drew me to this place.

I designed my first public garden this spring. It’s small, but it was a fun challenge. I had to take this sunny patch and plant a perennial garden that would thrive and bloom during one week at the end of July. It also had to survive with minimal watering and weekly or so spraying to repel deer and rabbits (which are abundant). I chose to fill it with native perennials which are attractive to birds and butterflies.

It’s in the first year, so the plants are small, but most of them were blooming last week. I watched people taking photos and I overheard a lot of nice comments. One woman was even taking close-up pictures to use for greeting cards. The best part for me was looking closely at one of the pink swamp milkweeds and seeing four fat monarch caterpillars munching away.

I have plans to design two more gardens for the same event next year. Now, no matter how much I move, one of my gardens will stay put.

I finally added a heated bird bath to the yard. I found a small, affordable one that only uses 50 watts. I figure I can turn off a light somewhere in the house if it means birds have access to fresh water when everything else is frozen. Right now the only melted snow we have is saturated with road salt, sand and grime.

So far it is working like a charm! I also rearranged some of the feeders and now I have three cardinals coming in to check out the smorgasbord. I love those little specks of bright red when everything else is shades of grey.

I love feeding birds in the winter. I got a new feeder for Christmas – one of the fancy ones with counterweighted perches. If a squirrel gets on it, the perches drop and cover the seed holes. I was able to fill it with sunflower seeds and peanuts. The birds absolutely flock to it and it’s great to see. Everyone around me has plain lawns so I’m glad I can provide a little oasis in the middle of suburbia.

The last plants have been planted and I moved some that didn’t seem happy in their previous locations. I still need to mulch, but that is going to require a truckload (literally) of mulch. I’ll get to that when I can. I’m going out to draw maps of the beds so I can find things next year. I’m making copper labels too, but I found this spring that most of the labels I made last year had disappeared. I am becoming a firm believer in repetitive record-keeping.

The yard is full of birds, butterflies, bees and all sorts of miscellaneous critters. The flowerbeds are full of movement and it’s great to watch. A few days ago, I watched the male cardinal bring his fledgling chick down to the birdfeeders to show it how it’s done. I’ve never seen a young cardinal before. It didn’t look like either the male or the female – more like a big fat gawky sparrow. So when I went looking for a photo of a juvenile, I found something interesting – it wasn’t a cardinal. The poor male was feeding a juvenile cowbird.

New blooms are opening daily and I’m enjoying the show. It’s a good thing I’m done because I’ve totally ricked my back and I broke my border fork while digging out a huge hosta. Lee Valley Tools is replacing it for me and even sent me a postage paid label to ship it back. I want another one because it’s the perfect size for my short bod and it’s lightweight. I don’t know how I ever gardened without one. These last transplanting efforts were frustrating because shovels cut through roots, while forks loosen plants and lift them up more or less intact.

Last chore is to find a way to save some of my plants from the &$#@$# rabbits.

The chickadees have fledged and now the house wrens are moving in. The male is like a speedy, drab canary with a saucy tail. He sings his little heart out while sitting on top of the nest boxes. I’ve seen him adding twigs to the boxes and I’m pretty sure he’ll end up using the same one the chickadees occupied. Whenever I get near it, he sits in the trees nearby and cusses me out. Male wrens are very generous to their brides. They build several nests, let the female check each one out and she chooses whichever one she likes best. This will be the third spring in a row that both chickadees and wrens have nested in my yard.

When building a backyard habitat, I try to provide all the basic elements for wildlife – food, shelter and water. Food is covered. I have feeders and plants that help provide a lot of variety. I also have shelter in the form of evergreens, shrubs and nest boxes. Water is not always easy. I have several birdbaths, but the sound of trickling water draws birds in from a distance like no birdbath can. Last weekend, I finally made my bubble fountain. It doesn’t look like much, but it burbles soothingly and has just enough exposed water for sipping, without any worries of drowning. Bees and butterflies need water too and this is a good setup for them. The sound of it lowers my blood pressure and makes my garden feel more like a private sanctuary.

If I could live anywhere, I’d live in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.

I captured this photo last year completely by accident. I was using my new camera to try to photograph a monarch in my garden. It fluttered away and landed on a milkweed. While I waited for it to come back to the plant I was standing in front of, I used the zoom and took a quick shot. Imagine my surprise when I downloaded the photos and saw I had caught a perfect shot of the female laying eggs.

Today I watched a monarch fluttering around my garden. It landed on the same milkweed plant and I saw that tell-tale abdomen curl. This time I knew what I was looking at and I waited for her to fly away. I gently lifted the leaf and there by the stem was one, perfect, pearly white egg.

On my quest to find two blueberry bushes and two purple fountain grasses today, I accidentally purchased two and a half extra flats of plants. In my defense, I did buy plants for the butterflies and hummingbirds. I have a garden full of perennials. However, some of the best butterfly plants are annuals (heliotrope, lantana, verbena and marigolds) and so are some of the best hummingbird plants (fuschias, impatients, nicotiana and cupheas).

I had to do it. It was a moral imperative. It’s either that or I need to join Gardeners Anonymous. I prefer to believe my addiction is doing something good for the world. Those 67 extra plants that were not on my list will make my yard a better habitat.

I also bought tubing to hook up my fountain pump and add water to the garden. I’m really excited to get it put together.

This is one of those goals that will never be finished, but it’s so rewarding to work on. I have three nest boxes in my backyard and a pair of chickadees is definitely nesting in one of them right now. I’ve had a pair for the past three years, but they don’t always choose the same box. House wrens come in shortly after the chickadees fledge and build their twig nests right on top of the abandoned cups of moss left by the chickadees.

I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for hummingbirds. Now that the lilacs and columbines are blooming, they should be showing up. Right now I have chipping sparrows and goldfinches galore. I was almost nailed in the head by a male goldfinch the other day. Three of them were chasing each other at warp speed and I don’t think he was watching where he was going. Either that or he was trying the Han Solo maneuver (whereby one zooms very close to a large obstacle in hopes that one’s pursuer just learned to fly yesterday and won’t be able to avoid crashing with a big explosion).

Tomorrow I shall try to upload a photo of a new feathered friend.