Tag Archives: Habitat

Certified Wildlife Habitat

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Small sign saying Certified Wildlife Habitat on metal post, near raised bed, and steps to front door of house.

It’s official. We’ve been designated by the National Wildlife Federation as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. This means that our garden “provides natural sources of food, water, cover, and places to raise young, and is maintained in a sustainable way that incorporates native plants, conserves water and doesn’t rely on pesticides.” We posted our sign in our front yard. We are one of over 227,000 such gardens in the United States, and they are hoping to reach 300,000 this year.

In order to be certified, you fill out a form at https://www.nwf.org/CertifiedWildlifeHabitat and give a donation to the organization. It’s on the honor system–you tell them the sources of habitat in your yard, in several categories. For food in our yard we have native plants, berry bushes, and fruit trees, as well as our bird feeder, and the pond. One of my favorites is evening primrose that grows wild. We keep several, only cutting in places that don’t work to have a tall plant–last year there were goldfinches all over this plant, and hopefully more this year.

Goldfinches eating seed on round plant head.

We provide water especially with the pond. The pond serves so many purposes–food, water, a place to raise young (the tadpoles!), cover for frogs. When I walk in the morning, I see birds bathing, bees taking a drink, frogs sunning and snatching flies. But any kind of water brings wildlife to a yard–small or large. We also have a bird bath near our patio, and see birds and squirrels getting drinks there.

Cover is used to protect from bad weather, hide from predators, or hunt prey. Around the edges of our yard there are trees and bushes, and piles of branches that provide cover for small critters, and places to raise young. Ever since the orchard trees and hazelnut bushes have grown up, birds are always perching there, sometimes on their way to the bird feeder, sometimes eating insects. I’ve posted about the robins raising young in a nest on our back porch. But we’ve also seen young squirrels in trees, and chipmunks coming from underground.

As for sustainable practices, we never use pesticides, and we compost our food waste and leaves. We conserve water with our rain barrels, and if the pond needs topping up, that comes from the rain barrels too. We try to incorporate native plants wherever we can–mostly by not pulling the weeds that emerge on their own: violets, pansies, daisies, wild strawberry, goldenrod among many others. I use an app to identify plants that come up. We do also have invasive plants that we are trying to get rid of.

The official designation and sign were a gift to ourselves, and to make our intentions more visible in the neighborhood. Most of the actual habitat is in the back and side yards. Have any of you participated in this program? Maybe you might like to check it out. There are little things that each of us can do to care for the earth community, and foster habitat for wildlife.

When Trees Fall

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The good part, for which I am grateful, is that our neighbor came to our door to talk to us. He asked whether we would mind if they took down trees in the area between our two properties. He wasn’t sure of its status, but I told him it was a “paper road” that likely would never be built. I told him we would NOT want those trees taken down, that they provide privacy between the two yards. The neighbors want to garden in the way back of their yard, but don’t get enough sun. I suggested that the boundary trees are to their north, so wouldn’t affect their sun. He said it was just as a way for the machinery to get into the back, but they could do it a different way and not take down those trees. He wanted to respect our wishes. So that is the good part. And I like that they want to garden.

Felled pines behind our big pine, behind our back yard, with goldenrod in front.

But the rest is so bad. Loud machines have been working all day yesterday and today, felling tall pines, and chipping up branches. Sometimes we feel the ground shake in our house when the trees fall. Our thin strip of protected trees does not hide what they are doing, light comes through and all the visuals of machines, and trees being cut down. The cherished privacy of our back yard is no longer what it was. But most of all, I think about all that habitat lost and wonder how many birds’ nests have been destroyed. Many many birds yesterday were making alarm calls. Early this morning, a pungent skunk-spray smell came through my windows. I imagine that the skunk has been dislodged in some way, and perhaps came across our yard and encountered one of the little cats that hunt here. I think about how we love the wildlife that come through our yard, and how the trees and underbrush, on the so-called “undeveloped” land, have been a mini-wildlife corridor for deer, turkeys, skunks, groundhogs, sometimes even foxes.

Through the trees, we can see the big machines, the pile of wood chips.

I try not to make the neighbor an enemy in my mind–after all, he wants to create a garden, so there is love for the earth there too. We live in the city, in a neighborhood near little brooks in sunken areas that continue to provide wildlife a refuge. But just in the six years we have lived here, acres of trees have been cut down in our neighborhood. Each tree down means more carbon in the atmosphere, more warming, more drought. I think about the long history of cutting the great forests of North America for settlers’ farms and gardens and cities.

And this is how the wider world feels to me right now as well. Slowly falling down around us, more and more “developed,” less and less room for wildlife and trees. I don’t even know how to feel this sadness. It is too deep, too fundamental. Even as Margy and I try to love this small piece of land, to learn from it how to live in mutuality with the earth, all around us the path of destruction seems to hold sway. I think about the great pine in our back yard on the paper road, the one that is over 100 years old, and how she must feel to sense the destruction of her family of trees nearby. I think the trees know. They know that we are destroying our only home, our only planet. And so we grieve together.

On My Walk

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Turkey VulturesOn my walk yesterday, I followed the brook trail by the Hall School. Then, as I was going along the road that crosses over the brook, I happened to look through the chain link fence to my left, and saw these huge birds resting in the underbrush near the brook.  They had not been visible from the trail–in fact I went back to see if I could get a closer look, and they were completely hidden.  Turkey vultures.  I had never seen them in the neighborhood before, but while watching for several minutes, another bird emerged–looking scruffy like a juvenile.  So maybe this was mama and papa’s protected home for raising their baby.

Turkey Vulture Juvenile

You never know what you’ll see in the little thickets and woods along the brook.  Further along my walk, I cross over another branch of the brook.  (My neighborhood is situated between two branches of flowing water that both feed into Capisic Brook.)  Stopping to see what I might see, I almost missed this tiny bird. I want to guess that it might be a black and white warbler–I saw one of those last year on the warbler walk at Evergreen.  But I am not sure.  Anyone?

Black & White Warbler?