Backyard Wildlife Habitats

By Patricia Diaz, from the April 2003 Newsletter

This month’s article discusses not only how to create a backyard habitat but how to get it certified by the National Wildlife Federation. If you make your garden area creature-friendly enough to be certified, it’s certain that animals will come. And once the critters come and the longer that they stay, the more accepting they will be of your presence, and they’ll start behaving as they do in the wild. That’s when the really wonderful benefit of not just being entertained by Nature’s critters but educated as well comes.

Incorporate the main elements of habitat – food, water, shelter, nesting places, and safety – into your backyard habitat. One of the most important things to provide is food, more specifically, a year-round food supply. If you want to attract the greatest variety of wildlife, you must be very diverse in your selection of offered food. Using native plants or at the least, blending natives with non-natives, provides what the critters are used to eating. Consider plants with berries, nuts, and seeds, as well as lots of foliage, nectar, pollen, and sap. Insects will be attracted too, which will, in turn, attract birds, toads, etc.

Use plantings that bloom at different times of year. For instance, hummingbirds arrive here at the end of April and need flowers such as columbine and coral-bells in the spring, and scarlet monkey flower, penstemon, and salvia in the summer. In the fall, birds like cedar waxwings love pyracantha berries. Other wonderful food plants include flowering red currant, Oregon grape, salal, and evergreen huckleberry. On the Palouse, we need to put up bird feeders in the winter because natural food is scarce. Some people take feeders down in spring, but I leave mine up year-round for snacking purposes, and don’t fill them as often.

To provide the essential backyard habitat, you must offer water year-round. Ponds are a wonderful way to attract all sorts of wildlife. If you’re concerned about mosquitoes, you can use Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis for natural control. It comes in either granules or donut-shaped disks. I’ve been using disks for years, and they work well. Incorporate the sound of water falling, such as in a waterfall or fountain, and you will attract even more wildlife. You can also provide water in other containers, such as birdbaths and buckets. Keep water sources clean, preferably by hosing them out every other day and scrubbing them occasionally with a brush. In the winter, purchase a heater for the birdbath or container to keep it from freezing.

Shelter is the next essential provision. Lots of leafy or twiggy plantings give birds and other wild critters places to go for safety and for nesting places. Dense shrubbery is excellent, as are brush piles. Plants with thorns, such as a thicket of rugosa roses or pyracantha bushes, are superb as safe shelters. Lizards, rabbits, quail, and other small animals love hollow logs, woodpiles, and stacked rocks. If your garden area is small or if a brush pile is not aesthetically pleasing, consider bat houses, birdhouses, bee homes, butterfly homes, and toad homes.

Unfortunately, cats and wildlife don’t mix. Belling your cat often doesn’t work, so keep your cat indoors. If that’s not possible, feed your cat indoors at prime bird-feeding times (early morning and early evening). Place feeders and nesting boxes where cats can’t reach them. There is a wondrous assortment of squirrel-foilers that work equally with cats.

Keep birds from flying into windows by painting big dots or other shapes with water-soluble craft paint on them. (You have to renew these when you wash your windows). Vary the color of paint (white in winter and green or brown in summer) if the dots bother you or cut out snowflakes or bird shapes from craft paper and hang them inside the glass. Kids would love to help with this project.

Once you’ve provided the essential elements, you may want the National Wildlife Federation to certify your habitat garden. Applications are available by mail or can be downloaded from the NWF website, www.nwf.org/backyardwildlifehabitat. You need to include with your application, snapshots that show the reviewers what you’re describing in the application, as well as the common names of the plants and animals in your garden and the wildlife food and water your garden habitat provides each season.

Pat Diaz lives in a wonderland of wildlife habitat about an hour east of Moscow. Wild turkeys, deer, snowshoe hares, birds, red squirrels and other great creatures make daily visits.

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