Urban wildlife

[godfry n. glad]

With the storm coming in, I stepped outside on to the concrete stoop in freshening air of the evening. Just as I closed the screendoor behind me, rustling occurred in the cover of the darkened arbor. It continued, and sounded rather like someone hiding in the jungle that is the near corner of my back yard. I stepped back inside the screen door and latched it behind me. I listened. The rustling continued. I stepped across the kitchenette, away from the back door and flipped on the floodlights to the back yard. It was illuminated right up to the thousands of rhododendron and camellia leaves that made up the outer surface of the jungle. The rustling continued unabated. It really didn't even change once I'd flipped on the floodlights. I figured that it had to be something stupid....certainly not a raccoon. I figured a human would probably even fess up once the spots went on. It had to be....

yep...it was....

my annual visitation from one of the Possum clan. Full growed one this year. He had decided to break cover and amble, hurriedly, across the vast expanse that is my "lawn". All of about twenty feet. Then he was in the shadows again.

I live in a central city neighborhood. It's practically smack in the center of the regions largest urban agglomeration (warranted, it's not "world class" as cities go) but I still get visits from opposums, raccoons and even an occasional stray coyote. I'm assuming that these are the most adaptable of the quadripeds to human community incursions in their habitats. Still, they are unusual enough to be mildly interesting.

[The Lone Ranger]

I like opossums, but they're definitely not the brightest of critters! One evening I was walking in the woods when I heard something coming toward me. I stopped and waited to see what would happen. Soon, an opossum came ambling toward me. I kept waiting for it to notice me, but it just kept ambling toward me. The critter walked into my leg. Only then did it realize I was there. It looked up at me, its mouth gaping in surprise, and looked so comical that I actually laughed out loud.


It's practically smack in the center of the regions largest urban agglomeration (warranted, it's not "world class" as cities go) but I still get visits from opposums, raccoons and even an occasional stray coyote. I'm assuming that these are the most adaptable of the quadripeds to human community incursions in their habitats. Still, they are unusual enough to be mildly interesting.

Yup. Some species -- notably opossums, raccoons, coyotes, and white-tailed deer have adapted remarkably well to human alteration of their habitats. Coyotes, opossums, and raccoons are opportunists and scavengers by nature and highly adaptable, so they've adapted to suburbia very well indeed. In fact, all three species are actually thought to have larger ranges today than they did when Europeans first set foot on the continent.

White-tailed deer are "edge" species that do best at the boundaries between forests and meadows/grasslands. By slicing up large patches of forest into lots of smaller patches with plenty of "edge" habitat, humans have tremendously increased the amount of suitable habitat for white-tails. Between that and killing off most of the white-tails' predators, humans have allowed white-tail populations to soar. Like coyotes and opossums, white-tailed deer nowadays occupy much more land than they did when the first European settlers arrived.


Cheers,

Michael

[godfry n. glad]

I've noticed a resurgence of butterflies and hummingbirds in the local area, too. Either there are more of them, or what there are are bolder.

This year, I was pleased to see a dragonfly, or two, in my garden. It stopped and rested in my front garden. I am fairly close to Crystal Springs and Oaks Bottom, so I suppose this is not really all that 'out of the ordinary'. But I was pleased.

[The Lone Ranger]

If you're interested, there are several organizations devoted to encouraging people to adopt "wildlife-friendly" lawn and garden practices. For instance, here's (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0875966756/qid=1152686958/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-2600498-1400168?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) a book that offers suggestions on how/what to plant in order to attract butterflies, birds, and other neat critters.

Cheers,

Michael

[godfry n. glad]

Yeah...I'm sorta half aware of all that, but never put much time into it. I used to have a bird feeder (that was feeding a couple of neighborhood cats, too), but once we were adopted by Hobbes, that came to an end. It was fun when we had our outdoor Angora bunny...when he'd get shorn in the spring, we'd get tons of bird visitors. There was bunny fur all over the garden.

The visitors I most enjoy are the gray wrens. I inadvertantly attracted a flock of them two summers ago by watering high up in the rhody/camellia jungle out back. It was a great joy to watch them covorting in the water dropping off the leaves....about 30 of them at once. They are fun to watch.

[freemonkey]

When we first moved into this house there was a family of raccoons living in the trees in the wooded lot next to our driveway. In the evenings we'd sit on the backporch on listen to them wake and climb down the trees to assemble for the night's activities. I love the sound they make. They lived there for a couple years, but when we got our dog they realized it was not safe for them.

I always thought it odd that we had no squirrels here, but some time after the raccoons left, I started noticing some little red squirrels cavorting in our yard. They like to chatter at the dog, and now I find little walnut seedlings and peanut shells in my planters. I call it "gardening by squirrel".

In the winters I get a wood rat in the brush pile at the back of our yard (cute!) and a brown rat under the house (not so cute, and soon dead by rat trap).

We used to put bird seed out, but again, since the dog, its not safe for them, so I don't encourage it. That doesn't mean we don't get birds anyway, just not as many, and not all the same ones. The pheasants stay away now, but we still get chickadees, juncos, tiny brown wrens (Ellie managed to catch one of those last year, as well a crow the year before. Oh, and she even caught a rat once!). This year, I've had a family of crows living in my front yard. They like to clean their seafood in my birdbath! Some years, we also get a family of Stellar's Jays nesting in our trees.... beautiful but loud.

[Plant Woman]

I love that my garden is full of all kinds of critters. There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not treated to glimpses of towhees rustling the leaf litter on the ground, or a frog chorus so loud we named our place—Frog Holler. One morning I was sitting so still in the garden that a chickadee landed on my head. I don't know who was more startled, me having it land on my head without warning, or the chickadee when it realized its new perch was a human. I love the hummingbirds that fly around the garden that is planted with numerous flowers to keep them coming back every year. I especially enjoy when the mama hummers bring their juveniles to the feeders and she hangs out in the distance watching over her babies as they feed. If she feels anything is threatening to her babies, she chases them off with no fear. This year when I am watering my containers in the evening when they show up, I stand and water the lower branches of a tree, and they take turns taking a shower, within a few feet of me. It’s become an evening ritual.

The strangest thing I ever experienced was one morning I was sitting on my deck drinking coffee and a red fox trotted boldly up to me. It had a rope tied around its neck and it trailed behind it. It was as if it was asking me to help, so I reached down and slid the rope off its neck. I turned away for just a second to pick up my coffee cup and when I turned back, the fox had disappeared.

I spend as much time as I can observing the wildlife around my neighborhood and feel privileged that it is teaming with so much life! Although a dog chasing a bear into my garden wasn’t my ideal wildlife visitations. Fortunately, the bear ran right through my garden; it didn’t notice me standing in the middle of it, my jaw draped open and body frozen with fear. To this day, I hear that bear grunting while crashing through the underbrush of the woods before breaking into the open of my property. The dog chasing it and all the other dogs kicked up a fuss, howling and barking frantically when they smelled a bear in the ‘hood. When I hear the dogs repeating this behavior, I know either it is an emergency vehicle siren or maybe a bear nearby they are fussing over.

I always think of my garden as a wildlife habitat. I provide water in the form of two ponds and plenty of plant material for them to feast on. One thing I do is not clean it up in fall and let the seed heads stay on the plants and let the leaves stay on the ground. The birds are all over my garden all year round. I grow highbush cranberries (Viburnum trilobum) as a hedge that feeds the birds in winter. I also have many plants for the hummingbirds, butterflies and bees. Being an organic gardener all my life, I do nothing in the way of pest control. It takes a few years to get a garden balanced, but once there it is balanced with many beneficial insects that keep the pests under control. I grow a lot of native plants and any exotic plants must not be such a problem that they have to be constantly sprayed to maintain.

Freemonkey, our native red squirrels are usually quite shy. It sounds like yours are well fed. We have one in the neighborhood that isn't shy and he comes out to greet us when I walk some mornings. I think humans are feeding him because this is not normal behavior.

A good book for the Pacific Northwest is Russell Link’s Living with Wildlife, University of Washington Press.

[godfry n. glad]

Wow...helping foxes and showering hummingbirds.

The neighborhood here has a murder of crows. I'm not quite sure where they nest, but they are here year 'round. I can always tell when a hawk or owl wanders into the skies over my neighborhood, as the crows gang up and get rillyrilly noisy.

I've also a scrub jay couple which repeatedly nests in the stand of mature Douglas firs three lots over. What can really be fun is watching the jays keep the local cats under control. I've even seen a jay knock a cat, ass over teakettle, off of a picket fence. Those buggers can be pushy. Plucky.

I used to put out peanut butter in drilled holes in a chunk of limb which has been suspended from my arbor. That always got me loads of chickadees. I stopped when Hobbes moved in.