Backyard Wildlife Primer
(Page 10 of 14)
September/October 1986
By Raymond Zoanetti and the Mother Earth News editors
Pets. Predators play an important role in the environment, but your pet — as much as you may love it — is not a part of the natural scheme of things and can be a serious threat to wildlife you've attracted to your yard. If you have a dog or a cat, try to keep it indoors or penned at least during the early morning and early evening, when birds and animals are most active. You may also want to put a bell on your pet's collar. Also, of course, place all feeders, birdhouses, and nest boxes near or in cover.
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Gardens and orchards. The old saw "Good fences make good neighbors" holds especially true when those neighbors are hungry rabbits, raccoons, and other wildlife. A simple two- or three-strand electric garden fence like the one described in issue 99's Mother's Handbook is the method of choice for keeping out small mammals. If birds raid your fruit trees, cover the limbs with inexpensive, lightweight plastic netting. If wild critters are nibbling the bark of a tree's trunk or climbing up to get at the fruit, wrap an 18"-wide band of metal around the trunk, or encircle it with a small fence.
Unwelcome houseguests. Come cold weather, the squirrels that so eagerly took up residence in your oak trees just might decide they prefer a warmer place for the winter: say, your attic. You can't blame wild animals for seeking out a comfortable house . . . but if you'd just as soon they didn't take up residence in your house, be sure to seal up all unwanted openings. Also, remove other sources of temptation: Keep garbage cans in a closed shed or garage, for example.
Some types of birds are ground feeders and others prefer dining higher up, so be sure to include a variety of feeders, homemade or commercial-shelf and hanging feeders, seed tubes, etc. Place them at different levels, spaced well apart in the most sheltered areas of your property, near cover. If no such shelter exists, plant clumps of three to five pines or evergreen shrubs near the feeding stations to provide thermocover.
You can stock your feeders with commercial seed mixtures. Another approach is to buy seed separately from farm and garden stores, local Audubon chapters, or nature centers. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, nearly all seed-eating birds can be attracted with just two types of seed: white proso millet, which is preferred by ground-eating species . . . and black oiltype sunflower seed (the smallest of the sunflower group), which is a favorite of a wide variety of birds. These can be used as the core of your feeding program, but you should also offer such nutritive (but somewhat more species-specific) seeds as black- and gray-stripe sunflower, red proso millet, milo, peanut kernels, German millet, and niger thistle. The more varied the menu, the better.
Beef suet, which is available free or at low cost in meat markets, will help birds maintain body heat during cold winter weather. If you simply put suet outside, a greedy jay or starling can make off with it in one swoop — so hang the fat in (for example) a plastic mesh bag, a holder made of wire mesh, a wire soap dish, or a small log drilled with several half-inch-deep, one-inch-diameter suet holes. Or dip pinecones in melted suet and tie the coated cones to branches.
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