Backyard Wildlife Primer
(Page 5 of 14)
September/October 1986
By Raymond Zoanetti and the Mother Earth News editors
Shrubs are particularly useful because they develop sooner than trees, and provide food, cover, and reproductive sites for many birds and animals. Use them to create a diverse understory among existing stands of trees. Plant shrubs around trees, and around your home and other manmade structures, to blend such elements into the landscape. As much as possible, use appropriate food-bearing species such as elderberry, fire thorn, serviceberry, or manzanita. Refrain from pruning the lower branches of shrubs; leave them to provide cover for ground-nesting wildlife.
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Grasses, flowers, and ground covers are also vital elements in habitat design, not only for their inherent value as food and cover for such species as hummingbirds and seed-eating songbirds, but because they support insect o populations that in turn attract many additional kinds of birds. Low herbaceous growth serves as a useful landscape design tool, too, adding color and texture and filling in open spaces between other vegetation. Plant both annual and perennial grasses and flowers.
* Edge is essential. Simply stated, edge is any area where two or more types of vegetation come together: where forest meets meadow, grasses and flowers give way to shrubs, pasture becomes marsh, marsh meets pond. Because such an area contains a greater diversity of plant life, it is used by a greater number of species of creatures than is any one of the more distinct zones. Studies have shown that the population and diversity of wildlife species increase proportionately with the size and (interestingly) irregularity of edge habitat. A way to create one kind of edge habitat quickly is to stop mowing the outer few feet of the perimeter of your land, or to take an out-of-the-way comer of your property out of the mowing cycle.
* Connect isolated habitat areas. Small, scattered pockets of habitat — a lone brushy area, a pond in an open field, a small cluster of trees surrounded by lawn — are of little use to animals. To make the brushy area's cover, the pond's water, and the fruit and nuts from the trees accessible to the species that need them, such areas should be tied together whenever possible by travel lanes made up of small trees and shrubs, tall grasses, or other dense vegetation.
* Choose plant varieties appropriate to your climate and growing conditions. As much as possible, use varieties of trees, shrubs, flowers, and other vegetation native to your region; those species have had centuries to adapt to your area's environment, and are hardier than so-called exotics. Take note of the natural vegetation and the kinds of conditions in which various types grow — willows in wet areas, pines in open, sunny sites, and so on. Then choose the appropriate native species for the conditions on your land. [EDITOR'S NOTE: According to the National Wildflower Research Center, over 2,500 species or subspecies of native plants are threatened with extinction. As a general rule, don't gather native plants from the wild. Instead, buy natives from nurseries that offer, or specialize in, such species — and before you buy, be sure the nursery propagates its own stock, or at least collects only from sites destined to be cleared.]
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