Mother's hardly working naturalist

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• In very hot weather, hummingbirds cool themselves by panting.

• Ruby-throated hummingbirds; migrating to and from North America fly 500 miles nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico. Twice a year, rufous hummingbirds travel 2,500 miles between Central America and Alaska.

• To keep their fast-moving bodies fueled, hummingbirds eat almost constantly. Every day, a hummingbird visits between 1,000 and 2,000 flowers, and drinks more than half its weight in nectar. It also gobbles up small insects and spiders.

HARD-WORKING HABITAT

The unmown grass, the ragged-looking shrubs, that pile of dead limbs and brush behind the poplar: Some would say, as my misinformed neighbors have hinted from time to time, these are symptoms of a good for-nothing homeowner. Of course, I know better I'm creating wildlife habitat.

I recommend the hobby and here's my secret: Often, the best thing you can do to provide a hospitable home for birds and animals is to do nothing at all.

For example:

• Don't regularly mow the outer few feet of your lawn. The resulting growth will create edge, which provides cover for many species and nesting areas for some. if you can't let your lawn's perimeter go natural, pick an out-of-the-way comer or a dry or swampy spot where grass already has difficulty growing.

• Don't clear grassy areas or prune trees or shrubs until the end of nesting season. (Or better yet, maybe you should forget the job.) if you do prune, leave the lower branches intact to create ground-level cover.

• Don't rake leaves from beneath all your deciduous trees. Let some leaf litter remain to encourage an insect population that will provide fare for insect-eating wildlife.

• Don't keep your yard perfectly cleaned of all twigs, grass clippings, feathers and other small debris: Birds need such objects for nesting material.

• Don't get rid of fallen limbs or pruned branches. Instead, build a brush pile to provide cover and nesting places. Don't trim hedges or other shrubbery flat. Let vegetation assume its own natural shapes.

See what I mean? The formula for successful wildlife landscaping couldn't be simpler or more suited to summer's dog days: Sit back, relax and let nature do much of the work.

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