AvianActs: Animals in the 'patch'

The wild animals that pass through or make a home in my 'patch' influence the habitat surrounding my home and in turn affect the bird and insect populations. I try to balance the selection of plants and shrubs that look attractive to me and to my neighbors with their manicured yards, and are not too palatable for deer, woodchucks, rabbits, and other animals.

I do not put out any bird feeders, and fortunately there are no feeders in my neighborhood either. Bird lovers who use feeders often witness squirrels overcoming supposedly insurmountable barriers to get to the seeds or suet. Instead, I witness squirrels, chipmunks and other animals sharing food sources with birds in a natural balanced way.

Eastern gray squirrels run up and down tall trees in the woods behind my house all year long. They nest in the trees, and their numbers increase in spring. By late summer there are only two or three in residence, digging small holes in the ground for storage and retrieval of nuts. In most years, they share an abundant supply of dogwood and other berries, black cherries, and Bradford pears with chipmunks and songbirds. Acorns are favored by both squirrels and Blue Jays. The acorn crop varies from year-to-year, and occasionally the Bradford pear crop suffers from an early frost. In a lean year gray squirrels begin chomping green dogwood berries with vigor in late summer, leaving only a very small fraction of this highly favored berry crop to ripen for the birds.

The eastern chipmunk is another major contender for the berries in my yard. I have given up the hope of getting fresh strawberries from my garden; the chipmunks always get those first and stash them in gutter pipes. Strawberry plants and low growing blueberry shrubs are now replaced with winterberry, chokeberry, and cranberry shrubs to attract other wildlife. Chipmunks pick a mouthful of berries at a time to take to their underground storage facilities where they hibernate in the winter but leave plenty for the birds.

The chipmunk population varies between two to almost a dozen from year-to-year. These creatures are also a source of food for predators including raptors as well as some carnivores. Once I watched a Red-tailed Hawk swoop down to catch a chipmunk. Hawks and owls also hunt in my 'patch' for garter and black snakes, mice, rats, and voles. These snakes are not poisonous and perhaps harmless, but small rodents eat plant roots and bulbs leaving bare spots in my planting beds.

This long strip of planting bed (photo) with small shrubs and perennials is a favorite place for small animals and birds, providing shelter and food. There is safe cover in the wooded area behind with tall trees for nesting, perches for lookouts and undergrowth for shelter.

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A family of woodchucks, also known as groundhogs, have an underground home somewhere in the woods and a network of tunnels in the planting bed for quick getaways. They munch clover leaves in the lawn and relish a few other perennials. Woodchucks hibernate in winter from October to early April. In the winter, an opossum is sometimes seen using the entrance to the woodchuck tunnel for shelter or for finding bugs in the leaf litter that collects there.

Cottontail rabbits have a more refined taste; they like to eat flowers. I discovered they had a color preference when only red petunias were missing from a bed of alternating red and white petunias. Annual flowers are now replaced with variegated shrubs to give some color even if it is just shades of green and white. Rabbits nest in a shallow hole in the ground and cover it with dry grass, well designed to withstand a lawnmower passing overhead. Baby rabbits stay in the nest for a couple of weeks and get mother's milk only once a day (photo). Somehow the family survives in the nest in the front yard, but survival is tougher once the baby rabbits leave the nest.

The planting bed strip is a good hunting ground for red foxes looking for rabbits and woodchucks. A fox once attempted to catch a baby woodchuck (photo) while I was watching through the kitchen window. The woodchuck managed to free itself from the fox's claws - lucky for the woodchuck, unfortunate for the fox!

White-tailed deer roam everywhere in this part of the country, and my yard is no exception. They like the tender leaves of plants in early spring and blossoms in summer. Their preferences change over time, and the plants advertised to be deer resistant are not necessarily safe. My best guess in selecting plants that attract birds and butterflies but are distasteful to deer does not always turn out well.

I suspected there were other animals that passed through my yard from the footprints on fresh snow. Now two passive infra-red (PIR) game cameras at the edge of the woods and facing the grassy area between the woods and the long planting bed capture the movement of animals at night in 10-second-long videos. Skunks, rabbits, and opossums are frequent visitors. Occasionally a red fox runs along the planting bed. Raccoons and coyotes are rare, and there was once evidence of a bobcat passing by.

Domestic and stray cats wander around during the day and at night. The birds keep a safe distance from my neighbor's small black-and-white cat and are not agitated. When a stray cat appears, American Robins perched on tall trees send out alarms; their calls continue for as long as the cat stays in the area.

There are several piles of tree branch cuttings, trimmings of shrubs and perennials and dried leaves in the woods. This keeps the open areas in the yard tidy and brush piles out of sight in the protected wooded areas. I have seen rabbits and skunks disappearing in a brush pile and a House Wren defending its territory while perched on a stack of dried branches.

Although not a perfect natural setting, this 'patch' offers food and protection to many animals and birds and an opportunity for me to observe them from close quarters.