The concept of a wildlife garden is foreign to a lot of people. Yet, they often buy bird seeds and fill humming bird feeders with sugar water. It’s not too rare to see someone put up a birdhouse somewhere on their property. Let’s look at what makes a garden or yard wildlife friendly.
As any good fishing or hunting enthusiast can tell you, cover or habitat is one of the most important things for wildlife. They need a place to hide, to raise little ones safely, and they need feeding sources, and for sure a water source.
Adapting this to the backyard in the city, a large tree or an evergreen tree or hedge can give wild critters places to hide, perhaps forage, and certainly to get about mostly unseen by us large two legged critters. Patches or hedges of wild growth, rather than closely cut grass lawns and well trimmed shrubs offer wildlife the places they need.
Songbirds need a place to nest. Some prefer hollow cavities of trees, stumps, (or birdhouses) — that describes the bluebird. Some prefer evergreen trees or shrubs. And some prefer leafy trees. Then think of little birdies — and let’s hope their first training flight doesn’t end up on a lawn with the…
