Ray Bilderback
As cities and towns expand in this finite place we call home, each acre we inhabit means wildlife loses an acre. Fortunately, it is possible to share.
There are big benefits to be had from sharing. One morning, my wife called me to the kitchen window. There, briefly, was a hummingbird at our feeder, deer and robins on the lawn, and an osprey diving for a fish in Curlew Lake. Such simultaneous combinations are rare, to be sure, but they wouldn’t happen if we didn’t have an urge to share.
Our house sits on what remains of a resort property and is large enough to provide a corridor to Curlew Lake for deer. It also provides a lot of opportunity for nesting and feeding for a variety of birds and other critters (lots of brush along the lake shore, stands of conifers, and other trees and lots of weeds).
To welcome visitors and residents alike, we set up feeders, bird nests, and bat houses. As for visitors, we often feed migrating birds in both fall and spring. We try to follow Audubon guidelines on feeding practices. So, when migrating birds have had a couple of days to rest and feed, we stop feeding for a day or so. It’s not an exact science, but we try.
We keep a small, metal garbage can on the back step that contains sunflower seeds, and in a cupboard near the back door we keep suet for the nuthatches and woodpeckers (actually, everybody seems to like suet). We scatter seeds on the snow trying to give the birds a clean plate.
A word here on hummingbird feeders: putting less in the feeder at a time and cleaning it more often seems to make the birds happier.
The front lawn is irrigated and attracts deer, especially in August and September when the woods dry up (this year they showed up in July).
A doe with a split ear is a recognizable regular customer. In the spring she brings her new fawns and they grow up regarding our place as part of their territory. One such buck, once a spotted fawn the doe brought by, now sports a magnificent set of antlers still in velvet.
Not everybody welcomes the deer. They can be a nuisance and even a threat to pets and children. A neighbor recently heard a scuffle in her front yard and had to rescue her dog from a doe that had a fawn nearby. The dog is recovering from his bruises. No telling when his ego will recover.
The neighbor lives next to a nice bit of forest and can expect such visitors again. So, she has plans to “deer-proof” the backyard, as we did of our own backyard some years back. Next year she can have flowers, her dog can have a place to stretch his legs, and the deer can graze the front lawn.
Avoiding hazards
In the little town of Sprague, where I once lived, some people were feeding quail by scattering seeds on the street at dusk. Quail came out of the adjacent scabland by the hundreds to enjoy the feast. We had a great horned owl living in our elm trees and it was getting fat and lazy. Turns out that feeding the quail that way, made them easy pickins. If you have ground-feeding birds such as quail, pheasants, or doves, try to feed them under bushes or a shelter of some kind.
We had to cover our big living room window with a net because it was a real wildlife hazard. Under some light conditions it appeared to be a dark opening. One day, a woodpecker flew directly into it, breaking its neck in the process. That bird had been a regular at our suet feeder. We miss it and feel like we could have avoided the accident. The net prevents such an event from recurring.
A cavity-nesting duck was the next victim of our house. It managed somehow to get down alongside the chimney. We could hear a scrambling that seemed to come from a closet, and it sounded like it had feathers. Couldn’t be.
At times during the night, we could hear the same feathery struggle. The next day, I removed a panel in the closet. A very tired hen duck was stuck in the wall. My fearless wife grabbed it, and I held the door open for her. She scrambled down to the lake and let the thing go. And it did. Go, that is. Tired as she was, she half-flew, half-paddled away. We fixed that hazard (knock on wood), and we are trying to anticipate the next hazard and eliminate it before some other visitor comes to harm.
Other hazards
We try to keep the place free of poisons. If you have pets that roam your yard, they will be thankful. If you have a well, the water will taste better, and, here’s a plus, you will have more pollinators.
We have quail on the place. They are cute and eat lots of weed seeds and bugs. Quail are “easy keepers.” They love cover and a bit of feed in the winter. Their chief predators are owls, hawks, and house cats.
Another neighbor told us of a different sort of a hazard. This time it was not a hazard to the wildlife as much as to our neighbor. She had a pair of dogs and a pet door. One day she came into the house from the garden and saw a skunk waddling down the hallway. She opened her front door really wide, got out of the way, and the skunk waddled out the big door just as pretty as you please. It was a polite skunk (didn’t raise a stink about being shown the door).
If you want birds, give them cover. Turns out that can be a hazard for you. How do you set the home place up with shelter for critters and still keep your place fire-safe? That’s a challenge we all must take up.
Ray Bilderback, creator of the Reuben Braddock novels, was born and raised in the Sierra foothills of California. He served in the U.S. Navy Seabees during the Korean War and taught for many years in the west. He makes his home in the mountains of eastern Washington with his archeologist wife, Madilane Perry. “In the 1930s and 1940s, where I lived, we still used horses and hand tools, canned and preserved what we grew or raised, lit our kerosene lanterns, stoked our woodstoves. In my writing, I draw from those times like water from a sweet well.”
