Providing Shelter:

In order to survive and reproduce, wildlife needs four essential elements: food, water, shelter, and nesting cover. Here are some tips to make your garden or backyard more attractive to birds and other small animals seeking shelter from predators or in need of safe places to nest:

1. Plant a few evergreen shrubs or trees. Their dense boughs create concealed nesting sites, windbreaks, and provide quick escape from hawks or cats. Native hollies and junipers are good choices since they provide food and dense foliage.
2. Rock piles, old logs, and thick layers of mulch protect toads, lizards, and burrowing mammals.
3. Allow dead trees to remain if they are not in danger of falling. Woodpeckers will excavate dens, and subsequently cavity-nesting birds or mammals may move in. If you have no dead trees, add nest boxes appropriately sized for screech owls, squirrels, bluebirds, titmice, chickadees, wrens, purple martins, or great-crested flycatchers.

Whenever you put up a nest box, you are supplying a potential nursery for a new generation of birds or mammals. Rather than nailing any old “bird house” to the nearest tree, take a few moments to think about design, location, and predator protection in order to make this home as safe as possible.

1. Keep nest boxes away from wildlife feeding areas to avoid luring raccoons and other hungry predators into nursery zones.
2. Do not to fasten nest boxes to trees or easy-to-climb posts, where they can become death traps for the occupants. Make support posts hard to climb by mounting on smooth metal electrical conduit made very slick by polishing with auto wax or coating with silicone or by installing a baffle of stove pipe or PVC pipe.
3. Remove old nests after birds fledge. Raccoons have less success grabbing eggs or chicks from a deep cavity than from a shallow nest built atop older materials. An extra block of wood on the box front also hinders the reach of furry predators.
4. Rough up the wall of the nest box inside below the entrance to assist birds leaving the nest.

Contact us via email for more details about wildlife habitat landscaping workshops that will bring birds, small mammals, and other wild visitors to your yard and photo classes with opportunities to photograph these creatures.