Plant Trees, Create Habitat and New Neighbors Will Come

By Contributing Writer, 6-17-08

My husband and I looked at each other in bewilderment. What have we done? We thought we were putting in a windbreak.  We planted three rows just like the extension booklet said – lilacs and caraganas, hybrid poplars, and blue spruce. In subsequent plantings, we filled in with Siberian crabapples and Nanking cherries After 20 years, we claim our windbreak is a success, but for whom?

Unintentionally, we created new wildlife habitat.  Provide cover with access to food and the critters move right in. Our windbreak is now a wildlife super highway and an apartment complex for birds. Have we made it easy for them to plunder our garden and fruit trees and murder our chickens? 

When we moved here, there were no trees or shrubs. It was fallow grain ground, hay field, and pasture. Robins nested on the ground. Magpies had no perches. Mule deer and skunks took cover in the tall grass. We tried to shoo wildlife out of the way before we cut hay. Deer could see the tractor and mower coming. Ground squirrels dove into their holes. Skunks felt safe in the tall grass. Too late, we would watch a skunk come up into the chamber of the baler. The red tailed hawks considered baled skunk a tasty treat.

As the trees grew, the robins and magpies moved their nests into the poplars. They had to. Death losses from our cats were unacceptably high. The magpies fought back. They dive bombed our tomcat, followed him, pecked his tail, and scolded him. He cried piteously, and hid under anything he could find. In the barn, he was not so meek. He prowled the rafters routing the barn swallows and discouraging pigeons.

The odds changed again in 1997 when we brought in a trio of female barn cats, all littermates. Their mother had raised them on ground squirrel so they learned how to hunt early and well. To the horror of the birds, these cats could shinny up a poplar as fast as they could run across the lawn. The robins and magpies moved their nests into the spruce. The dense branches discouraged the cats from climbing.

As the trees grew taller, a greater variety of birds arrived. About 10 feet up in a small spruce, a flycatcher made an ornate nest of wool fleece and window screen fibers, fringed with blue plastic from an old tarp. Flickers and downy woodpeckers moved in to scavenge the poplars for bugs. Mourning doves set up housekeeping. Occasionally, a great horned owl dropped by to serenade us.

Dense foliage has created new habitat for smaller birds. Chickadees and house sparrows visit the bird feeder by the porch all winter. Their droppings show they roost in the spruce about 5 feet off the ground. They flock and decorate the leafless trees waiting for us to refill the feeder with sunflower seeds. A sparrow hawk noticed the congregation of prey and swept in to snag a meal.

In spring the goldfinches, western tanagers, and little yellow warblers come back. We had to take the pegs (for perching) off the bird feeder to keep the magpies out. Though flickers, red wing blackbirds, and grackles cling to the holes to get a snack, it’s easier for them to eat leftovers off the ground.

The windbreak is now a tall, dense, shady jungle. (The Siberian crabapples and the Nanking cherries are dying for lack of sun.) Bald eagles (in spring migration) and redtail hawks enjoy hovering in the wind currants above the trees. Soaring over the hayfields in search of mice, voles, and ground squirrels, they pause to perch in the poplars.

The dense cover of the windbreak provides a wildlife super highway. Whitetail deer move back and forth, resting by day. Active at night, they highline the apple trees and browse the struggling plum trees. If I put out my cabbage plants before the garden is up, they will clip them off at ground level. I hide the lettuce in tall weeds. In early autumn the deer paw up my beets and potatoes. (The summer damage is minor. Most deer come in late winter to raid the haystacks.)

Two raccoons wander into the barn to check for chicken feed. Finding none, they help themselves to corn from the garden or crabapples. In the early morning shadows, a skunk ambushes one of our roosters. A few days later, I see her baby amble across the driveway between two sections of windbreak.

A covey of Hungarian partridges scurry for cover. A lone male pheasant wanders the windbreak calling for a mate. Robins feast on strawberries and Nanking cherries. Who knew they were such big fruit eaters? Odds are I’ll find one caught in the bird netting.

The magpies built a three-story mansion in a spruce overlooking my garden. They watch me plant peas and sunflowers, then help themselves. They eat apples and chokecherries, even before they are ripe.

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The snow was deep and crusty this winter. Times were lean for wildlife. Four pair of pheasants showed up for handouts – more than we had ever had. A red fox ran off with 21 of our 22 tough, old chickens. (He needed them worse than we did.) He passed through about 8:30 on his morning rounds from his den about a mile away. The fox alternated between chicken and pheasant (about one every other day), moving on to mice and voles once the snow melted.

Hunters noticed the pheasants, and the fox too. They came to our door asking permission to shoot them. “No,” we replied. “They’re our neighbors. We all live here together and call this place home.”