Making Your Property Wildlife Friendly

First, and foremost, keep your cat confined indoors!

Carol is strongly opposed to violence or cruelty of any kind toward
cats or other animals.
Please report known illegal activities to the proper authorities.

There are humane methods for excluding cats from your property.

To make your garden wildlife friendly...

Provide water (and lots of it!) Dripping, flowing, bubbling, running water attracts all sorts of birds and other animals. It is fun to put food out for the birds, but water is even more critical. Be careful about building a little pond and stocking it with expensive fish. You wouldn't be the first person to witness an egret making a quick meal out of all your pricey fish (after all, they've got to eat too!). Try stocking it with some cheap fish and then enjoy the show!
Plant fruit trees. Robins are particularly fond of cherries (yes they do eat something other than worms!). If you have junipers, you may be lucky enough to see a flock of beautiful Cedar Waxwings. Trying to learn bird identification skills? Let the National Audubon Society help you!
Plant flowers. If its hummingbirds you're after, try planting trumpet vines. They love them! Also, you can make your own sugar solution to put in hummingbird feeders from 1 part sugar to 3 (or 4 ) parts water. Boil it for 20 minutes and cool. NEVER use honey and be sure to change out that solution every other day!
Provide shade trees and brush piles. Birds need to hide and cool off too.
Provide houses and nesting material. Try hanging out the lint from your dryer and little scraps of material and yarn. You'd be surprised to see where it may end up!

Hoping to attract opossums and raccoons? Biologist Ron Jurek has reservations about the promoting of wildlife feeding, especially opossums and raccoons. You may wish to go to this site.

Squirrels: You either love them or you hate them! If you love them, put out sunflower seed, dry corn, and peanuts. If you hate them, put baffels around your feeders. It also helps to put corn out and AWAY from your feeders (keeps the critters out of trouble!)

Bunnies are easy. Provide water, brush piles, and dried corn and sunflower seeds (although food is not necessary as they are excellent foragers). Of course a nice garden with goodies in it helps...

For more information on creating wildlife friendly yards, contact the National Wildlife Federation.

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