Make a Home for Wildlife: Creating Habitat on Your Land Backyard to Many Acres

209 Pages·2019·7.34 MB·English

by  Charles Fergus

MAKE A HOME FOR
W I L D L I F E
Creating Habitat on Your Land
Backyard to Many Acres
CHARLES FERGUS
STACKPOLE
BOOKS
Guilford, Connecticut
This book is dedicated to the women and men who today are creating and advocating for the habitats
that wildlife needs to survive. Some of these people are landowners. Others have made conservation
their life’s work and are employed by state and federal agencies, colleges and universities, and nonprofit
organizations. They give wildlife a voice in today’s world and teach us how to nurture the wild crea-
tures whose continued presence makes this land a fascinating and wondrous place to live.
Published by Stackpole Books
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Blvd., Ste. 200
Lanham, MD 20706
www.rowman.com
Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK
800-462-6420
Copyright © 2019 by Charles Fergus
Photographs by the author unless otherwise credited
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical
means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher,
except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fergus, Charles, author.
Title: Make a home for wildlife : creating habitat on your land : backyard to many acres / Charles Fergus.
Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Stackpole Books, [2019] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018040811 (print) | LCCN 2018045810 (ebook) | ISBN 9780811767606 (e-book) |
ISBN 9780811737722 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Wildlife habitat improvement—East (U.S.) | Habitat (Ecology)—East (U.S.)
Classification: LCC QL84.2 (ebook) | LCC QL84.2 .F47 2019 (print) | DDC 577.0974—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018040811
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard
for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 LANDOWNER STORY:
“Pterodactyls” and the Muck 100
You Can Make a Difference 1
LANDOWNER STORY: An Island of
CHAPTER 8
Habitat in a Sea of Farmland 4
Special Habitat Features 111
CHAPTER 2 WILDLIFE SKETCH:
A Perilous and Uncertain World 114
Wildlife and Habitat Basics 11
WILDLIFE SKETCH: Turtle Time 14
CHAPTER 9
A Plague of Invasives 123
CHAPTER 3
Get to Know Your Land and LANDOWNER STORY:
Healing a Shrubland Helps an
Explore Its Potential 22
Endangered Rabbit 126
WILDLIFE SKETCH: Biding Time 24
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 4
Habitat Around Your House 140
Forests for Wildlife 37
WILDLIFE SKETCH: Mood Music 42 CHAPTER 11
LANDOWNER STORY: Helping Birds 150
The Music in the Pinelands 46
LANDOWNER STORY: A Return to
Birdsong and Wildflowers 152
CHAPTER 5
WILDLIFE SKETCH: Tyrants Rule 162
Grasslands for Wildlife 65
LANDOWNER STORY: Bringing CHAPTER 12
Bobolinks Back to New England 66
Helping Other Wildlife 169
LANDOWNER STORY: In the Words
CHAPTER 6
of Wisconsin Landowners 174
Shrublands for Wildlife 81
WILDLIFE SKETCH: Respect 180
WILDLIFE SKETCH:
Wave the Foliar Flag 84
CHAPTER 13
LANDOWNER STORY: Teaming Up
Enjoy Your Habitat! 184
to Help Woodcock and Trout 88
WILDLIFE SKETCH: Spring Fling 188
CHAPTER 7
Index 191
Wetlands for Wildlife 96
WILDLIFE SKETCH:
The Chorus at Oak Pond 98 About the Author 203

1
You Can Make a Difference
ON A BRIGHT SUMMER DAY, I stood quietly at dangled from the plants’ tall stalks. Hawthorn
the woods’ edge and looked out on the two-acre shrubs and apple trees stood above the lower
field we call “the Upper Meadow.” plants, their branches dotted with still-green fruit.
Orange hawkweed and yellow hawkweed, I raised my binoculars and scanned the field.
white daisies, red clover, and yellow buttercups Winks of tan, orange, white, and pale blue came
spangled the field’s lush greenery. (From violets from butterflies’ wings. A blue-green dragonfly
and wild strawberries in May to goldenrod and hovered, then darted sideways to snatch a smaller
New England asters in September, there’s always insect out of the air. In the past, I’ve spotted deer,
something blooming in the Upper Meadow.) The wild turkeys, foxes, coyotes, and bears in the
slick, blade-like leaves of milkweed reflected light Upper Meadow, but none of those large animals
from the sky; unopened hot-pink flower clusters were present that day.
The Upper Meadow at the Butternut Farm in northern Vermont, kept as old field habitat through periodic
mowing. Burke Mountain stands in the distance.
1
Lowering my binoculars, I looked at those elevation, behind and below the house; the other
verdant acres. It wasn’t hard to imagine meadow was higher up, at the base of a wooded hillside.
voles down at ground level, scuttling along on One of our new neighbors told us that when he
narrow runways through the weeds and grass, started farming in the early 1980s, he cut hay
pausing and using their teeth to snip the plants’ in both fields but eventually gave that up as the
stems and gain access to the upper, more succu- fields, left unfertilized, produced less grass and
lent leaves and seed heads. I pictured field sparrows more weeds. As the years passed, shrubs and small
sitting on nests built on the ground, or attached trees seeded in.
to low blackberry canes, patiently incubating eggs After we finished remodeling the house (actually,
or bringing insects to feed their growing nest- after we pretty much rebuilt it around the dwell-
lings. Caterpillars nibbling on vegetation. Spiders ing’s original post-and-beam structure), I turned
catching flies. Frogs and toads snapping up beetles my attention to the two old fields. When explor-
and crickets. Shrews hunting earthworms. Weasels ing the rest of our land and looking at neighboring
chasing mice. properties, I had discovered that most of the area
I took a few steps into the open on a path I keep was either forest of varying ages or open hayfields.
mowed along the field’s upper edge. I glimpsed a There were few old fallow fields. Restoring and
sudden movement to my right: A hawk launched perpetuating those two old fields would add to
itself out of a tree, flapped its wings, and went the diversity of habitats in our area, something that
soaring across the field. Its medium size and would be good for wildlife. It would be good for
black-and-white banded tail identified it as a us, because we like to see wildlife. Delaying the
broad-winged hawk; I had seen one a few days task would only make it harder since the trees that
earlier in the woods nearby, where I figured a pair had come in were getting bigger every year. As a
might have built a nest. Perhaps the broadwing bonus, removing the trees from the upper field
had been watching the mowed path for incau- would restore a long-range view to the north and
tious rodents and snakes. east. That’s where I started working.
As I strolled down the path, I thought of what Red maples, black cherries, white ash, and
I had done to renew and maintain this opening quaking aspens had risen above the weeds and
at the forest’s edge. grass in the old field. The largest of the saplings
In 2003, my wife and I and our son moved from were around 25 feet tall. Scattered among the
central Pennsylvania to an old farm in northeast- young trees were several dozen thornapple shrubs
ern Vermont, a region of the state known as the and wild apple trees—I didn’t know how many
Northeast Kingdom. The Butternut Farm had there were until I’d crisscrossed the field several
been named for the many butternut trees grow- times tying bright orange flagging to their crowns.
ing there. The house was rundown but fixable. I planned to save the thornapples and apple trees
The big attraction for us was the land: 120 acres, since their fruits are relished by wildlife.
most of it forested but with several fields totaling Using a chainsaw, I began felling the hardwood
around 16 acres. We could cut firewood in the trees. Some of them hung up in their neighbors’
woods to heat the house and make hay in the crowns, and I had to push and pull until they
fields for our horses. came down, or, working from the bottom up, cut
The property also included two old fields that, their trunks into stove-length pieces. I dragged
through the process of natural forest succession, the smaller branches out of the field and into the
were well on their way to becoming woods. Each woods. It was hard labor but also satisfying, as I
field was about two acres. One field lay at a low could see progress after each work session.
2 MAKE A HOME FOR WILDLIFE
A great spangled fritillary feeds on nectar from a milkweed flower. In old fields, meadows, and other
grasslands, wildflowers are an important source of food for insects, in turn preyed upon by amphibians,
reptiles, birds, and mammals.
Tom Berriman
After removing the taller trees, I trimmed their day, my wife and I hike or snowshoe through the
stumps as low to the ground as possible. Then Upper Meadow, where we stop and take in the
I walked along behind a big orange DR brush scenery—and look for wildlife—before continu-
mower—a gasoline-powered brush hog made ing the last quarter mile home.
here in Vermont—and cut down the thumb- The following year, I did much the same
thick sprouts that were pushing up all over the thing with the second old field, the one lower
field; had the sprouts been allowed to keep grow- down and closer to our house. The soil in the
ing, eventually they would have become trees. Lower Meadow is damper than that in the Upper
Finally, I had the Upper Meadow the way I Meadow. There are fewer apple trees, but June-
wanted it: an expanse of grasses and forbs (herba- berry, elderberry, and pagoda dogwood grew
ceous flowering plants: think wildflowers and profusely in the Lower Meadow, along with
weeds) scattered with thornapple shrubs and shrub willows and tamaracks. For variety’s sake,
apple trees, plus one good-sized crabapple that I and taking advantage of the native shrubs and
found hidden among the saplings. The view that small trees that were present, I left the Lower
my work restored—of forested mountains stand- Meadow in a somewhat shrubbier condition than
ing above an undulant patchwork of woods and the Upper Meadow. I also kept a few patches of
fields—is beautiful in all seasons. Almost every trees as islands of older habitat.
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE 3
LLAANNDDOOWWNNEERR SSTTOORRYY
An Island of Habitat in
a Sea of Farmland
Carl Graybill planted evergreen trees plus bare-root seedlings of quaking aspen trees and
dogwood shrubs in a habitat patch extending from his lawn into an adjacent crop field.
CARL AND MARY GRAYBILL LIVE IN A HANDSOME NEW COLONIAL-STYLE HOUSE
on five and a half acres near Annville in southeastern Pennsylvania. Their property
is part of a small development sectioned off from a farm. Surrounding the develop-
ment lies some of the most fertile farmland in Pennsylvania, where corn grows in
long, straight rows interrupted only by roads, houses, and farms with tall silos.
Carl is the retired director of the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Bureau of
Information and Education. He and Mary love watching wildlife—which was not very
common in the intensively farmed landscape when the Graybills built and moved
into their new home. They decided to do something about that by turning part of a
farm field behind their house into a patch of shrubs and young forest.
They took the first step in 2005 by planting 64 six-foot-tall hemlocks, spruces,
and firs in three rows as a 200-foot windbreak that also provided cover for wild-
life, mainly birds. Then in 2011, Carl obtained 150 bare-root seedlings of quaking
aspen, a fast-growing tree that thrives in many different types of soil, plus 150 silky
dogwoods, which are native shrubs that produce berries eaten by a wide range of
birds. He planted the seedlings in a nursery bed in his garden and let them grow for
a year so they would develop healthy root systems to give them a better chance of
surviving once they were transplanted into the farm field.
The next spring, Carl marked out a semicircle 200 feet across and extending about
150 feet from the windbreak of conifers out into the field, a part of the Graybills’ lot
that was currently being farmed but would now become a home for wildlife.
In the nursery bed, the aspens had grown to be around four feet tall. Using a
shovel, Carl planted them roughly eight feet apart scattered throughout the center
of the semicircle.
The dogwoods were also around four feet tall. “Before they put out leaves, I gave
them a haircut about 18 inches above the ground using a hedge trimmer,” Carl
recalled, a trimming that would stimulate their growth once they broke dormancy.
He planted the dogwoods at roughly eight-foot intervals around the perimeter
of the aspen stand and mixed in some seedlings of gray-stemmed dogwood and
winterberry for variety. He also added five six-foot-tall spruce trees to the mix,
randomly spaced in the patch, which altogether covered about three-quarters of an
acre. He watered the trees and shrubs several times that first year, but other than
that, “I pretty much just stood back and watched them grow.” Everything did well
except for the winterberry, which needs a wetter environment than the Graybills’
land provided.
I first saw Carl’s habitat patch in 2013, when it was a year old. It didn’t look like
much: some spindly plants with a few green leaves standing above bare ground.
However, Carl pointed out a pair of brown thrashers darting into the windbreak
of evergreens and then flitting off to land in a red maple he had planted in the
lawn. “This is the first year we’ve seen brown thrashers since we moved in,” he said.
“They’re probably attracted to secure nesting sites in the conifers. I’m hoping they’ll
stick around, and I’m looking forward to seeing other birds show up as the aspens
grow.”
When I returned four years later, the patch looked utterly different. The aspens
now soared up 15 to 20 feet, with hundreds of coin-shaped leaves shimmering in
the breeze. The dogwoods were sprawling head-high clumps with dense foliage. In
between the dogwoods grew coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, and milkweed—plants
sprung from seeds Carl had gathered in the wild or bought from a local nursery. At
the edge of the habitat patch, foxtails grew profusely. “The mourning doves love to
eat their seeds,” Carl said. Just beyond the foxtails was a curving row of corn—part
of a veritable sea of corn that stretched toward a low, wooded ridge on the horizon.
“The aspens have done really well,” Carl said. “A few years from now they’ll be even
taller, and their underground root systems will send up more stems, making more
small trees. Each autumn, their leaves fall and decompose, enriching the soil.”
Carl uses an herbicide applied with a two-gallon hand-sprayer to limit plant growth
around the edge and in parts of the habitat patch. “I want to keep the ground fairly
open because I like to come in here and see what’s going on, and I don’t want to pick