WindStar Wildlife Garden Weekly
Connecting People
To Nature Through
Education September 24,
2007
Official
Publication of WindStar Wildlife
Institute
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 Fall Visitors Can Be A
Problem
NOW IS THE TIME when wildlife
can cause property owners a few headaches...namely bats and
field mice.
Field and other
mice have a knack for invading our homes and outbuildings
before winter arrives. They build nests in our shoes,
chew lawnmower and clothes dryer parts, raid cereal boxes and
race across our floors when we least
expect. I've
even had them chew wiring in the car parked in the garage.
This was expensive to fix!
The most inexpensive and effective way to
straighten out a mouse problem is to set traps.
Available at most hardware stores and feed mills, mouse traps
should be baited with cheese or peanut-butter and placed at
locations where mouse droppings or damage have been
found. Set more than one trap and move them around until
you start catching mice. Don't stop until sightings and
damage stop.
Homeowners occasionally find bats
roosting or rearing young in their attics. When this
type of discovery is made in the summer, it's best to wait
until late fall to remedy the situation.Trying to exclude bats
from your attic in summer may lead to bats trapped in the
attic. They may eventually work their way into your
living quarters in their efforts to escape.
Waiting until fall, when bats head to winter
hibernation sites, eliminates this risk. Placing a bat
box outside may help ensure the bats don't try to access your
home when they return in the spring, providing you closed off
their access to the attic.
Tom Patrick
Founder &
President
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Wildlife
Corridors Help Animals Flee From Climate
Change
 By
This stream corridor connects
forest and native grass habitats.
By Brandon Keim
TO HELP ANIMALS survive
climate change, setting aside nature reserves isn't
enough: to flee habitats made inhospitable by shifting
climes, they also need "corridors" between wilderness
areas.
Groups around the world are
working to establish these wildlife highways, with
varying degrees of success. In North America, the
Wildlands Project is pushing for a huge
"Yellowstone-to-Yukon" wildlife corridor. In Central
America, conservationists are slowly and sporadically
working on the Meso-American Biological Corridor.
The
dream: A monkey should be able to go up a tree in
Panama and not have to climb down until it reaches
Mexico. The grand vision of the IUCN is an uninterrupted
connection between Argentina and Alaska along the
hemisphere's western mountain ranges.
The corridor idea is
relatively new: conservationists once thought that
preserves were enough. But groups of animals...
Read
On
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Nature
Quotes
 "I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder
for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden,
and
I felt that I was more distinguished by that
circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet
I
could have worn."
--Henry David Thoreau
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Invasion of the
Creepy-Crawlies
By Scott Shalaway
ONE OF
MY earliest memories as a boy is getting ready
for a bath and finding a two-inch long hundred-legger in
the tub.
My reaction was to catch it and put it in a
jar, but mom grabbed some tissue paper, squished it, and
flushed it down the toilet. If she had just scooped it
out of the tub and let it roam the house, we would have
been better off.
Centipedes (2,500 species worldwide) are predators
that eat all kinds of household pests. Common house
centipedes, the species that appears in bath tubs or on
the kitchen floor, eat all kinds of household insect
pests, including cockroaches. Giant tropical centipedes,
which may measure more than 6 inches long, sometimes eat
small lizards and mice. (Common
House Centipede)A more
recent memory of a many-legged creature dates back only
a few years. It was a particularly wet September, and
screams from our dirt-floor basement caught my
attention. I expected to find a long shed snake skin
hanging from the rafters, because this happens once or
twice each summer and I try to remove them before anyone
else notices. But when I got down to the cellar, I
immediately saw the source of the terror. OK, it wasn't
terror or even fear -- it was disgust. On the damp floor in... Read On
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Wildlife Photo of
the Week
Hover Fly Tastes Dianthus
Nectar
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Predators and Prey:
Gracefulness
Before Meals
By Michael
Burke
 A DOZEN CARP swirl in
the muddy waters. They are trapped in a shallow pool as
the tide recedes, but seem oblivious to their
predicament as they feed aggressively on the food-rich
sediment. (Great Blue Heron by Max
Waugh)
The scaly backs of the biggest
break the water. Sea gulls have gathered, as have a pair
of Great Blue Herons. An over-eager heron can't resist.
It grabs one of the big fish and quickly gets the carp's
head in its mouth. But the bird can't lift the heavy
fish, nor does it stand a chance of swallowing the fat
18-incher. The geometry of the situation is irrefutable.
Suddenly, a flash of
dark-and-light breaks our field of vision. A rocketing
Osprey (Pandion Halieaetus), talons
outstretched, plucks a slightly smaller carp out of the
pool. The bird has a death grip on the fish and is
heading for the tree line. Several Ring-billed Gulls
give pursuit, but the Osprey shows no sign of slowing or
loosening its grip. Gradually, the gulls give
way.
Others in the family accipitidae, such as
hawks and eagles, feed on... Read
On
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Backyard Pond Became a Heron
Hotel
LAST SUMMER four unusual birds
"hung out" by a pond he'd built in his backyard.
"They'd snap at bugs, nap in the sun,
bathe and stretch themselves. Sometimes they'd even walk
up the stairs to my deck and jump up on the edge of the
hot tub. After consulting all of my bird books, Chris P.
of Fircrest, WA, thought they might be Green
Herons. But everything he read said they were elusive
and shy. (Green Heron eating fish by Jonathan
Farmer)
A birder
friend contacted the Audubon Society, and a member came
out and confirmed his suspicion-they were juvenile Green
Herons. Chris enjoyed observing their behavior. One of
them acted as a "lookout," usually standing on a high
rock while the others continued their daily
routines.
"One day, the three largest birds were
sitting and napping on a lawn chair. When the smallest
one struggled to hop up and join them, it looked like
the others were... Read
On
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Have An EXCELLENT Day in your
WILDLIFE HABITAT!
Tom
Patrick
President
(Red Milkweed is a butterfly favorite, photo by
Prairie
Nursery) |
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10072 Vista
Ct.
Myersville, MD
21773
301-293-3351
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