wildlife Archives - Big Green Purse

5 Ways You Can Attract More Birds to Your Backyard

admin — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 03:45:12 +0000

Want to attract more birds to your backyard? You don’t need a big field or woods. The key is to make whatever space you have even if it’s NOT a backyard – like a porch, a balcony, a school or work property – so inviting that your feathered friends will want to drop by and come back for more.

The National Wildlife Federation lists four keys to creating a bird-friendly wildlife habitat, and I’ve added one of my own:

Food – Plant native shrubs and trees to provide the foliage, nectar, pollen, berries, seeds, nuts and other food sources that most wildlife species need to survive. Augment with supplemental feeders and food, like blocks of suet or seed suspended from a tree branch or hanger. The National Wildlife Federation recommends you have at least three food sources. I don’t have bird feeders, but I do have a lot of bushes and trees that bear berries, like hollies and mulberries.

Water – All animals need clean water so they can take a bath, drink, and reproduce. I put in a small pond, and also have a couple of birdbaths around my yard. Other water sources may include lakes, rivers, oceans, springs, and rain gardens. Be sure to change the water frequently in something like a birdbath, and keep water circulating in a pond to prevent mosquitoes from breeding.

Protective Cover – Many animals need shelter to keep them safe from people and predatory animals. Native vegetation, thickets and brush piles, and even dead trees can do the trick. I’ve created a thick brush pile over the years using sticks and branches I’ve trimmed from my trees or picked up after a storm. I put up a wren house behind my own home and away from traffic. I’ve also planted a lot of viburnum, which have the kind of integrated branches and leaves that make perfect and hidden platforms for birds’ nests.

A Place to Raise Their Babies – Birds need boughs or houses where they can safely nest. Trees or bushes that grow tall and have thick branches are good for this.

Keep an Eye on Your Pets – Dogs and cats take a pretty devastating toll on wildlife. I once let my dog loose in my yard and she came back with a baby squirrel clenched in her jaws. Cats are by far the biggest culprits, though, especially where birds are concerned. I put a bell on my cat’s collar but it didn’t really seem noisy enough to give the birds adequate warning. What did work? I got rid of bird feeders so the cat couldn’t get the birds if they flew down to the ground to get fallen seed. I also mostly let my cat out at night, when the birds were safely roosting in nests.

If you want to ensure your yard adequately invites wildlife, consider getting your yard certified by the National Wildlife Federation. I got my own property certified several years ago and have been enjoying the wildlife ever since.

When I sit at my home office and look out the window, I can usually count 10 or 15 different species of birds flying by on any given day, including chickadees, wrens, robins, cardinals, blue jays, catbirds, woodpeckers, swallows, vireos and bright yellow goldfinches. We’ve had foxes nesting (which is both positive and negative), and turtles and frogs in our pond. One morning I woke to find a mother deer and two fawns strolling through my front yard – and I live a block from the Washington, DC border!

To get certified, there’s a $20 fee, but that entitles you to a personalized certificate commemorating your achievement as well as a subscription to the organization’s magazine, a subscription to the e-newsletter Wildlife Online – Habitats Edition, and 10% off merchandise you might want to buy from NWF’s catalog. You can also get a metal sign to post in your yard to show you’re committed to protecting wildlife – and maybe encourage your neighbors to help the birds and critters, too.

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Help Save Sea Turtles on Topsail Island, NC

admin — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 17:00:48 +0000

Right now, something completely amazing is happening on a barrier island in North Carolina. Sea turtles, one of the Earth’s most ancient creatures, are coming ashore at night to dig nests and lay their eggs. They’ve been doing the same thing, over and over and over again, for more than 100 million years. And it’s still utterly amazing.

I recently spent a morning on Topsail Island, NC, with my sister-in-law Bobbie and her husband Bob, doing what they do every Monday morning between May 1 and the end of August. We walked up and down a stretch of this barrier island’s 26-mile long beach looking for tracks that would indicate that a turtle had crawled up from the ocean’s shore to lay eggs.

Bob and Bobbie are part of an impressive volunteer force that’s been mobilized by the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Hospital to help save these creatures. That means helping to protect the laid eggs from predators and even guiding hatchlings back to the sea.

We got to the beach about 6:20 a.m. with no guarantee that we’d find any tracks. When they’re there, you can’t miss them. The turtles that nest on Topsail are primarily loggerheads and occasional greens, and they are BIG – some almost four feet across! When they drag their heavy shells across the sand, their flippers leave a string of distinctive gouges behind. If any turtles had nested the night before, we’d see the evidence.

Bob grabbed a trash bag to collect random plastic bottles, paper cups, and other debris that might have been left on the beach over night or washed in on the tide. He also had a set of sticks and bright orange caution tape that would be used to mark off a nest if we found one.

We headed up the beach at a brisk clip. One reason why volunteers patrol is because a nest full of turtle eggs is almost irresistible to foxes, raccoons, and other predators. In other parts of the world, people eat turtle eggs, too. That’s not a problem on Topsail, but still, we didn’t want anything or anyone digging up the nest, whether for food, fun, or just to see what they might find. Plus, if the nest has been laid too close to the high water mark, or if it’s too shallow, tides could wash away the sand, exposing the eggs to the elements and pretty much ensuring their demise. Volunteers carefully relocate nests if they have to, but time is of the essence, as the eggs can only be safely moved within a few hours after they’ve been laid.

Fortunately, this morning, time was on our side. No more than 15 minutes went by before we came across a long set of tracks leading up from the shore to the base of a sand dune where it looked like a nest had been laid. (That’s me standing next to the tracks and nest.)

Bobbie used her cell phone to call for back-up. Before long, Donna, another volunteer, showed up carrying a long stick, a deep orange pail, a notebook, and other equipment. Though a turtle may crawl out of the ocean and even dig a nest, there’s no guarantee she will actually lay eggs. Donna used the stick to gently probe down into what appeared to be the nest to see what she could find.

Suddenly, Donna’s face broke into a big smile. “We’ve got eggs,” she announced. “Yay!” everyone cheered. Donna recorded some data – the location of the nest, along with the time and date. Then she determined that the nest was too close to the high water mark and would need to be moved.

She got down on her knees next to where she thought the eggs were and began to dig with her hands. She dug and dug and dug until finally, she felt the first egg. Then she set up a little assembly line. She put a layer of wet sand on the bottom of the orange bucket. My sister-in-law Bobbie squatted down next to the bucket. Donna lifted the first egg directly up and out of the nest and placed it on the sand. Bobbie picked up the egg and placed it as carefully as possible in the bucket. They both tried to avoid jostling the egg so as not to damage the embryo inside.

For what seemed like a long time, Donna (in the hole) lifted eggs up and out of the nest, and Bobbie lifted them up, then set them back down into the bucket. Meanwhile, I was counting every egg as it came out.

When we got to 50 eggs, I was impressed. When we reached a hundred, everyone was excited. By the time we got to the last one, there were 160 in all – 40 more than the usual 120! We had a motherlode of turtle eggs in the bucket, a nest almost 3 feet deep, and a big crowd of kids and their parents standing around us in total awe of what they were seeing.

Without wasting any time, Donna scanned the dune area and opted to relocate the eggs about five feet higher up. Then we essentially reversed the process. First, Donna dug out the new nest. Then she added some sand from the old nest in case the mother turtle had left secretions behind that her babies needed. Bobbie carefully carried the orange bucket full of eggs to the new nest and began placing them one at a time on the sand. Donna picked them up from the sand and put them back in the nest, hoping to place them in the same order in which she took them out. She put one aside, which she would later send to a lab for DNA testing as a way to track where the mothers lay eggs during the season.

When all the eggs were safely deposited in the nest, we covered it back up with sand. Then Bob helped Donna lay a protective wire mesh maybe five feet by five feet on top of the nest, and hammered in an anchoring stick at each corner. They wound the caution tape around each stick to create an effective visual warning for anyone passing by. Donna covered the mesh with additional sand and posted a warning sign instructing everyone who passed by to leave the nest alone.

“What’s next?” I asked, feeling elated at having done my tiny little part to help sea turtles survive.

“We wait 55 days,” said Bobbie. “Then we start watching the nest at night, waiting for the eggs to boil,” which is what it’s called when the eggs hatch. By then, volunteers will have banked a path from the nest to the ocean so that the newborn turtles have no choice but to head directly back to sea. If it’s a dark night, someone may stand in the surf waving a flashlight to simulate moonlight and give the turtles something else to aim for as they try to make it to the nourishing underwater grasses where they’ll feast until they’re big enough to head into open ocean.

“Why are you saving sea turtles?” asked one of the kids who was watching Bobbie and Donna move the nest. Someone explained how difficult it is for sea turtles to make it from the egg stage all the way to a thriving adult. It’s estimated that only 1 in 1,000 babies survive the first year, and as few as 1 in 5,000 – 10,000 survive to adulthood. Even if they do make it from their nest to the ocean, lots of hungry animals will be waiting there to slurp them up and gobble them down.

Adult turtles are threatened, too, maybe more from people than from the natural elements. Thousands of turtles are captured in fishing nets every year. Just as many mistake plastic bags that have gotten loose in the water for the jellyfish they like to eat — and choke. Climate change may be taking its toll, too; warming oceans may be raising the temperatures at which turtles ideally live and reproduce.

All that aside, here’s another truly amazing fact: in about 25 years, the turtles that do grow up will come back, not just to any old beach along the Atlantic coast, but to this stretch of Topsail Island. No matter how far away they swim, they’ll ride the currents back to Topsail, where they’ll lay their own nests, and perhaps enthrall another group of volunteers who will, once again, help them stay safe until they can find their way back to the sea.

You Can Help!

We did our part last week by helping to protect at least this one nest. If you want to help, too, please make a donation today to the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center.

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Why Are You Grateful for Earth Day? Please Share.

admin — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:33:52 +0000

It’s Earth Day today, a day when as many as a billion people around the world will be taking notice. Some will be celebrating what they love about the world we live in with walks in the woods, picnics with families and friends, neighborhood clean-ups, poetry readings, and just some quiet time outside. Others will be sounding the alarm about threats that could undermine this one earth on which we all live, pointing to climate change, air and water pollution, deforestation, toxic chemicals, and more.

For me, Earth Day is a time to reflect on what I am grateful to Mother Nature for. Here’s my “short list.”

* I’m grateful for the abundance of inspiring flowers and trees that add beauty to the world.

* I’m grateful for the planet’s soul-expanding wild places and the chance they provide to experience Nature in the raw.

* I’m grateful to the Sun and the vital solar energy it sends down to Earth each and every day (now, if only we would take advantage of it!).

* I’m grateful that a planet called “Earth” is actually covered with so much water. We could not survive without it.

* I’m grateful for the community of friends I have and with whom I share a passion for hiking, camping, and exploring the outdoors.

* I’m grateful for the network of environmental activists to which I belong, and who magnify my voice when we join together to protect the world we love.

* I’m grateful for the changing seasons and the way they remind me that, when all is said and done, Mother Nature is still in charge.

* I’m grateful for singing birds, chirping crickets, blowing wind, and all the other elements that create a natural soundtrack in my day-to-day world.

* I’m grateful for the power I have to make a difference. As insignificant as it sometimes seems, I know what I do can change my life, help change the lives of others, and contribute to a better legacy for my kids and yours, too.

What are you grateful for? Please share your thoughts and comments!

Happy Earth Day!

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