Nature journal: Fall wildlife abundant in the backyard

By Jane Greiner
Sun staff writer
Fall is a great time for backyard wildlife. It seems as if every creature is out and about, busy fattening up for the winter ahead. It’s amazing how many different birds and animals frequent our back yard.
We encourage them with bird feeders, suet feeders and bird baths set out to attract the them. The feeders attract more than just the birds; small animals come from time to time as well as deer.

The most blatant feeder robbers are the squirrels. We have at least three kinds of squirrels in our yard. There are the plushy looking gray squirrels with their big fluffy tails. When the light hits them correctly you can see how each hair is silver tipped.
There is also a pair of rather rotund all-black squirrels. My squirrel book says the blacks are just a rather common variant of gray squirrel.
There are the feisty, pint-sized red squirrels. You would swear these little guys were baby squirrels until you see one chasing after the bigger, less aggressive grays.
In addition, the nocturnal flying squirrels are visible in the evenings as they swoop down from nearby trees like single wind-swept leaves. When they climb around in the trees they move so fast it is almost impossible to follow their motion. Once in a while they pause and we can see how tiny they actually are, not much bigger than a big mouse!
There are also one or two cotton-tail rabbits that come around at dusk to search for corn the deer have missed. We also have a raccoon who visits from time to time and an occasional opossum.
All summer long the deer stay in the woods where we rarely see them. But now they make regular stops at our deer feeder (a split log on which we sprinkle corn). We seem to have one particular doe with two half-grown babies who come by every evening after Lyn puts out the corn.
All the wild critters have learned to ignore our dogs no matter how loud they bark. As long as the dogs are safely inside the house, the deer or raccoon will keep eating. However they always position themselves facing the house so they can keep a wary eye.
We never let the dogs go out without purposely making some noise or slamming a door to give the critters a chance to escape. By the time the dogs hit the turf it is unoccupied by any of the previous visitors.
One day while the dogs were out they stalked and caught a little field mouse. The dogs were playing with him, not killing him but not letting him get away either. I went out to rescue him and found him frightened but facing his attackers as if he had a chance of fighting them off. I pulled the dogs into the house and waited for the field mouse to make a getaway. I heard later from my TOPS ladies that this was the time of year the mice were trying to get into everyone’s houses. Not a good idea at my house with our two dogs and three cats in residence.
Besides all the bonus critters, our bird feeders do attract a variety of birds. Fall brings a marked increase in feeder activity. Easiest to spot are the bright and handsome blue jays. In addition we have the upside-down walking nuthatches (both the red-breasted and the white breasted), the bold little black-capped chickadees, the tufted titmice, the now olive colored goldfinches.
The big, soft-looking doves are ground-feeders so they are always foraging below the feeders for scattered seeds. Dark-eyed junkos are the other birds commonly found eating below feeders.
The suet feeders are great attractions for woodpeckers. We get the downy (smaller) and hairy (larger) woodpeckers, the large red-bellied woodpeckers (which don’t have a red belly at all, but do have a bright red cap on their head), and the giant, prehistoric-looking pileated woodpecker.
Lyn saw a rare (for us) red-headed woodpecker on her way to work down by the Narrows. We saw one there a few years ago so we hope they are back. We would love to have red-headed woodpeckers visit our feeders.
We still see many wild turkeys along the roads but have not had any in our yard for several weeks.
Identifying our birds recently became easier with publication of a new bird book called Birds of Michigan by Ted Black and Gregory Kennedy. I saw a copy at a friend’s house and had to rush out and buy one for myself. It’s handy because it covers only Michigan birds, is visually organized for easy use, and has one full page of information for each bird.
When the weather turns even colder, we will put away the summer birdbath and set up the heated winter one which keeps water available for the birds when everything else is frozen. A heated bird bath sounds like an extravagance, but some books I have read say that water can be harder for birds to find in winter than food. So we like to provide water for our birds.
In addition we will continue to cart home 50-pound bags of birdseeds and keep paths to our feeders snow blown so that we can keep them filled all winter. Last year when I mumbled something about the cost of corn and birdseeds, Lyn said, “We will NOT try to save money on bird seeds!” She’s right, of course. I don’t know why I even mentioned it. Nothing can match the enjoyment we received from watching our multitude of wild creatures that venture into our back yard.