I love my birds, and sometimes do some crazy stuff to accomadate them! I have a robin that nests on top of my garage door opener every year for the last 3 years..if i am doing anything in the garage she sits on the ledge and just bickers at me until i leave, so i do what i am doing, then leave every so often so she can get in there and feed her babies...i enjoy her..she follows the mower and grabs whatever she can after the grass is clipped..i get a kick out of her. i have a pileated woodpecker that comes every night at dusk and grabs huge chunks of a stump and just flings them over his shoulder..he is very skittish, and if he sees me he is gone for the day. i should have gotten rid of that stump years ago, but he seems to like it, so it stays... i have hummers all over..i just love them. 2 years ago, i had a pair of mourning doves make a nest right in the middle of my gravel driveway...so i moved it off to the side, and they went back to it and raised their chicks...i put traffic cones around it so nobody would accidentally run over it...it was the highlight of my day to see them..they drag their wing and act wounded to lure you away from their nest..every morning and every night, i watched them play wounded..they are still here, but further from the driveway now, so i don't get the show that i used to! i also get a huge kick out of the humminbird moths..they are all over my bee balm every summer..once you get used to spotting them, they are easy to find, and they aren't afraid at all, you can get them to sit on your hand..they look like mini hummingbirds.. i never just look at my roses..i always look at what supports them, and what they support...i am glad that i don't use chemicals..Donna

My garden and house caters first and mostly for my dog - he's the most pampered pet you can imagine :-) This includes his own doghouse in the garage (that he hardly ever uses, but is used by the roaming cats in the neighborhood, much to Timmy's distress), an enclosed front porch with doggie door, basket, rug and private sofa, free roaming of the garden, two more beds inside the house, etc. You get the picture - he's the king of it all :-) As for wildlife, since we live on the foothills of a small mountain range and part of a natural park, we do get quite a lot of critters. We have a birdbath that is used not only by the birds but also by the bees and wasps, of which there are gazillions (we are in a honey producing area). Birds in the garden include sparrows, robins in Fall and Winter, loads of blackbirds, gold finches and a multitude of others I can't name. Last Saturday I saw my first swallow of the year. Above us on the hill we can frequently spot hawks, of which there are some colonies in the park. At night owls are a frequent visitor and we can hear their calls many times. Cuckoos are also a familiar sound as soon as Spring is here. I have a lot of evergreens in the garden and this provides excellent nesting sites for the birds. Preferred are the bay trees, laurustinus and the conifers. I'm constantly finding nests whenever I prune anything. I had a resident bat for about a year, sleeping in a closed garden umbrella we had on the patio. Unfortunately I had to remove the umbrella because the wasps decided it was a good place to nest, so it had to go. I was already stung twice, didn't want to be stung whenever I opened the umbrella! Still, bats visit frequently and it's common to see one or two flying around the garden at dusk. Some years we have glow worms in the Spring, which I absolutely love. It's magical to see them hovering around the garden at night. Other assorted critters include geckos, small lizzards, snakes, mice (yuk!), crickets, locusts and the occasional hedgehog. In terms of specifically catering for critters, I keep the birdbath going all year (we don't have hard freezes) and try to plant things I know will be used by the wildlife. This includes berry shrubs like pyracantha which are a major hit with birds in the cold Winter months. I also have a weeping mulberry tree and let its production go to the birds, who have a feast with the fruits. The compost pile is also a good feeding ground and there's a little bird that spends hours there hunting for the small fruit flies that proliferate inside the pile. Butterflies are catered for with things like lantana, mock orange and buddleia. I need to add more larval food to cater for butterflies, but haven't come quite up to it yet. I don't use any sort of chemicals in the garden, don't even spray the roses, and this of course translates into a welcome sign for critters, even if it means that slugs and snails are huge, sigh... I don't use a slingshot to get rid of them, like Edna does ;-), but I do throw them onto a neighbooring field that is kept wild. All in all, I consider a privilege to have wildlife in the garden and have been slowly educating myself to encourage it as much as possible. Eduarda

wrens are the smallest of the nesting birds you probably will get and they can squeeze into a 1 inch hole. The chickadees and nuthatches a inch 1/4 or 1 1/2 hole. you can compare the sizes of the birds you get but there is not a lot of size difference in wrens and chickadees. bluebirds would need a little bigger house. if you can compare nests from last year you could see if the nest would fit in the house. the hole guards are to keep woodpeckers or squirrels or others from enlargeing the holes. I have seen woodpeckers enlarge a hole and use the house. A lid from a tin can with a hole in the center is used and tacked on. and can be painted to match the bird house. I don't get the tits or redpoles or some of the small birds from back east. also each variety of birds make different nests some with twigs and others with straw or grass or woodpeckers often sawdust. The bluebirds we get like to use hay or straw and bits of string or yarn or the stringy bark from cedar or juniper trees. I know some people here hinge the lid or front of the birdhouse so they can open it. not only to clean but also if the wrong birds try to nest say a wren with twigs they remove the nest and hope to get a different bird before the egg laying begins. Just because the hole is bigger does not mean the wrens won't try to use it. They are mean little birds and will kill babys or destroy nests of other birds.

LOL Tsuga. I think with the warmer weather we were having I was getting overzealous. I even started painting my garage, yet to be finished. I've been feeding suet all winter. In the past month, I've seen my first downy woodpecker as mentioned earlier, and another unidentified bird...same size as a sparrow, almost looks like a sparrow at a distance, but a closer look shows a muted red on its head and neck region, and when they spread their wings you can see a red spot on their back. Not bright red like a cardinal, a soft muted red. I've never seen them before. In one glance, I have robins, cardinals, juncos, the unidentified bird, chickadees, and usual sparrows in my yard. Tons of activity. They seem to be enjoying the new evergreen thuja green giant I planted last year too. I just purchased some black oil sunflower last night, have to figure out where I'm going to put it. I read the seeds inhibit plant growth.