In the Garden

It wasn’t long after we bought our first house that I started birding, so when I decided to plant a garden in our backyard I immediately decided to grow flowers that would attract different species of birds to my garden. Since my main visitors were finches and sparrows, I planted Cosmos and Bachelor’s Buttons for the seeds they produced in the fall. The following year I spotted a hummingbird feeding on my Cosmos plants in October, so I began adding flowers which would provide nectar for both hummingbirds and butterflies, many of which I started from seed. These include Scarlet Sage (Salvia sp.), Scarlet Runner Beans, Lantana, Verbena, Morning Glories, Four O’Clocks, Columbine, and even parsley, a host plant for the Black Swallowtail.

As our backyard is quite small, it’s hard to create a real wildlife garden; however, we’ve had some interesting creatures visit our yard since we moved in in 2003. With a fair number of trees in the neighbourhood, a surprising number of songbirds stop by during migration – Ruby-crowned Kinglets are almost annual in my yard. A crabapple tree across the street usually attracts Bohemian Waxwings and Pine Grosbeaks in winters when they are present, and both Merlins and Cooper’s Hawks nest close enough to my house that I see them several times a year. To this day I’m not sure which species on my yard list surprises me the most: the Northern Shrike, the Orange-crowned Warbler, or the Field Sparrow!

Birds

1. Canada Goose (flying over)
2. Mallard (flying over)
3. Rock Pigeon
4. Mourning Dove
5. Common Nighthawk (flying over)
6. Ruby-throated Hummingbird
7. Killdeer (flying over)
8. Ring-billed Gull (flying over)
9. Herring Gull (flying over)
10. Double-crested Cormorant (flying over)
11. Great Blue Heron (flying over)
12. Great Egret (flying over)
13. Black-crowned Night Heron (2 flying over)
14. Turkey Vulture (flying over)
15. Osprey (flying over)
16. Cooper’s Hawk
17. Red-tailed Hawk (flying over)
18. Downy Woodpecker (front tree)
19. Northern Flicker (neighbour’s tree)
20. American Kestrel (neighbour’s antenna)
21. Merlin (on roof)
22. Eastern Phoebe (heard out back)
23. Blue-headed Vireo (neighbour’s yard)
24. Red-eyed Vireo (front tree)
25. Northern Shrike (neighbour’s tree)
26. Blue Jay
27. American Crow
28. Common Raven (landed on Jeep!)
29. Tree Swallow (flying over)
30. Black-capped Chickadee
31. Golden-crowned Kinglet (neighbour’s tree)
32. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
33. Red-breasted Nuthatch (neighbour’s tree)
34. White-breasted Nuthatch
35. Brown Creeper (across the street)
36. European Starling
37. American Robin

38. Bohemian Waxwing (neighbour’s tree)
39. Cedar Waxwing (neighbour’s tree)
40. House Sparrow
41. American Pipit (flying over)
42. Pine Grosbeak (neighbour’s tree)
43. House Finch
44. Purple Finch
45. Common Redpoll
46. White-winged Crossbill (neighbour’s tree)
47. Pine Siskin
48. American Goldfinch
49. Snow Bunting (flying over)
50. Chipping Sparrow
51. Field Sparrow (back lawn!)
52. American Tree Sparrow
53. Dark-eyed Junco
54. White-crowned Sparrow
55. White-throated Sparrow
56. Song Sparrow
57. Baltimore Oriole (front tree)
58. Red-winged Blackbird
59. Brown-headed Cowbird
60. Common Grackle
61. Tennessee Warbler (singing out back)
62. Orange-crowned Warbler (front tree)
63. Nashville Warbler
64. Cape May Warbler (Viburnum bush!)
65. Yellow Warbler (front tree)
66. Blackpoll Warbler (neighbour’s tree)
67. Black-throated Blue Warbler (singing out back)
68. Pine Warbler (front tree)
69. Yellow-rumped Warbler (front tree)
70. Black-throated Green Warbler (neighbour’s yard)
71. Wilson’s Warbler (front tree)
72. Northern Cardinal
73. Rose-breasted Grosbeak

---

Mammals and One Amphibian

Seven Striped Skunks making merry on my lawn!

Having feeders, of course, attracts wildlife of the four-legged variety. Two years in a row (in 2008 and 2009) I had a shrew visit my yard in the fall. He would emerge from the grass, steal a seed from the patio stones beneath the feeder, then disappear back into the grass, only to come back a minute or two later. As he never stayed out in the open for very long, it took a while until I got a decent enough photo of him to identify him.

Raccoons visit me from time to time, knocking my feeder onto the ground and then cleaning out the seeds. These brazen thieves don’t even flinch when we open the back door and shine a flashlight on them. Our best raccoon experience was when three babies came up onto the back deck one night and peered in at us through the glass! Skunks are also attracted to the seed beneath our feeder, although they don’t visit the backyard often. Our best skunk encounter occurred when a skunk gave birth to a litter of six or seven babies beneath our front step one summer. The kits would play in my garden after dark before going hunting with mom; often they would turn their backs on one another and raise their tail, as if threatening to spray each other! One morning while leaving for work I saw the whole group returning to the hole beneath my step.

Oddly enough, American Red Squirrels are quite rare in the subdivision despite being abundant in the woods nearby – I’ve only seen about four or five in the entire times we’ve lived here. They usually find their way to my feeder, and sometimes my back door!

The toad gets a special mention as the only amphibian I am every likely to see in my yard: I saw a huge adult hop out of the grass and onto the back patio one day in July 2014. Our house is in the middle of Emerald Meadows, surrounded by several roads before you hit the green space of the storm water ponds, the farm fields south of Hope Side Road, or the woods of Stony Swamp, so how this adult lived long enough to avoid all the traffic to reach my yard is a mystery. We only saw it the one day, though I would have been perfectly happy for him to stay!

• Eastern Grey Squirrel
• American Red Squirrel
• Eastern Chipmunk
• White-footed/Deer Mouse
• Eastern Cottontail rabbit
• Striped Skunk
• Raccoon
• Northern Short-tailed Shrew
• American Toad (July 2014)

Raccoon, 2019

---

Insects

Despite planting numerous butterfly and pollinator-friendly flowers over the years, I have seen very few butterfly species in my yard, most of which have been single sightings (except for the ubiquitous and non-native Cabbage White).

1. Black Swallowtail (caterpillar found on some parsley)
2. Giant Swallowtail (a fly-through across my front yard)
3. Clouded Sulphur
4. Cabbage White
5. Striped Hairstreak (2020)
6. Spring Azure
7. Silvery Blue (2020)
8. Eastern Tailed Blue (2020)
9. Eastern Comma
10. Grey Comma
11. White Admiral
12. Red Admiral
13. Common Ringlet
14. Monarch

Eastern Tailed Blue, 2020

Although the Eagleson storm water ponds are close enough to my house to see herons, geese, Killdeer and ducks flying over frequently, smaller winged creatures such as dragonflies and damselflies generally do not stray far from the shallow water and open fields where food is abundant. Therefore, every one that turns up in my yard is a surprise, and I’ve had a few species that surprised even me (hint: everything that is not a skimmer)! Occasionally late in the summer I’ll see darners patrolling between the treetops of my street, but never close enough to identify. Only one darner has ever landed in my yard; what makes it even more bizarre is that it’s not one of the common species I see on this side of the river!

Fragile Forktail

1. Fragile Forktail
2. Eastern Forktail
3. Black-tipped Darner
4. Ebony Boghaunter
5. Beaverpond Baskettail (2020)
6. White-faced Meadowhawk
7. Band-winged Meadowhawk
8. Autumn Meadowhawk
9. Common Whitetail

My garden also gets a pretty good variety of arachnids, moths, bees and other insects; I haven’t created any formal lists, but if you’re interested, please check out my photo gallery on Pbase to see some of the more interesting creatures that have stopped by!

---

Updated February 2021

9 Comments