November Wildlife Garden

November is a significant month for a wildlife garden because it's generally the turning point for the first frosts of winter. This fall has been warm, as was last year - we still have roses and raspberries in mid-November - but the rains have begun in earnest.

I'm writing a whole book about my Nature-Culture ideas: living my life as part of nature; sharing my resources with those who share theirs (the bees and the birds, etc.); becoming more aware of nature's needs so I can be a better neighbor; changing my habits so I can cause less harm.

My working definition of Nature-culture is "Humans living in unity with nature: acting in ways that create shared spaces that honor the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems."

Agenda:

1. Bird watching

2. Feed the birds

3. Add to my wildlife garden habitat

4. Winter vegetable garden tasks

5. Personal life-style goals

6. Education and advocacy plans

1. Bird watching:

My first intention for my wildlife garden is AWARENESS: staying in daily touch with my home ecosystem - observing and interacting, learning the names of the flora and fauna that visit in fall and winter; being mindful of the air, water, land, season and climate; becoming a better neighbor.

The winter rains make my intention to "stay in daily touch" a less inviting activity, but birdwatching from the comfort of my front room window is always entertaining, and learning the names of new birds helps me be a better neighbor.

The changing season sets in motion the annual bird migration. Though many birds leave Oregon in early fall, others move here for the winter. And some shift from the mountains to the valleys or vice versa. As natural food is depleted in the countryside because of environmental degradation, we might notice more birds in our urban gardens. 

Today I will set out my binoculars and my Nature Notebook by the front window, and settled in for some viewing. My Nature Notebook is for collecting the names of all kinds of my Nature Neighbors - I try to regularly add new names of plants, insects, birds, or animals that I see in my yard or neighborhood.

My "regular" winter yard visitors: Dark-eyed Juncos, Red-breasted Nuthatches, Black-capped Chickadees, Flickers, and Anna's Hummingbirds are frequent all winter. With the onset of November rainstorms, I'm on the lookout for new birds! Here are a few travelers I'm watching for:

Varied thrush - moves from mountains into valleys for the winter. Usually found foraging on the ground by late October. They are shy but will sometimes approach suet feeders, or underneath seed feeders.

Evening Grosbeaks - even more erratically opportunistic than Varied Thrushes; they were (apparently) forced into the lowlands in late 2010 due to a poor conifer seed crop in the Cascades.

Ruby- and Golden-crowned Kinglets - Look for these tiny birds amongst the "usual" flock of chickadees in late November.  They are tiny, constantly moving, and tend to forage relatively high up in trees. 

Warblers (Townsend's and Yellow-rumped Warblers) - With the mixed flock of small birds, look also for warblers foraging high up in trees, eating berries, and occasionally picking at suet.

 

Finches - Pine Siskin, House Finch, Lesser Goldfinch, and American Goldfinch.

 

2. Feed the birds:

This is the time of year that I put out my feeders again after the summer hiatus. Here's what I supply:

Black oil sunflower seeds in a simple tube feeder with a metal cage for perching: These are a crowd pleaser, and we always see chickadees, nuthatches, finches, and juncoes (who clean up the spillage).

Nyjer seeds in a thistle feeder for the finches.

Suet in a wire cage.

Nectar in a glass feeder, for our loyal Anna’s Hummingbirds. I make my own nectar with a mix of 1 part white sugar to 4 parts water.

I have a whole new bird viewing opportunity this year, with our new back patio. I plan to find the perfect place for a feeder - Unser cover but not over the deck. 

And I need to be more diligent in cleaning my bird feeders, including the nectar feeder. Damp weather paired with birds flocking to feeders increases the potential for diseases to spread, including salmonella. A good cleaning routine is twice a month:

• Clean your feeders with soap and water and rinse;
• Soak for 10 minutes with a solution of 1 part household bleach to 10 parts water;
• Rinse, and dry before using again.

3. Add to my wildlife garden habitat:

My second nature-culture intention is HEALING CARE: Creating healthy sanctuary - a wildlife garden with native plants and intentional wildlife habitat to reverse some of the human-caused habitat destruction that is hurting nature.

To that end, I will take these actions:

1. 
   Add to our log piles in the garden - one in the front under the bedroom window, and one in the back, under the hedge - to provide hibernation places for toads, frogs, salamanders, and newts, a place for wood-boring beetles to live, and a damp place for mosses, ferns, lichens and fungi to grow. (I add wood to the pile each year, as the bottom logs decompose, but take care not to disturb the habitat.)
2. Leave flower stalks and seed heads until early spring. Some insect friends overwinter in hollow stems and leaves as larvae, eggs, or in their adult form. They need shelter and food and will thank you by coming back in large numbers in the spring.
3. Avoid trampling around between plants in my wildlife beds, as many moths overwinter as pupae below the soil surface and the caterpillars of some butterflies spend the winter deep in vegetation in borders. They are all mulched now, and ready to leave be.
4. Plant wildflower seeds now (this year- Oregon iris, Blue-eyed grass, and Showy fleabane) so they have time to chill out over the winter; they need cold stratification before they will germinate. Birds will likely help themselves so sow heavily and dust come compost over the top to hide a few.
5. Gather leaves as they fall and tuck them under the front shrubs, to create a habitat for wood mice, voles and many invertebrates. 

4. Personal life-style goals:

My third nature-culture intention is NATURAL LIVING: Having integrity with my whole life - causing less harm; using less plastics, less carbon fuels, and less processed foods; limiting waste by recycling, reusing, and repurposing material; growing a food garden using regenerative agricultural practices.

I'm always thinking about ways to improve our lifestyle, and at the holidays I have a couple of goals -

1. Buy no new plastic gifts (used toys are okay).
2. Make as many gifts as possible, using recycled materials (cloth scraps, wood scraps, plastic bags...).
3. If I can't bike, I stay home.
4. Bake bread and make soup, weekly!

5. Regenerative winter vegetable garden tasks:

Another part of natural living is growing a food garden using regenerative agricultural practices.

1. Harvest, mostly kale, green tomatoes, and beets.
2. Collect leaves, the most wonderful gift: My trees haven't dropped many yet, but my neighbors are piling them in the street, so I just need to take time to collect them. If I'm careful I will preserve overwintering insects. I will put some on our paths and where ever else I was to inhibit growth, and make a pile near our compost bins.
3. Mulch any unplanted soil with organic straw or leaf mold. A mulched garden bed is like a safe haven for soil. Mulching keeps water in the soil, and the soil temperature warmer in the winter. It also reduces weed pressure and soil erosion. Mulching is one of the key principles of regenerative gardening. 
4. Chop and drop to return nutrients to the earth. Simply chop back any above ground parts of the plant, leaving the roots in the ground. Then, you leave the chopped part of the plants on top of the soil as a green mulch. This is something I do year round, but now I've got a lot of good, green mulch available to return the plants nutrients back into the earth.
5. Plan for garden expansion. Fall is a great time to prepare the soil in new beds for next year’s planting so that I don’t need to till next spring. I can apply a heavy layer of mulch over areas where I’ll be expanding our garden or areas that became particularly weedy. This will slowly kill back the grass or weeds, while enriching the soil at the same time. 
6. Thin and mulch raspberries: My everbearing raspberries are still blooming and making berries, but they just mold now because of the rains. These canes are in their first year, and should be left to over-winter, but can be topped so they don't get too tall in the spring. Raspberries are vigorous growers, and they will produce runner or stolons, which are horizontal running underground stems that move out to other parts of the garden. I've let too many of these grow into plants, and my bed is crowded. This is the best month to dig these out to give away. I'm aiming to leave plants that are at least 2 feet apart (because they will fill in again quickly!)

6. Education and advocacy plans:

And my final nature-culture intention is to pay forward the benefits we receive from nature by educating others and advocating for nature. I have big intentions for the next year for climate change and pollution advocacy work, and I'm setting things in motion this month by inviting clearness, and collecting resources.