Critters On My Frontier

Since moving to my small Frontier (acre in the suburban countryside), I have been able to host several critters.

There were already bluebird houses here.  Seven bluebirds auspiciously flew over the house when I first visited in the winter.  Sadly, there have been few bluebird since then.  Perhaps they are afraid of the outdoor cat, although I have never seen the outdoor cat hunt.  He much prefers to instead lounge all day, visit with his cat friends, and receive cat food.  

Anyway, some other birds moved in this spring, including a lovely swallow couple.  They are always nice to watch and can be very approachable when they are not nesting.  When they are nesting, they are territorial and engage in scary bluff attacks on the people who are trying to mow the lawn.

My second attempt to attract birds was purchasing a screech owl house. The house is cedar.  It faces East.  It is lined with cedar chips.  An owl has not yet moved there.  European Starlings nested in the house earlier this year.  I understand another owl nesting window of time is now here, so fingers crossed on attracting an owl.  Here is a

 selfie picture with the owl house.  I climbed the tree to install it.

Then, there are the cats.  I understand  that they are non-native bird eaters, but I am also a non-native bird eater, as are many of us.  Here is Dandelion inside and feral Bucher outside.  Bucher was a member of a feral cat colony, but he joined my cats and me and became very attached to us at the last place where we lived.  He stopped using the feral colony's resources in favor of sitting in my yard all day and night.  I was able to trap and move him here with permission and help from the feral cat colony's manager. Although he has some mannerisms of a pet, like his goofy pose shown below, he is very skittish and avoids direct contact.

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My latest venture is housing mason bees.  Several mason bees visited the flowers here in the spring and summer.  I read that hosting these native bees is now a "thing."  It is good to help our declining pollinators.  Next spring, I would like to plant a small pollinators garden for the pollinators.  A few companies also now sell mason bee houses, and the bees themselves!  I went with cute and inexpensive.  

I am not sure about this, though.  What if something goes wrong and instead of helping out the mason bees, I end up hurting them?   For example, I read not to use bamboo tubing because it will degrade.  Maybe the bees here are doing just fine without their new little house.  One thing that appealed to me about the mason bees is that they are solitary nesters.  Every female mason bee is queen of her own tube.  They are also said to be non-aggressive. The mason bees also need mud for their nests.  I don't mulch so they may be picking up mud from the flowerbed.

By the way, companies are also selling leafcutter bees, which can also be non-aggressive and are native, but bringing in leafcutter bees would be an ugly thing to do to the neighborhood.

I would like a bat house although I am uncertain how the neighbors would feel about a bat colony.  They were not too thrilled about the skunks that were living  under my enclosed  porch.