It’s Winter here on our homestead with at least 12” of snow, ice and temperatures below 0°F at night.
We are nice and cozy with our 2 wood burners heating the house to over 70°F. The freezers and pantry shelves are loaded with lots of good food.
Outside, there is hay and grain for the livestock in the barns and the water line hasn’t frozen.
We have no place we have to go, it’s just us and Nature.
The strange and forgotten thing is that the homestead is not only about us and our livestock, but also the wildlife which we share it with. This blog session is dedicated to the Homestead Wildlife.
To understand wildlife, we need to examine what requirements wildlife need to live, survive, and reproduce. Are these basic needs available to the animals during winter storms? If so, where and how much?
Game biologists refer to this time of year as the “Critical Period”.
What shelter, food, and water can the animal access during these stormy conditions?
To determine what’s available we need to do an inventory of the outdoors.
Game biologists have developed an inventory instrument that is used to determine what is available. It is call Cover Mapping.
Cover Mapping identifies accessible shelter, food sources, and available water. Hocking College in Nelsonville Ohio had this book available in their bookstore, however you don’t have to be that technical. All you have to do is take a hike throughout your homestead. Observe and inventory what you find available to the animals during the storm.
Check out your woodlots, fence rows, streams and ditch banks. See where the wildlife is feeding, seeking shelter, and traveling. Look for trackways in the snow. What animals visit your homestead? I'll bet there are more than you realize.
Just because a creek, stream, or pond has water in it, don't assume wildlife has access to the water during the winter months. Looking from a bridge over a fast flowing 40 foot wide creek there is no open water. Further upstream, the creek had gotten slushy in the sunshine, but there was little open water.
It looks like a red fox was hunting for a drink.
During a prolonged cold snap, the creek and ponds will be frozen for miles.
This will drive wildlife to other areas.
This information can be used to develop your homestead stewardship plan for incorporating wildlife habitat improvement projects. Many of those projects can be simple, inexpensive activities or costly and time-consuming major projects.
A few simple projects you might consider:
· Build brush piles
· Leave grassy areas between edge of fields and woods
· Don’t burn or mow during bird nesting seasons
· Leave at least 2 ‘den trees’ per acre in your woodlot.
· Develop springs and shallow water pools
· Renovating and reseeding pastures and don’t overgraze your pastures
· Protect your woods from fire and grazing
· Open up areas around nut and seed producing trees to increase their production
· Don’t let grassy areas become overgrown with tress and shrubs
· Food patch plantings (resources: National Wild Turkey Federation/Pheasants Forever)
Perch trees (on left) and den trees (right) are valuable wildlife habitat structures you can identify on your property. This perch tree often has hawks and even bald eagles perching and looking for meals. Den trees are good for squirrels, raccoons, birds, and such. There may be more than one access point in the tree.
Here is a link to a USDA website with lots of resources about wildlife management. https://www.farmers.gov/conservation/wildlife
There is also a new magazine, Mossy Oaks Gamekeeper, which highlights wildlife management techniques in the few issues I looked at.
I found a good, down-to-earth resource I can recommend. It’s free and online from the USDA. Published originally in 1953, Farmers Bulleting No. 2035 USDA Making Land Produce Useful Wildlife. The bulletin explains how to incorporate wildlife habitat improvements for the 5 different land uses in agriculture. The five areas are:
· Cropland
· Pastures
· Rangeland
· Woodlands
· Wildlife areas
It provides lists of simple practices that are beneficial as well as those that are harmful for each area. The key of the bulletin is that most activities listed are accepted farm practices which are no cost/low cost activities.
(Here is a link to a high-quality scanned copy of this out-of-print classic. You can purchase used copies from bookstores such as Abebooks.com. When you are doing your search be sure to include the author’s name, Wallace L. Anderson)
The real jewel is its explanation and practices listed for those areas we already set aside for wildlife.
There are 8 areas identified which we generally find in each square mile (640 acres) in Eastern US.
· Wetlands
· Odd areas
· Ponds
· Fence rows and hedges
· Wildlife borders
· Windbreaks
· Stream banks
· Ditch banks
Of these 8 areas, I suggest you examine the wildlife borders section. Known as Edge Effect, this is the true wildlife landscape on our homestead. Wildlife loves to romp, play, and eat in open areas (lawns, pastures, cropland), however they need adjacent cover for shelter, to loaf, or escape from predators. Berry briars, shrubs, and plants bordering fields make excellent edge effect borders. The best part of establishing edge effect borders are they normally grow naturally – we only need to allow them to grow.
The "edge effect" refers to the habitat along the edge of woodlots, pastures, ditch banks, etc. When edge-growing bushes and brambles are permitted to grow, wildlife will seek shelter and food there. In the right-upper picture notice all the tracks moving toward and along the brush. Most of these bushes are either autumn olive or multiflora rose, both have a over-wintering berry.
One of my wildlife test questions for my students was….”List five practices you can do to improve wildlife habitat without spending money.”
The wrong answer was always, “I don’t hunt, trap, or fish.”
In this case NOT doing something is not improving the situation for wildlife. If you want to improve the situation, you must take some positive action. These bulletins and webpages are full of ideas and recommendations.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife has many good resources. There are also private game biologists, field days, written and online resources for you to use and explore.
The Wild Ohio magazine cost $5.00/year
There is also a Wild Ohio magazine for kids called The Wildlife Journal that is phenomenal. Kids and adults can use it. Look online or call 1-800-Wildlife for more information.
A WIldOhio publication, the Wildlife Journal has lots of information and encourages kids (and adults) to become biologists in their own backyard. It's a great homeschooling resource, too.
While you are on the phone or online, check out the ODNR’s full-color flora/fauna field guides. They have one for insects, birds, wildflowers, mammals, fish, reptiles….. you get the idea. And they are free.
Just a few of the field guide publications from Ohio ODNR.
Whether you live in town with a ¼ acre lot or have hundreds of acres, you can encourage various wildlife to visit your property.
We planted a 4-acre pollinator/prairie restoration project for birds and bees on unreclaimed strip mine land. It is a playground for fox, deer, rabbits, turkeys, eagles and whatever else is searching for food.
For wildlife pictures of from our homestead and the Yellow Creek Watershed, check out our Facebook page Yellowcreek Conservation Club.
Also, mark your calendar for Saturday, May 21, 2022 to attend the 3rd annual Homestead Rendezvous at the Bergholz Firehall grounds in Bergholz, Ohio. The Facebook page for information and updates is The Homestead Rendezvous.
If you have questions, email me at ragivens@gmail.com
Remember Maple Syrup season is less than a month away. Check out my previous blogs about this first gathering of food for the year on the homestead.
Now, go do something wild…….
Bob
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