Acorn woodpeckers specialize in acorns, but they won’t say no to a well-placed bird feeder.
Michael Gronwold lives in a downtown LA apartment. He doesn’t have much room, but that didn’t stop him from creating a wildlife habitat. He set up two wooden window boxes four floors up from the busy street, hoping his little garden would attract the bees, butterflies, and other pollinators he’d seen flying around downtown. They showed up right away. So did a hummingbird. Inspired, Michael installed a hummingbird feeder.
As more hummingbirds found his garden, he increased his feeders to four. Two species routinely show up: Anna’s hummingbird and Allen’s hummingbird. On one particularly cloudy day, he counted thirty-six hummingbirds feeding or perched outside his window. Michael describes his experience as being “visited all day long by the beautiful flying residents of downtown Los Angeles.”
Individuals have the power to make Los Angeles work better for wildlife. Urban and suburban green space can be divided into two categories: parks and other protected spaces, and privately-owned yards and lawns. We can show city officials how altering the ways parks and preserves are managed will benefit humans and wildlife, but in urban settings, more than a third of green space is backyards and private property. Studies have shown that when yards become more wildlife friendly, even habitats as small as Michael’s, the payoffs can be huge.
According to a study conducted on backyards in Illinois, one backyard can provide a small benefit to wildlife, but when multiple neighboring houses—within 150 feet of each other—use wildlife-friendly landscaping strategies the combined benefits are tremendous. One example: neighborhoods like these attracted more birds than those where homeowners didn’t create critter-friendly habitats. And streets with multiple bird-friendly yards had almost twice as many bird species as those without.
Cabbage white butterflies are among the most commonly spotted in Los Angeles. They have been recorded flying every month of the year.
In the early 1980s, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries began to promote a practice they termed shinrin-yoku. Loosely translated as forest bathing, it involves taking in the atmosphere of the forest: essentially, a nature walk. Research shows that this improves mental and physical well-being and promotes relaxation.
The Japanese aren’t the only ones making this sort of argument. American biologist E. O. Wilson argued that humans have a strong “urge to affiliate with other forms of life,” something he termed biophilia. And the idea that spending time in nature can be good for the soul is wrapped up in the establishment of the nation’s National Park system, often described as America’s best idea. Newton B. Drury, director of the National Park Service between 1940 and 1951, once said that by exposing Americans to the natural world, the parks offer “an opportunity to grow mentally and spiritually, as well as physically.”
It would be nice if we could all take time every week to hike in mountains, or even stroll through a city park, but sometimes work, school, and family obligations get in the way. Soccer practice, conference calls, trips to the dentist—given the pace of life in the City of Angels, staring out the window at songbirds and hummingbirds for a few minutes or noticing the nature on your way to the grocery store can do a world of good.
Of course, there’s also the ecological benefit of biodiversity. Without a wide variety of species, the things we need to survive—oxygen, clean water, food—could be in short supply. Since it seems we don’t plan to stop cities from growing, allowing biodiversity some space in our yards seems like a reasonable compromise.
A wild predator shifts silently in and out of lush, green shadows. Its sole purpose, at this moment, is to eat. Finding a target, she closes the distance quickly, snatching her prey between ferocious mouthparts.
This scene could describe lions on the prowl in Africa, but it also unfolds every day in LA backyards, courtyards, and parks. The humble ladybug is the lioness of your backyard garden, stalking aphids as voraciously as lions do antelope. Los Angeles’s raccoons, foxes, hummingbirds, lizards—and, yes, even the insects—live in a world just as inspiring and brutal as the dramatic Serengeti. Great horned owls crush cottontail rabbits in their talons, applying some three hundred pounds per square inch of pressure to drain the life from their furry prey. Parasitic wasps lay their eggs in caterpillars so their young larvae can have fresh meat when they hatch. And beetle grubs make juicy snacks for Southern alligator lizards, which are themselves hunted by California scrub-jays.
Spend enough time in your backyard or apartment complex courtyard and you’ll see more than just the drama of predator versus prey, you may be lucky enough to see what stays hidden from most people. Animals use your yard to court, have sex, lay eggs, and give birth—maybe just a few feet from your own bedroom. They defend their territories, raise their young, grow old, and eventually die. Animals go about their lives unknown to us, unless we look closely.
There’s so much we can do to make our homes, schools, parks, and neighborhoods critter-friendly, whether we’ve got a small apartment with a window box, or a house with a few acres of yard. A few changes to your backyard or garden can make it more wildlife friendly. Start by providing basic needs—food, water, shelter, and space. Here are some good ideas:
• Plant native species—they use less water, are adapted to our climate, and their leaves, seeds, and flowers provide the best food and shelter for local wildlife.
• If you have space for trees, plant a mix of evergreens, like pines, and deciduous trees, like oaks. Trees don’t just add habitat, they add complexity—a variety of habitats stacked vertically one on top of the other.
• Put in a small water feature like a simple bird bath—birds like to bathe in it, and insects and other animals will drink from it in the heat of summer.
• If you have a swimming pool, consider installing a “frog log.” It’s a little escape ramp that allows small animals, including frogs, squirrels, lizards, baby birds, and others, to avoid drowning if they fall in.
• Create shelters—a brush or rock pile is a great place for lizards and other small critters to hide. If you put logs out, you can also look for mushrooms and slime molds growing on them after it rains.
• Don’t clean up too much! Let plants go to seed—birds rely on them for food. Allow leaves to accumulate; it helps build soil and provides cover for soil-dwelling creatures.
You can take your wildlife-friendly yard to the next level by installing an owl box, a bee hotel, or a bird feeder. Rather than simply making it possible for animals to use your yard, these devices can actually attract them. Owl boxes and bee hotels also provide space for babies. Imagine having an owl nursery in your backyard!
This California towhee bathes to stay parasite free. After splashing around, it will sit in the sun to dry out and preen its feathers, adding a protective oil coating to each one.
It’s worth mentioning that your good work creating a wildlife-friendly backyard can be undermined by certain actions. For example: letting your cat outside. Specifics vary from study to study, but biologists agree that outdoor cats kill a staggering number of birds, reptiles, and mammals each year. Keeping your tiny leopard inside could have a big impact on your neighborhood’s biodiversity.
If you do have an outdoor pet, and you keep a food dispenser outside, make sure it is critter proof. Same goes for your trashcans. Raccoons can develop gout if they eat too much pet food, and easy trash pickings can attract coyotes to your yard. Coyotes may also choose to make your pet into dinner (another reason to keep Whiskers inside), so work to make your yard as coyote unfriendly as possible.
Though squirrels and other rodents can be a nuisance, don’t use rodenticides or rat poisons. While these poisons do kill their intended targets, they also work their way up the food chain. Predators like bobcats, mountain lions, hawks and owls, and pets like cats and dogs can all get secondary poisoning—it accumulates in their systems after they eat animals that ate the poison or if they scavenge a poisoned animal’s carcass.
In studies conducted by local National Park Service biologists, over 80 percent of coyotes and over 90 percent of bobcats and mountain lions had been exposed to rodenticide poisons. Even if the poison doesn’t kill these predators directly, it can still impair immune function—increasing the risk of catching mange and other diseases.
Try natural options for pest control. Many of our non-human neighbors have survived the relentless march of urbanization for generations. But that doesn’t mean we can’t give them some neighborly help. Plus, the local predator population will return the favor—less poison means more hawks, owls, and others taking care of your rodent problems.
One off-beat suggestion is to sprinkle coyote urine here and there around your yard—you might just convince the squirrels to leave your herb garden alone.
Leo Politi Elementary School sits just two miles from downtown Los Angeles, in one of the densest parts of the city. This means there’s not that much room for nature to grow or kids to play. A few years ago, then-principal Brad Rumble decided to take an empty part of campus and grow a garden.
With the help of students from a nearby high school, they planted sages, oaks, monkey-flowers, and other native species. They dug a vernal pool. Then they waited for the birds and insects to show up. Teachers began using the space for lessons, and Brad took students there to talk things through when they were troubled.
Not long after the garden grew in, wildlife turned up—the students counted dozens of species of birds in the garden, and hundreds of insects—but that was expected. The surprise was that student disciplinary issues dropped to almost zero and science test scores skyrocketed. Brad said they went “from the basement to the penthouse in science.” Before the garden, 9 percent of Leo Politi students tested proficient in science. After the garden was planted, 54 percent did. Gardens don’t just benefit wildlife. They also benefit us.
Students from Leo Politi Elementary survey their schoolyard garden for birds. The data they collect are uploaded to eBird, so scientists and others can answer questions about birds in Los Angeles.
What would our city look, sound, and smell like if every school and property owner provided a bit of quality wildlife habitat? If enough people landscape their yards with wildlife in mind, those gardens could become corridors for traveling between larger green spaces, allowing animals to hopscotch safely across the city from backyard to backyard. Los Angeles has a good amount of undeveloped green space, but, acre for acre, the nature of Los Angeles is the nature of the backyard.
