Wildlife Federation Certified Habitat

Although our home and school is located in a busy urban neighborhood only two minutes from a downtown area filled with towering hospitals and corporations, we are delighted with the wildlife that lives in our own backyard.

The feature that attracts wildlife is a branch of the Dry Run Creek that meanders happily through the marked and measured city blocks. Our home and school property includeds a fifty foot stretch of this twenty foot wide creek, where Mallards nest, Blue Herrons feed, and numerous water critters (minnows, crawdads, and water insects) dwell. One morning I even spied a hunting Kingfisher poised above the creek on the branch of a snag!

In addition, this creek becomes a small thoroughfare for coyotes, red foxes, wild turkey, and even on one occasion a whispering White Tail doe. Yet one block from us is a major four-lane avenue transporting thousands of cars from downtown up the bluff. Nesting in the large, mature trees above us are nuthatches and woodpeckers, hummingbirds and bluejays, as well as a family of Cooper's hawks. A neighboring yard hosts large cottonwood trees where a Red Tail Hawk lurks and on occasion comes to our yard to hunt. (At one point, the Red Tail Hawk has caught a baby rabbit and dropped it from on high just inches from my daughter. The baby rabbit fell, amazingly into the creek behind our house, and swam away!)

The children in our home have designated themselves caretakers of the creek, watching carefully as minnows build pebble nests and spawn by the hundreds, as damsel and dragonflies dance above the water, and as crawdads hunt and battle the multitude of water bugs swimming about.

But the creek is just one part of our habitat. Over the past five years, I have transformed a sterile, overmowed, and barren yard into strips of indigenous prairie, butterfly garden, and shade gardens. I removed a diseases silver maple and several invasive species, replacing them with fir trees, a tulip poplar, and a red oak. One section of our prairie is thriving in an area where nothing else would grow; a five foot by thirty foot strip of land overlooking the creek from a city road bridge is now filled with ten foot high Big Bluestem, Ironweed, Spiderwort, and many other native species of grass and forbe. All of them seed out, providing food, shelter, and a nesting area.

Another section of praire plants runs closer to our home, featuring milkweed, butterfly plants, Joe Pye Weed, grasses, and more. Of course we see quite a few Monarch butterflies about the milkweed plants, and a recent addition of a fountain and small bird bath sized pool have drawn even more birds. We keep tadpoles in the pool to eat up pesky mosquito larvae, and enjoy watching the tadpoles turn into native toads who then visit our shade garden.

We also supplement with several bird feeders: hummingbird, multi-seed, niger thistle, and ground feeders. Water in the fountain pool is topped off and refreshed regularly, and the creek in our yard, despite it's name of "Dry Run" never actually runs dry and always has several feet of water flowing.

Because a road runs over the creek by our house, there is also a man-made cave where swallows build nests, and occasionally bats roost. We see bats frequently feeding in the evenings above our yard. Along the creek are many bushes, with undergrowth and trees. Many trees are mature and large, some young with berries, and some old and dead, providing nesting for plenty of critters. A twenty foot high wooden retaining wall also provides shelter in its crevices along with surface area for mosses and other plants to grow.

Our family was fortunate to move to this little urban oasis- all of the neighbors treasure this area because of the wildlife and nature that concentrates here. And while I have made improvements to the land by introducing native prairie plants, trees, and by clearing out invasives, as well as providing supplemental water sources, nesting and shelter, I also consider our family to be caretakers of this natural area. We improve it where we can, but not at the cost of damaging the little eco-system that has formed here.

And lastly, I view this conservation and improvement to be an extension of community education. I want the hundreds of bicyclers and dog-walkers who traverse the city bike route past our yard to stop and enjoy the habitat. Those gawky flowering weeds are in fact native flowers that have grown in this area for millenia, only to be farmed down, and now restored. The waterway that some people think is only storm drainage is a stream that has been here since before our neighborhood was pastureland. Our grandmothers played and fished in it at the turn of the last century. I hope that when passersby become educated about this wildlife habitat, they will be more inclined to protect and enhance such areas in their own yard, inspiring the next generation to do the same.