Umberto Nutkins, kin of Squirrel Nutkins
This week the year’s first flowers have started forming–Plumcott and Pluot buds and one whole crocus–but for the past 2/ 2.5 months the stars of the garden have been the critters, mostly a legion of rumbustious gray squirrels who recently did some demolition on the Christmas gingerbread village.
Until a couple days ago, when I saw HIM–the gi-normous Barred Owl. I didn’t even know owls were in town, but there he was smack in the middle of a rainy February day standing on top of the deer fence’s 10 foot rebar post like some sort of spotted power transformer.
Apparently Barred, aka “hoot,” Owls have to do day time food runs this time of year because the owl stork schedules his deliveries in the middle of winter.
This first time sighting is a perfect example of the pleasant incidental effects of cultivating a large garden and suburban orchard. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised over the past year by other new residents like little Joey Buffo the bunny, his family, and his foe bunnies, a four-fold increase in bluebirds and woodpeckers, sassy punxetone groundhogs, hundreds of honeybees a day in summer, fuzzy bumblebees, and butterflies of all types.
I’m less enthused by others, like the gray fox who is always right on Buffo’s tail in the circle of life or hornets that ambush the butterflies. But that’s all part of life’s rich pageantry. In fact the owl was probably hunting voles or moles.
Deer require a whole blog post of their own.
Barred Owl
- Crocus. First flower 2013.
- Plumcott buds forming.
A Practical Pleasure Garden 
Congrats on the lovely first flower and the owl sighting, both which would have thrilled me to no end. Most gardeners are surprisingly fickle about wildlife; adoring birds and butterflies and yet killing every snake they can get a hoe on. When I speak to a garden club, no matter what the topic of the presentation, the first question is nearly always how to do away with one “pesky animal” or another. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want voles in my garden either. But respect for life’s rich pageantry (as you so eloquently express it), is something too many of us have lost sight of.
Hi Marian, thanks for your comments. Several times I have made plans to “remove” voles or moles, gotten a pack of chewing gum to place in their tunnels to choke them, and every time I’ve felt guilty and declined to go through with it. It looks like I’ve been rewarded with owles. Snakes are only a problem for me if they are venomous or persistently present. Many people consider the bunnies to be a nuisance, but I find the damage they do is minimal and well worth suffering for the opportunity to see them. On one occassion I was watching a bunny eating some groundcover at dusk and I witnessed an unsuccessful attack from a gray fox. That did bother me because I don’t like to have bears, foxes, or deer roaming around town, garden or not. I plan to do a post later on my struggle with deer, which, while attractive, are not compatible with rose or vegetable gardens.