A shocking number of birds are in trouble
Ah, I love birds. Story time that&#x27;s somewhat sequitur to this.<p>When I moved to Oregon I moved just North of a 600+ acre nature reserve. My property has numerous 40+ ft tall trees and plenty 10-20+ ft trees. The closest body of water is a large river and few people have ponds in my neighborhood. One of the goals I had was keeping plants that are favorable to the soil first and local ecology second (come to find out there&#x27;s not much of a difference there). Much of the gardens pre-existed my presence here, so I expanded them with geraniums. I started composting and fertilizing the soil. I controlled for weeds using aggressive, non-invasive ground cover that include pollinator friendly blooms and cover.<p>I figured, if you build it they will come, and they very well did. The bird population around my neighborhood boomed this spring. There are two feeding frenzies I&#x27;ve observed at morning and in the afternoon. Birds will line the trees and some of my hanging steel lines used for lights. I was able to verify <i>every single</i> bird species was represented at least once in our backyard within a one week time period.<p>Then, the ecosystem of my neighborhood started to whiplash. Rats boomed as they fed on the habits of bushtits and finches throwing seed on the ground and easy access to feeders. I modified the feeders so that rats could not shimmy up them. Eastern Grey Squirrels were already present in my back yard, which are invasive, and more showed up. I started to build some traps to be able to move them. Then, one of the birds I wasn&#x27;t tracking showed up. Two hawks made a nest and began policing the boom in rats, local cats minorly brought down the bird population. The Eastern Grey&#x27;s were wiped out by something and native squirrels nested the tree closest to my house. My hypothesis is that they were chased out by some larger Robins; the native species of squirrels we have are much more shy and less predatory to birds than Eastern Grey&#x27;s. It was a stunning series of events that occurred over about a two week period. Things have normalized and settled down quite a bit but I was truly astonished how minor changes and thoughtful additions could impact the small, medium, and bird of prey populations in such a small locality.<p>Next I plan on adding a bat house or two to build up the local bat population to police bugs in my yard and I&#x27;m planning a water feature in the form of a small solar powered fountain. What I&#x27;ve learned, or rather had reinforced, is that by making a place that is friendly to these creatures I achieved my soil health goal. The increased soil health brought in big worms, the birds aerated my lawn for me, my ground cover and grass took off as a result, and now much of the ecosystem does the work of maintaining plant and soil health for me.<p>Point being, what&#x27;s being stated in this article can be undone if you make minor changes that make it more safe and happy for birds, even in a city. That and making a place for birds also has knock on effects for soil, bugs, and plants. They have a huge role in our ecosystem.