Natural Food for Wildlife Archives

The silver maple and the squirrel: two species who go so well together. Both are much maligned, one for her strong, visible roots and shedding limbs, and the other for her extreme persistence in gathering the seeds she needs. At one time silver maples were planted routinely in front of new human homes, and they in turn gave homes to an abundance of other creatures. But the humans were fickle, as humans are, and it didn’t take long for them to decide that silver maple roots were too disruptive to manmade lawns, or that maple seeds were too messy in their manmade gutters, or that it was simply too inconvenient to bend down and remove maple branches from the paths of mowers.

So the humans cut the maple down and planted a tree guaranteed not to drop limbs, not to shed seeds, not to attract insects, not to grow roots that would “invade” the turfgrass. But then the humans noticed that something was missing. Where were all the birds? So the humans hung birdfeeders filled with seed grown a thousand miles away and watched delightedly as the cardinals, sparrows, mourning doves and chickadees came to eat. They added more feeders and took pictures and learned to identify every species by name and by song.

One day the humans looked out the window and saw a squirrel hanging upside down on the feeder. “Go away, squirrel!” they shouted. “That feeder is not meant for you!” The squirrel didn’t hear them, or maybe she didn’t listen, as squirrels are skilled at ignoring humans. The humans got angry, went to the store, and bought the best squirrel baffle money could buy. They went back to their home (and, in their minds, their home only), installed the baffle, and sat back behind their window to watch the birds again.

But soon the squirrel was back, wedged around the baffle he had just chewed half-apart, happily eating seeds. So the humans got even angrier. They bought a live trap and set it outside near the birdfeeder. They were good people, they reasoned — animal lovers, even. They had a dog, they watched birds. They didn’t have anything against squirrels out there in the broader environment. But there was no place for them in their yard, which was meant for birds.

The trap worked like a charm, and the humans drove the squirrel several miles away and released her in a field, not realizing they had just separated her from her babies, who would soon begin to starve, and not realizing the mother squirrel would be disoriented and lost, as if in a foreign land, and would soon picked up by a hawk.

Back at home, the humans congratulated themselves on a job well and humanely done. The squirrel was in a better place, after all — an open field, and isn’t that where all animals want to go? They looked out the window, admiring the bluebirds eating the imported mealworms from a cup on platform. They didn’t think about all the native plants the bluebirds could have gathered insects from instead, like the silver maple they’d already cut down. They didn’t think about the fact that their bird seed was not just a feeding station but a baiting station, one that would become an endless source of conflict between them and the squirrels, raccoons, mice, coyotes, and even other birds who’d landed on this continent through no fault of their own but were now called “invasive pests.”

Over in the corner of that barren yard, though, there was someone else who was already one step ahead of them, someone watching and waiting for her chance to eat at the coveted hanging diner. As the humans turned their backs to the window to go make lunch, the new squirrel came to have a nibble of her own. Little did she know that soon she would inadvertently launch Human-Squirrel War II, for the mere crime of just trying to get something to eat.

Don’t be these humans. Nurture and plant the plants that all your wild neighbors can eat and take refuge in. Then sit back for a glimpse of nature like the one above instead — a sweet scene that has unfolded outside our front window every day for two weeks during silver maple shedding season. This is something no amount of money or fancy feeders or wildlife-watching trips can buy.

(Video by my husband, Will Heinz.)