When it comes to backyard bird feeding, the bird feeder reigns supreme. Many people have one or more feeders in their yards and some people go to extremes with their feeders. However, how many people have stopped to consider if they are benefiting or harming the birds. This is an issue as contentious as keeping [...]
The Nighthawk is a bird that used to be abundant throughout the US but has been in decline in recent years. There are many potential reasons for this, among them is a change in the construction of roof tops. Nighthawks have been known to nest on roofs with gravel tops, but since most roof construction [...]
In Portland, Oregon there are a number of schools who have installed rain gardens. Portland has been one of the leading cities in the world when it comes to stormwater management and has a great number of good examples, some were even featured in the book I mentioned in the previous post, Rain Gardens: Managing [...]
One of the major habitat elements, after food and shelter, comes water. There are two main routes that can provide water, a pond provides constant water while a rain garden provides constantly changing levels of water. There are many great resources for design and installation of both options. PONDS If the goal is to provide [...]
The next post is about rain gardens and ponds and is where habitat, hydrology and stormwater management start to overlap. This is a paper I wrote about the hydrologic cycle that may be helpful to anyone wanting to understand hydrology and why it’s so important that we mitigate the affects of all of our impervious [...]
One of the most impressive green roofs in the country is the one on top of City Hall in Chicago. Part of the impressiveness comes from the fact that the building is over 100 years old and was not designed specifically to allow for the additional weight of a green roof. Many buildings can only [...]
The first question many people will ask when you tell them you want to create habitat is why, which often comes before the how. It’s important to formulate an educated response to the why whether it’s a homeowner or city planner asking. There are many answers to that question and I plan to address many [...]
The Wildlife Design Competition from the Holbeck Urban Village in Leeds has just closed and the winners will be announced next month. This is the second year of the competition and before the winner is announced, let’s take a look at last years winner. A wildlife high-rise skyscraper was the winner last year by Garnett [...]
The NRCS or Natural Resources Conservation Service has some excellent resources available online for download or you can order them free. The first publication is a booklet called Backyard Conservation: Bringing Conservation From the Countryside to Your Backyard and it features many topics such as the benefit of trees and how to plant them, wildlife [...]
National Wildlife Federation Attracting Birds, Butterflies & Backyard Wildlife is a great book by David Mizejewski, published by the National Wildlife Federation. It’s aimed at home owners, but has relevant design information for many aspects of habitat. You won’t find any fluff in this book, which I appreciate, it’s short and to the point. Topics [...]
The 2010 WASLA awards were recently announced and winning a Merit Award for Research and Communication was a report by The Berger Partnership titled Funciontal Landscapes – Assessing Elements of Seattle’s Green Factor (PDF). The report graphically shows the benefits of the Green Factor program with in-depth looks at each category. The report is well [...]
I finished reading How Birds Migrate by Paul Kerlinger just ahead of International Migratory Bird Day which is coming up on May 8th. Migration is an important topic for the urban environment as many cities have an enormous impact on bird migration and many cities, including Portland and Seattle, lay in a major flyway, which [...]