Important: If you think you’ve found a sick or injured animal, or abandoned young, please do not try to take them in as a pet or feed them. Please contact Volunteers for Wildlife, a wildlife rehabilitation center that serves all of Long Island.
I’m fortunate to have a large bay window that looks out upon our backyard and opens into the garden. I can spend hours just watching all the wildlife passing through, often from quite closeup. It’s amazing to think of all the life in all its beautiful diversity right here in the middle of suburbia.
One of the reasons our yard attracts so much wildlife is that we leave a lot of the land in its natural state. That is, we have a lot of brush, woods, and meadow, and we leave woody debris, fallen leaves, and weeds to provide food and habitat for wildlife. So many suburbanites these days think that the yard is supposed to be an extension of the house, and so they hypermanicure the yard to the point where it looks sterile, and to me, barren and lifeless.