4
and cover for some species. The
waste grain and weed seeds are
food for wildlife during the
winter.
Crop Rotation
Instead of continuous
cropping, try rotating your
crops. It will increase the health
of your plants and add plant
diversity.
By adding legumes to your
cropping program, you’ll add
nitrogen to the soil, reduce
fertilizer requirements, and
provide ideal wildlife nesting
cover and food.
Also, delay mowing until after
the peak of the nesting season
– around July 15.
Untimely mowing will kill
nesting adults and destroy
their nests.
Strip Cropping
Another good conservation
practice is contour strip
cropping.
Here row crops are planted in
strips along the natural
contour of the slope and next
to a grass strip. You’ve got both
erosion control and plant
diversity.
The grass strips serve as
travel lanes and nesting/
roosting cover for wildlife.
Terraces planted to grass/
legume mixtures also provide
food, nesting/roosting cover
and travel lanes.
Food Plots
One of the most popular and
best ways to provide winter
food for wildlife is food plots.
Farm co-ops have an
excellent assortment of
grasses and grains that can be
used for wildlife food and cover.
They include millets,
lespedezas, soybeans, grain
sorghum, and legumes, plus
sunflowers, birdsfoot trefoil,
cowpeas, and crown vetch.
For maximum bird attraction,
try the grain sorghum. The
tuber heads grow as long as
there is moisture – often until
a killing frost. Then, when it
ripens, birds will have a feast.
Food plots should be
sheltered on the north and
west by natural features such
as wooded creek bottoms,
wetlands, or wind-breaks, that
will prevent drifting snow from
covering the grain.
Farmstead
Another excellent area for
wildlife is around abandoned
farmstead sites.
The trees, shrubs, grasses,
and weeds found there are
beneficial to wildlife, especially
old, mature trees with cavities
and those that produce
quantities of nuts, fruits, and
seeds.
Old buildings are used for
nesting by barn swallows,
songbirds, barn owls, and as
dens for rabbits, woodchucks,
and raccoons.
If it is necessary to remove
the old buildings, retain the
trees and shrubs. You may even
want to plant additional native
trees and shrubs such as
cherry, hawthorn, and highbush
berries, where the buildings were.
These farmstead sites are
also important habitat for
squirrels, flickers, robins, brown
thrashers, sparrows, catbirds,
crows, red-tailed hawks, wood
ducks, owls, finches, deer, blue
jays, woodpeckers, chickadees,
cedar waxwings, and black
snakes.
This article was written by
Thomas D. Patrick, President
and Founder of the WindStar
Wildlife Institute, a national non-
profit conservation organization
whose mission is to help
individuals and families establish
or improve the wildlife habitat on
their properties.
For more information or for the
name of a Master Wildlife
Habitat Naturalist in your area,
please contact:
WindStar Wildlife Institute
10072 Vista Court
Myersville, Maryland 21773
Phone: 301-293-3351
E-mail: wildlife@windstar.org
http://www.windstar.org
