Have lots of birds (grackles, cowbirds, sparrows of various kinds, finches of various kinds, cardinals, wrens, nuthatches, siskins, tits, warbler or two, bluebird, mourning dove, towhees, thrashers, blue jays, 4 types of woodpeckers, hawks (flying overhead), owls (hear the hooting, various migrants) and mammals (rabbits, chipmonks, voles, squirrels, deer, fox (close but not in yard), armadillo (close but not in yard), coyote (seen scat in yard), bobcat (not in yard, but road dead 1,000 feet down road), bunches of raccons, possums)- more than we used to. But I feed birds year round. Hummers not year around, but usually have some. There is/was a bird store a few blocks away that had a number of hummer feeders and they would have many, many hummers at all times - I think my feeder got the loners who did not want to compete in all the hub-bub. But yesterday passed the store and it looks like they are closed, so I would expect to have more than I had the last few years. I had 2 bee hives in my back yard for some years, so could not spray - so not much spraying - although the round-up would come out occassionally. When the yard spraying started (and when I started seeing the little signs up) is about when I noted a marked decrease in my bees and honey. In fact, both hives died out at different times and I had to requeen them to get started again. The chemicals may not have killed them, but the supply of nearby clover blooms was diminished with the spraying (both privately and publicly on the roadways), decreasing their summer supply of nectar. They still collected spring locust and poplar and fall wildflower, but the summer clover honey was way down. When the mosquito spraying started is when I noticed a big decrease in butterflies - last year I only saw a literal handful or two. Last year I had one caterpillar on the bronze fennel - and usually there was probably 10-20 on each plant. This year not a one. I do not spray (holdover from the bee raising days) the lawn, nor do I spray fungicide, miticides or general pesticides. Therefore - there are some things that I cannot grow successfully - such as roses (everything), squash (squash vine borers) cruciferous vegetables (cabbage loopers), eggplant (flea beetles) and the like. This year, I have seen an increase in honeybee activity - maybe another hive moved close or a wild colony is somewhere close. But not bumble bees (very marked decrease). Other than the tearing down of existing housesto build two on the lot, there has not been a bunch of change in the neighborhood in 40 years. It's just grown older. Who knows what is causing the downturn? May come back next year and have 100's of monarchs flitting around, caterpillars denuding the bronze fennel, and bats getting tangled up in my hair (i.e. Barney Fife's fear). But then I could be like some of the red-neck fishermen east of here. 50 years ago, they started releasing Striped Bass into our reservoirs. On a couple of lakes the locals did not take kindly to the stocking of Stripers. They would even shoot the trucks. They blamed the Stripers for ruining the fishing on "their" lakes. Even when the biologist would show them that not a single Striper had a bass in it's stomach when they were sampled (90% of what they ate was shad, while the other 10% was mainly alewives and skipjack), and - they would not believe it. What they did not see was the drastic reduction of cover near the shore that their lakes used to have, but were getting older and the covers rotted away. Once they learned to fish the lake differently (not just throwing plugs at the shoreline) and started catching fish again, did they lessen up on the pressure on the wildlife fisheries dept. I think I'll be the same, and blame the chemicals until I learn differently. LOL
. They empty about 1 gallon every other day.
