Wildlife Gardening: Desert yard (in progress), 0 by oldmudhouse

oldmudhouse wrote:
The watering hole. Tall birdbath is used by white-wing dove, house finches, and thrashers; the shallow water dish gets visited by cottontail rabbits, ground squirrels, quail (and other birds too tired to fly up two feet.) Of course, darned house sparrows are everywhere. The tall bushes to the right are Desert Bird of Paradise (Caesalpinia gilliesii) which provides a nice screen at the edge of the grass. Behind them is a tangle of very dense old creosote, covering up a lot of criss-crossing “quail trails” all along that slope. The dove will go into the brush a short distance, but not as far as the quail. I think the dove prefer to fly straight up when startled, so this dense tangled brush is a plus for the quail.

I put some mule deer antlers on the ground, and the male quail stand on them as a lookout while their spouses scratch around for seed.

I left the ugly power lines in the photo since they are usually lined with white-wing dove, waiting for us to leave so they can try to beat the quail to the milo seed we throw in the brush.


This message was edited Jun 17, 2006 6:16 PM