Wildlife Gardening: Desert yard (in progress), 1 by oldmudhouse

oldmudhouse wrote:
Our backyard, on the south side of our house. The house sits on a hill top. Patio is to the right in the photo. To the left of this little patch of Bermuda is the land slopes down steeply, forming a south-facing hillside covered with (yup) more creosote.

The rabbits love the green grass, and so does our dog, so we’ll keep a grassy area. We eventually need to regrade this area for drainage reasons (the patio floods when it rains, which, as I said, is every four years.) When we do that, we might replace the Bermuda with a native grass that needs less water. As you can tell, we’re not keeping it very lush right now.

The quail hang out on the small south-facing slope to the south of this grassy area, and they stroll up over the edge of the grass to access the water bowl. There’s a chain link fence bordering this side of the yard, and quail sit on the top and yell for each other. (Apparently quail get lost a lot.)