You can kill 2 birds with 1 stone, if you play your landscape management cards right. To be more accurate, you can attract wild birds and other wildlife to your landscape by providing them with the proper habitats. For many homeowners, wildlife management is a natural extension of landscape management. People who love plants and working in their backyards tend to love wildlife, as well. Wild birds especially.

Although wild birds will occasionally cause damage to plants, by and large they are well-behaved, when compared to mammals. The Web site featured here is a Michigan Web site. But many of the principles elucidated by the site can also be applied to attracting wild birds in other states and in the Canadian provinces. I am providing links that deal with the habitats of 2 different wild birds:

• Ruffed grouse
• Woodcock

Both birds value quaking aspens (pictured here), in particular.


_{Photo ©2006 David Beaulieu (licensed to About, Inc.)}