Gathering Basket is a series of wildcrafted wonders from around the world and web. This installment is specific to tips for preparing a wildlife-friendly autumn home & yard.

As we’ve crossed the threshold into autumn, I wanted to gather a basket of simple actions and awarenesses we can remember to tend…as billions of birds migrate again, the leaves fall to nourish the soil, and bugs get ready to lay overwintering eggs or hibernate.

Even if you only have a patio or small yard or rental, there is something so healing and ultimately essential (for self and world) about stepping out our own door and touching earth, offering water, or other small gestures of reciprocity. It can be a homecoming.

I’m not an expert, and this is not an exhaustive list – these are just some of the things I’ve found that bring me joy while also being of benefit to other beings. It’s one way I love, pray, and say “thank you.”

Leave the leaves 🍂

(aka rewilding your yard)

Here’s a big one for those of us who have trees and yards: leave the leaves! 🍁 These feed the soil and harbor beneficial insects who lay their eggs or slumber for the winter. And also please leave ‘dead’ flowers (and their seed heads) whenever you can. Yes, this will make your yard a little less ‘tidy’ (but more witchy – how cool!🧙🏼), but will provide food and habitat for birds and essential insects.

Note that you can rake the leaves onto garden beds and around perennials & shrubs (gardens love the nutrients and roses love the insulation – bonus if you cover or wrap the leaf mulch with a little burlap so it doesn’t blow away).

Though we may have to rewild our perception (& worldview) a little bit to see the beauty of it, the bent and standing shapes of desiccated flowers also make for more intrigue for the eye – so many textures and shades of beige and gold and brown – and interesting shapes under the snow!

Essentially, we’re teaching ourselves to see beauty in all the lifecycle stages (no small thing in a youth-obsessed and Insta-idealized world). Also, all those seed heads will benefit birds all winter long (I still had chickadees visiting ‘dead’ sunflowers in February!). Even the less-pretty broken, hollow stalks of dead flowering plants might become winter homes and birthplaces for native bees.

• Learn more about leaving the leaves: https://xerces.org/blog/leave-the-leaves

• Learn more about leaving stems for native bees, including how late in the spring to leave them standing: sites.tufts.edu/pollinators/2021/04/the-right-way-to-leave-stems-for-native-bees/

Fall perennial planting

(habitat to-bee! 🐝)

Speaking of plants, fall is the other planting season. It’s a great time (and not too late!) to plant perennials that will root and overwinter.

(As a refresher, you may want to check the aforementioned springtime Gathering Basket to learn more about why habitat – even in our yards or patios – can be so important.)

Here again are some native plant resources:

• 🐝 Planting for pollinators: xerces.org/pollinator-conservation/pollinator-friendly-plant-lists – many more pollinator-friendly resources abound: simply search google for planting for pollinators to find more!
  

• 🐦 Planting to offer shelter and forage for birds, a good introduction (also benefits bugs): allaboutbirds.org/news/attract-birds-gardening-native-plants-insects
  

• 🌻 Audubon’s native plants for birds finder: audubon.org/native-plants
  

• 🌿 Even more native plants, not critter-specific: nativeplantfinder.nwf.org
  

• 🌾 Fun info: “messy” brush piles make good habitats: birdwatching.com/tips/brushpile.html

• ✅ You can even certify your yard or patio as wildlife-friendly. You might be surprised how simple it is. Check out the National Wildlife Foundation for tips and certification: nwf.org/Native-Plant-Habitats/Create-and-Certify

Migration season reminders

Yup, even in October, migration season is still underway! (I keep an ear to the sky, listening for cranes, every day…) I went more in-depth in the springtime Gathering Basket, but it’s worth a reminder to keep cats inside, and close blinds and turn off outdoor lights at night. Lights of any kind distract and confuse birds (especially littler ones) from their migration routes, exhausting them on their already harrowing journeys.

Bird-friendly yards (shrubbery & trees, water sources, berries…) can help provide crucial stopover support as well. Did you know that some urban parks are known migratory hotspots? As we learn more about migration (read Scott Weidensaul’s astonishing A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds), we learn the importance of providing more and more uninterrupted habitat for our feathered friends.

If you live in an apartment complex or HOA where you’re not in control of the lighting, consider contacting the management or taking part in meetings. Some cities or counties even have regulations around this, so you may simply check if they’re being properly implemented. Here in Boulder, for example, all outdoor lights have to be shielded from above.

• Check out the Lights Out initiative for more details and how-tos: audubon.org/our-work/cities-and-towns/lights-out

And of course you can watch migration in realtime at BirdCast.info!

I hope the above can be good resources for this path of rehoming ourselves back into relationship with the other beings we share our neighborhoods and world with. May you find joy and comfort in that reconnection – with our kin, with our home. Soil. Moss. Stone…

With wild care ~ Ariana