Magnolia Benefits From Millennium Vision

Magnolia Benefits From Millennium Vision
P. Scott Cummins © 2004 The Urbane R

It had been a good year for the Magnolia couple. They now have a home to serve them for many years to come, and their work together was proving beneficial for the neighbors - raising their standing in the community. Young and hard working, they would spend their lives together facing whatever uncertainties came their way. With the arrival of offspring, they together coped with incredible fatigue placed on them by the demands of parenting. In many ways they were just a typical Magnolia couple. But they could never be typical, because they are a Barn Owl pair, living twenty five feet off the ground in a cedar nest box – in the back corner of a Magnolia yard. And they live a lifestyle that many of their human counterparts would find enviable: flying off around this time every year to spend the winter in desert areas of Arizona, Southern California and Northern Mexico. Enviable as well is that their human neighbors love them so much, but for the very reason you probably wouldn’t want to be them: as their voracious eating habits involves rodents of all kinds. Particularly moles, because they are so small and easy to pick off when surfacing at night. And rats, because with the hatching of baby owlets, there are now hungry mouths to feed.

But this hasn’t happened yet. And it won’t without your help. In the 1980’s a dialogue started between gardening enthusiasts and the environmental movement. An idea began to take shape: your backyard as a place both beautiful and enjoyable to humans, while also beneficial as habitat for native plants and animals. Humans raising their awareness, living more in harmony with the environment in which they live. Enjoying nature, and reaping some benefits along the way.

In the mid-1960’s I was growing up in Montlake, the Seattle neighborhood inside a ‘L’ shape formed by the Washington Park Arboretum and the extensive Interlaken Drive greenbelt. Back in those days, some basements would flood during periods of extensive rain. Ground in the Interlaken greenbelt would saturate, causing small springs of water to literally erupt in yards along Boyer Avenue – which years before had been an extensive marshy bog. Citizens complained - something had to be done. City storm drainage systems were upgraded, and year-round streams became seasonal trickles. The downside? Native plants accustomed to the seasonal climate cycles of our region were unable to compete – so invasive non-native plants like English Ivy virtually took over in the greenbelts.

Today our city is virtually swarming with rats – but as a kid forty years ago I never saw a single one. Why? In those days Seattle had resident wild coyote, which we did see, almost every day. Particularly if we had not coaxed in our wayward Siamese cat that evening, and were now out with flashlights looking for her. Somehow she made it home every night – and lived with our family for almost twenty years. The primary food sources for the coyote were rodents. So when humans decided the coyote had to go, the rats lost their major predator. We humans had made a decision: baits and poisons left out for the rodents were less dangerous for our pets and children than four-legged varmint eaters. Somehow I think we miscalculated on that one.

There are a few coyote in Discovery Park. But they are elusive, and seem to somehow understand that any direct interaction with humans will bring on lethal consequences. The fur and bone in their scat is all I have observed in the park, yet I walk there regularly and have put in hundreds of hours planting trees (and pulling ivy) over the years. So when it comes to our rodent problem, the coyote of Discovery Park are not going to come to our rescue.

But here in Magnolia we are in luck – because of Discovery Park, and the small population of noble raptors which fly back every Spring. Yes, our friendly, sun-loving, see-you-in-Sonora Barn Owl neighbors. We humans would be mighty advised to help get the word out among their friends – about how Magnolia would be a great place to settle down and raise a family: as in many more silent, hungry owls that eat their weight in rodents every night kind of families.

The challenge for us is that great working conditions for barn owls require plenty of overhanging branches of the tree kind. We made a start with the city’s Millennium Tree Project in 2000, which encompassed a several year effort at planting trees along our streets and sidewalks – and culminated in actually giving them away for yards. Some 2,500 trees were planted in Magnolia during that period, and we are now starting to see just a hint of what we can accomplish on behalf of our friendly Barn Owl and (hopefully) future neighbors. While Discovery Park’s Barn Owls have left for a sunny winter in the desert, the good news for us caring humans is that winter is the best time to plant trees. My advice is to head on down to the Garden Center, they can help you plant a tree which will be perfect well away from your house – so that perhaps in years ahead its mighty growth can provide a home for some lovely Barn Owls that heard about Magnolia – while wintering in the desert.

(We want to hear your story of encouraging backyard habitat - like putting in a native plant garden, and other community-spirited acts of the environmental kind – email us at nature@pscottcummins.com)