Animals in the Environment

Animals in the Environment
Creating Homes for Wildlife
at Trinity River Audubon Center
By Jeanette Boylan

Lovely View: Hidden Secret

Looking out from the Trinity River Audubon Center’s deck, you see a beautiful landscape of wetlands nestled next to rolling hills. This lovely view hides a secret. The hills are actually capped landfills - huge piles of trash that have been covered over. Our site
was an illegal landfill for many years until the City of Dallas cleaned it up and began restoring it to native habitats. During the restoration process, several wetlands were created, hundreds of trees were planted and many acres were sowed with native prairie seed. Audubon Texas is now
managing the property and continuing the restoration process.

Artificial Bird Boxes

One feature missing from these newly restored habitats is large dead trees and snags. While not
aesthetically pleasing to many, dead trees are priceless to the thousands of species that need them as homes. To help out a few of these species, Audubon is providing the next best thing, artificial bird boxes. We are putting up boxes for barn owls, eastern screech-owls, bluebirds, wood ducks, and prothonotary warblers. We hope to see occupants in them next year.

Chimney Swift Tower

To help out chimney swifts, we unveiled a new chimney swift tower that was built by the North Texas Master Naturalists in March. This tower provides nesting and roosting habitat for swifts. These small aerial acrobats have become dependent upon chimneys. While chimneys were once common, fewer homes now have them and many homeowners that have chimneys are capping them, preventing the swifts from using them. We were ecstatic when a pair of swifts were seen flying into the tower during the summer. -Jeanette T. Boylan is Citizen Science Manager at
TRAC. She previously worked for 12 years at the Dallas Zoo. She earned her Ph.D. in Zoology from Colorado State University.

Saving the Bees

To assist invertebrates with habitat, we set up six bee hives. This is a partnership between Audubon and Texas Honeybee Guild. In the fall, the honey will be harvested and sold in the center’s nature store. The bees love our acres of pesticide-free clover. Honeybees have recently made the news because of a new problem called Colony Collapse Disorder that is decimating bee populations around the world. The cause of the syndrome is unclear, and the bees need all the help they can get.

Pesticide-Free Diversity

Audubon’s policy of pesticide-free maintenance also helps hundreds of other species. As a result, our insect diversity is incredible and our wetlands are teeming with aquatic critters. High insect diversity leads to high bird diversity. Many birds are insectivores and even our common seed-eaters like cardinals need to feed protein-rich insects to their young. It’s pretty easy to see that if you get rid of the insects, you’ll get rid of the birds.

Just the Beginning…

This is just a start for the Trinity River Audubon Center and we hope to keep improving the site for our wild residents.

What You Can Do:

Homeowners can improve their “habitat” for wildlife by some simple steps.

 Reduce pesticide use
 Plant native species
 Provide nest boxes
 Remove invasive exotic plants
 Reduce lawn areas
 Keep cats inside
 Reducing impervious surfaces

More information can be found at AudubonAtHome.org.