Ah, I love birds. Story time that's somewhat sequitur to this. When I moved to Oregon I moved just North of a 600+ acre nature reserve. My property has numerou

Ah, I love birds. Story time that's somewhat sequitur to this. When I moved to Oregon I moved just North of a 600+ acre nature reserve. My property has numerous 40+ ft tall trees and plenty 10-20+ ft trees. The closest body of water is a large river and few people have ponds in my neighborhood. One of the goals I had was keeping plants that are favorable to the soil first and local ecology second (come to find out there's not much of a difference there). Much of the gardens pre-existed my presence here, so I expanded them with geraniums. I started composting and fertilizing the soil. I controlled for weeds using aggressive, non-invasive ground cover that include pollinator friendly blooms and cover. I figured, if you build it they will come, and they very well did. The bird population around my neighborhood boomed this spring. There are two feeding frenzies I've observed at morning and in the afternoon. Birds will line the trees and some of my hanging steel lines used for lights. I was able to verify every single bird species was represented at least once in our backyard within a one week time period. Then, the ecosystem of my neighborhood started to whiplash. Rats boomed as they fed on the habits of bushtits and finches throwing seed on the ground and easy access to feeders. I modified the feeders so that rats could not shimmy up them. Eastern Grey Squirrels were already present in my back yard, which are invasive, and more showed up. I started to build some traps to be able to move them. Then, one of the birds I wasn't tracking showed up. Two hawks made a nest and began policing the boom in rats, local cats minorly brought down the bird population. The Eastern Grey's were wiped out by something and native squirrels nested the tree closest to my house. My hypothesis is that they were chased out by some larger Robins; the native species of squirrels we have are much more shy and less predatory to birds than Eastern Grey's. It was a stunning series of events that occurred over about a two week period. Things have normalized and settled down quite a bit but I was truly astonished how minor changes and thoughtful additions could impact the small, medium, and bird of prey populations in such a small locality. Next I plan on adding a bat house or two to build up the local bat population to police bugs in my yard and I'm planning a water feature in the form of a small solar powered fountain. What I've learned, or rather had reinforced, is that by making a place that is friendly to these creatures I achieved my soil health goal. The increased soil health brought in big worms, the birds aerated my lawn for me, my ground cover and grass took off as a result, and now much of the ecosystem does the work of maintaining plant and soil health for me. Point being, what's being stated in this article can be undone if you make minor changes that make it more safe and happy for birds, even in a city. That and making a place for birds also has knock on effects for soil, bugs, and plants. They have a huge role in our ecosystem.