Take a minute to think about the wildlife which lives in your backyard. What comes to mind?
Have you ever wondered about the food web of your yard? Or as Disney put it, "The Circle of Life"?
To put it more plainly, who is eating who in your backyard?
Who is at the top of the food web in your yard?
Let's get one thing out of the way. Cats. Cats can be beneficial animals to have around, for example, on a farm to help control rodent populations. There is a neighborhood cat who frequently hunts in my yard, from watching him he's mostly interested in rodents and lagomorphs and other small mammals. The house cat is an introduced apex predator. This post is not going to address the environmental the complications of house cats on the ecology of a landscape; it is merely sufficient to say that cats are often our apex predators.
Many of the other animals near the top of the food chain are birds. Coyotes, foxes, and raccoons certainly make their way into towns, and you may even have some in your yard. However to of the most common backyard predators are hawks. Red Tailed and Coopers Hawks seem to do rather well where there are people.
Two Red Tailed Hawks hatched in our neighborhood this summer and spent a fair amount of time pursuing local rodents and stalking my bird feeders. While Red Tails are truly small mammal specialists, they are also well known opportunistic generalists. They attempted a number of occasions with more or less success to hunt birds in the yard.
The Red Tails were never terribly successful at taking down other birds, but the Coopers Hawk with its smaller build and longer tail proved once again to be an effective Morning Dove hunter.
When your yard is able to sustain more forms of life, the local food web becomes more apparent. Even if I had no bird feeders stocked full of seeds, the network remains intact. Our yard is now home to around 30 different species of native plant, many of which attract insects either as larva or later when nectar or fruits are available. In response, birds like House Wrens, or this evening, a Common Yellowthroat spend time amongst the plants eating the insects. If they are lucky they remain top of the food chain but of course a larger predator like a Coopers Hawk may prey on the birds.
We don't often think of birds like Robins as being the top of the food chain but in many cases they might be. It is also important for us to keep in mind that if we are planting natives to attract butterflies and songbirds, we must also be prepared to accept the rest of the food chain. While the butterflies are beautiful they may be eaten, just as the songbirds may be silenced. We ought to consider the return of apex predators like hawks and owls a success and be confident in knowing that if our yard is healthy then its biodiversity with support all kinds of life even predatory kind.
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