Its been a mild winter for which I am grateful as it makes it so much easier to haul water to my horses. It's also easier on the wildlife - especially the birds, which I no longer feed.
                  I used to go through dozens of sunflower sacks every winter feeding chickadees, sparrows, nuthatches and other birds, even chipmunks and squirrels.  But then a couple of things happened which changed my mind about feeding wild birds --- hearing a bird scream I ran to see what was happening - discovered a magpie trying to stab a purple finch to death with its beak.  I scooped up the finch which appeared to be blind and put the little bird in a cage with seeds, orange slices and water and stuck it next to the bird feeder outside so it could have visitors -
                A few days later I took the finch to a wildlife rehabilitator and was told that when birds congregate at feeders they sometimes catch an infection that can spread to other birds. I think thats what happened to the finch - couldn't blame the magpie who seeing an injured bird was trying to get his own dinner.
              Here I thought I was doing a wonderful thing by helping birds survive winter when instead my feeder had had become toxic.
             The bird feeder also attracted pack rats who decided to move into the garage where I keep horse feed in trash cans. I started noticing poop everywhere in the garage plus elaborate nests made of hay, leaves and branches decorated with silver spoons, Christmas bows, scissors, anything shiny the pack rats could find in the garage. I have to give them credit for being so resourceful and industrious but I didn't want them living in my garage where they were chewing holes into the trash cans full of horse feed.
            My acreage is a sanctuary for all animals - so I wasn't about to kill the packrats - instead I live trapped one, which was fairly easy to do using peanut butter as bait. I relocated the packrat several miles away and thought the problem was solved-- but no, a new nest appeared -- I ended up live trapping and relocating 4 pack rats and finally making it impossible for them to get back into the garage.
           Since I stopped feeding wild birds, there are fewer squirrels and chipmunks - and no packrats. Yea -
I do have lots of ground squirrels but I don't mind as long as they don't dig their holes in the horse arena.  Quite by accident, I discovered a non toxic way to make ground squirrels move - dump used cat litter into their holes - they will move away and never return.   Every few weeks, a badger comes through my place and nearly wipes the ground squirrel population out -- but a week goes by and a new batch moves in.
          That's mother nature's way - seems like kind of a nasty bitch if you ask me.