Lawn Maintenance

Palm warbler

With the installation of my bird feeders and bath, I've taken to doing some bird watching again in my backyard. It's something I dearly miss from my previous landscape. There has just not been a good focal point here to witness the birds that share my home. That has changed. I've added a suet feeder and dried meal worms to what I initially had and it has given me the focal point I previously lacked. I now have a much better idea of what is around me.
Today as I sat with my coffee and a pair of binoculars in my backyard, my neighbor's lawn service arrived and broke the relative silence of my bird watching. It was a shock to the system to say the least. Earlier, a red-shouldered hawk caused a brief intermission of the sounds of birds, but the lawn service was far more potent in causing a death to the silence I once had. My neighbor to my north has a small yard of the same proportions as mine, but it is a dead zone. I've never peeked over the wooden privacy fence to actually see what it contains, but I expect it is little more than turf and a monstrous Norfolk Island pine. Nothing ever ventures into my landscape from over this fence. The life emerges from my neighbor's yard to my east. They have a "mess" in the area that abuts me. It is a no-man's land of tangles that no one manages. I guess my neighbor sees no reason to touch it. It is out of the way and the way the fencing comes together makes it difficult to even get into. That suits me fine. I suspect that it is the area where the Carolina wrens that visit me nest in. It is the area that the occasional catbird emerges from and it is the spot where the Carolina chickadees and tufted titmice fly back into once they are done feeding at my feeders.
The lawn service folks are only doing their job by mowing, trimming and leaf-blowing the yard to my north. They've been asked to do this and they do it weekly regardless of the status of the turf. It's been chilly here these past few weeks and I expect that the turf they mowed and blowed today was no more than 6 inches high. Turf does not grow much in the conditions we've had here these past weeks. I have not touched my yard and that seems best to me.
During the 15-20 minutes that they were here, the noise they produced was deafening and I could not have heard birds even if they were singing, but they were silent. I know that. They didn't leave, however. I read lots of things on social media abut the damage caused by the noise of leaf blowers and gas-powered mowers, but the reality is that birds do not leave because of them. They just hunker down until it's over. Where in suburban America would they go? It is a noise they have no choice but to accept. The birds were back within 10 minutes of the lawn service leaving.
The problems traditional lawn service cause are just unnecessary. My lawn, even with the St. Augustine that I am required to keep in my rental home, is not devoid of wildlife. There are butterflies that actually would use it as a host plant. There are weeds in it that also serve as host plants. Mowing it often, however, removes whatever value it has. Mowing the upper foliage to an inch of its life, removes the caterpillars as well as the leaves and stems. I will have to mow my turf at times because my landlords expect it, but I will do so only when it is necessary - and I will leave some of the out-of-the-way corners alone.
At least my neighbor does not also use a company to apply pesticides. The real reason why most yards are devoid of life is because of this. The birds in my neighborhood will adapt to the noise of the mowers and leaf blowers. It becomes part of the environment - like it or not. The grass skippers will likely fail to produce new butterflies, but nothing can adapt to the pesticides. Pesticides are non-target chemicals. They kill the entire invertebrate foundation of the pyramid of life. Without invertebrates, we have no pollinators and no invertebrate food for birds. Lacking pollination, we lose the seeds and fruit that birds also rely on. Without that, we have no life at all.
As I sat today in my yard for the quiet respite I needed, it became clear to me that the real culprit of modern landscaping is not turf grass itself, but the way me traditionally manage it. Most of us will have some turf. It has properties that make sense depending on our circumstances. It provided a place for me to play ball with my kids when they were young, for example. The problem is that we don't need it everywhere and we definitely do not need to manage it the way we traditionally do. If we are to share our property with the rest of the living world, we simply have to give them the consideration they need. It's not really difficult or complicated. It just takes some empathy and a willingness to share.