[HOME] [ABOUT US] [SCWRC NEWS] [HELP FOR WILDLIFE] [EDUCATION INFO]
[SCRAP BOOK] [IDEAS] [LINKS]

SCWRC NEWS

A Greener Garden:

Let's take a good look at lawn sprays:

Most Americans have a dream of owning a suburban house, with 2.3 children running around on a patch of lawn that looks less like grass and more like green level-loop carpeting. For those who use chemicals to obtain their "perfect" lawn, the risk of problems to family, pets, and the environment from commercial fertilizers should easily out-weigh the neighbor to neighbor race with the Jones. The companies who sell and distribute lawn fertilizers and pesticides claim that it is only dangerous to use your lawn within a few days of chemical application. This is simply not true. Even dry lawn chemicals can remain active for months, and any toy that contacts the lawn could easily spread contamination to anyone who touches it. Symptoms for lawn chemical poisoning can be hard to distinguish. They can be a sore nose, skin rashes, chest tightness, coughing, muscle pain, headaches, cramps, or diarrhea. When someone asks you why you do not spray your lawn to get rid of the "weeds", simply tell them that your family is more important to you than a perfect lawn.

Here's why spraying your lawn doesn't always work:

Americans spend over $1.5 billion a year to have professional lawn care companies chemically treat their lawns. That is nearly double what it was just one decade ago. We have to ask ourselves whether or not we believe that lawn spraying companies really care about our lawns. Our vast pastures of green are bringing them huge sums of green! Their business is based on repeated applications. Lawn sprays essentially make your lawn into a green desert. The grass is being fed from the surface so it develops a shallow root system, and the shallow root system will easily burn if not watered constantly on hot days. Healthy lawns will naturally develop a deeper root system to extract nutrients from the soil and also search deeper parts of soil for a more continuous water supply.

Here are some tips to have a beautiful, chemical free lawn:

1. Plant cool-climate grasses that are suited to growing in the northeast United States. They will withstand drought and wet better, and

grow slower. This means less mowing for you.

2. Rake leaves in Autumn and add them to a new or established compost pile for ready fertilizer in the spring

3. In spring:

-Don't be over-anxious to start gardening. Stay off the lawn if it is partly frozen or soggy.

-Gently rake off leaves and debris to prevent fungus disease and dead spots.

-Rake matted grass so it is standing up straight. Allow air and light to penetrate.

4. Don't cut off more than one-third of the blade at once; it is a shock to the plant.

5. Keep you mower blades sharp! Cut the grass, don't tear it.

6. Use organic fertilizers in moderation.

Source: The Green Consumer. Makower, Joel. 1988.

by Tim Simon

Resting Heart Beat Rates of Some Adult Birds

Body Heart Rate      Species Weight (gm.)              (per min.)               Authority

Turkey ---------------------------------- 8,750 ---------------------- 93 ------------ Simmons (1960)

Mallard duck -------------------------- 2,600 --------------------- 118 -------------- Calder (1968)

Herring gull ------------------------------ 930 -------------------- 218 -------------- Calder (1968)

Pigeon ------------------------------------- 382 --------------------- 166 -------------- Calder (1968)

Crow --------------------------------------- 337 --------------------- 342 ------------ Simmons (1960)

Mourning dove -------------------------- 130 --------------------- 135 -------------- Calder (1968)

Blue jay ------------------------------------- 77.1 ------------------- 307 -------------- Calder (1968)

Robin ---------------------------------------- 69.5 ------------------- 328 -------------- Calder (1968)

Cardinal ------------------------------------ 40 ---------------------- 375 -------------- Calder (1968)

Chickadee --------------------------------- 12 ---------------------- 480 -------------- Calder (1968)

Ruby-throated Hummingbird ---------- 4 ---------------------- 615 -------------- Calder (1968)

From: The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds by Terres

Raising Birds Together:

Sometimes we raise similar species of song birds together. There are several reasons for this:

Most song birds have more than one baby, and the young are use to being with others. Sometimes we get only one that is injured or orphaned, and putting a single juvenile bird in with others, helps them to adjust to being in captivity and being fed by someone other than a parent. This works especially well with older birds that have learned to fear humans, or birds with serious injuries.

Song birds tend to compete for food and if a younger bird sees another bird eating on its own, then the younger bird learns to pick up food more readily.

Imprinting (bonding) of young on humans is not good for the birds survival. If we put the birds together, they are less likely to imprint on us. This does not seem to affect their ability to find their own species and mate successfully.

As they say... "birds of a feather flock together."

 

Some Favorite Quotes

"To keep something, you must care for it. More, you must understand what kind of care it requires." - Dorothy Parker

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - attributed to Charles Darwin

"The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." - Henry Beston

"In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we have been taught."

- Baba Dioum

 

 

©2004 Second Chance WRC.
This site and all its contents and pages may not be copied without written consent from Second Chance WRC.
Web Design and Maintenance by WILD WEB DESIGNS

For technical questions email our webmaster