Bear here... 

Has anyone seen our catio building page? Anyone? ( We decided to build an 8' x 8' x 10' cage on the back of our house that the cats can enter via a window and tunnel. The cats like it, they can play outside and  still be safe in our yard.) 

Well... we decided to build a catio 2!  A catio that was large enough for the cats and us humans. ( I am pretty sure I blogged about it.) We are getting pictures of it together for a "how we did it" page. Until then you may want to check out the VIDEO of us and the cats in catio 2.

COOL... I think I did this right!  Hope you all enjoy the video.

​Type at ya later...​ 

Even in a tiny yard, you can get some big wildlife. Theresa had just gotten up from the computer to warm her hands at the woodstove when she saw a flash outside the bay window that her brain interpreted as a hawk chasing a small bird. She looked out the back door in case she could actually see what was going on, and found a hawk perched on our brush pile.

We estimate there were between 50 and 100 song birds in the pile at the time. The hawk was obviously looking for dinner, but was too big to make it further into the pile to get at his prey. After a few minutes, four or five birds took off and the hawk was after them in a flash, and was quickly out of our sight. A couple more minutes went by and the smaller birds left the brush pile in two waves, dozens of them rising up together. Others stayed put.

It makes you wonder- were the first few birds that left putting themselves in harm's way to protect the rest of the flock?

We were surprised when the hawk came back a few minutes later- his chase must not have been successful. Perhaps our brush pile has been his hunting ground recently and we haven't noticed. We decided to go outside, in an attempt to get better pictures, and to encourage the hawk to leave. We don't want him to feast regularly at our backyard smorgasbord. We also thought about seeing what would happen if we threw him some meat from the fridge (Bear wondered about mice in the basement), but decided we shouldn't...

Below are some fuzzy close ups of the hawk. Maybe a red-tail?

Needless to say, brush piles like these provide a lot of good cover for small wildlife. If you'd like to have one in your own yard, click to see more about our Accidental Brush Pile and Gardening for Wildlife.​

Hope you're having some great wildlife sightings in your own yard,
Theresa & Bear

From Theresa: We built our tiny wildlife pond in 2012, and it immediately started to attract wildlife, including dragonflies, snails, water beetles, birds, squirrels, and chipmunks. We built it hoping for frogs, because I love falling asleep listening to their calls. In its second summer we had one resident frog, but there weren't many mating calls. This Summer, we were serenaded for many nights by calls from the American Toad, tree frogs, and a third frog we couldn't identify. And this time it resulted in a pond full of hundreds of tadpoles, which have now become incredibly tiny frogs!!

"We're sunbathing and she's taking pictures of us- How rude!"

Frog with a Duckweed Hat
(Theresa was trying to clean some of the duckweed out of the pond,
and was surprised to scoop up a frog along with the duckweed.):

King of the Mountain:

King looking for a smaller mountain:

We first noticed tiny tadpoles in our pond on 6-6-2015:

Then the gang got bigger (6-12-15):

By 7-11-15 the tadpoles started to get legs (Bear says we should call them frogpoles):

Then they lost their tails and became frogs!
(Walking on water with the help of duckweed):

This American Toad could be one of the parents (dad or mom, we have no clue):

This is the wildlife pond we built, 
although Bear says it looks like a swamp since it's covered with duckweed. 
It's been amazing to sit next to the pond every day 
and discover first hand how tadpoles turn into frogs, 
knowing that we played a tiny role in supporting new life.

For instructions on making your own tiny frog habitat, 
see our page on how we built this wildlife pond:

Bear here... We gots lots of life in the pond. The mating songs are almost over and tadpoles are in sight. I am planning to take some pictures of them developing into toads. The momma  looks like an American Toad ( And yes, that is the name of the species). If I can figure out how to use the movie part of our camera I will try to post movies. (Don't hold your breath. Just sayen.)

I am going to blog most of the changes and am hoping to add to the pond section of the website in the fall. We have read that the changes could be done in 90 days. Let's see what happens...

From Theresa:

I've added instructions for how to build a small backyard pond, that will both benefit wildlife and fascinate humans. This is my favorite part of our yard, and I can't say enough to encourage you to add a pond to your own yard and enjoy the wildlife that will visit it. My instructions are quite lengthy, but are also hopefully quite helpful, as I've tried to pull together all the details I wanted to know when I built our pond and started welcoming frogs and dragonflies into our yard.