Over the years our garden is increasingly adjusted to accommodate wildlife, especially insects, worms, birds, and reptiles. A few bird species feed and nest here, including anna's and costa's hummingbirds, california towhee, pigeons (of course - and I agree with the above comment about them), crows, and phoebes. I love watching birds from our large office window, which looks into big shrubs. The best for me is when the tiny bushtits descend as a fast-moving gang, cleaning all the twigs and branches of bugs and departing in about 10 minutes. It's like having housekeepers in, but for bushes. --We also have a couple of lizard varieties (Western fence and alligator), and occasionally I'll turn over a rock or a piece of wood and see a skink. Alas, we also get rats, possums, and raccoons. The raccoons visited our small raised water tank (containing fish and waterlilies) last night and tried to make a meal. We've fortified it, so they did damage, but our fish and plants survived the trauma. --I look forward to the return of various butterflies each year, including painted ladies, the sulphurs, the western tiger swallowtails, the little skippers, and the occasional monarch. Planting native flora is a big encouragement to many of these guys. --An as-yet-unrealized hope is that some night bats may come to roost in the boxes we've mounted.... And we keep bees in our roof. These are wild bees, who choose our hive, not mail-order bees. And in the keeping of bees, we've begun noticing how many wild bee species come to our yard. --So, "intentionally or not": it's all by design and it's all, also, by chance. It's alive, and we'll do what it takes to keep it going.
