Water features are the heart of my garden, attracting birds, raccoons, toads and sometimes a large grey crane that clears out the koi. I wonder what kind of toad this is, a cane toad? Or a bullfrog? No, I don’t have any this size, but there are toads. That means my garden is healthy and I don’t use too much fertilizer and no pesticides at all.
It’s now August and 4 neighbors have decided that it’s time to spend money on their homes. 
The trench is going in next door with its huge cement retaining wall. 
Gravel and bricks are stacked ready to go. Across the road, the whole drive is taken up with reconstruction and bobcats repairing the outside. Down the road, the newly finished house and freshly tended lawn is again being torn up by 2 bobcats with four dump trucks waiting to take away the load for a swimming pool going in the back. 
I guess this was an after thought? Visited the Mississauga website on planning permission recommendations and two of the houses have been approved the put in side garages where there is not enough turning radius for the triple car entry to work. You know the saying, there’s nothing worse than fast stupid sailors? How about rich, stupid people?
Well after a good wet spring and a few hot days of summer, the garden has still the dewey green of cool colours. Here are a few of the best successes so far. I’m taking out all the periwinkle because it’s crept into all the ground cover, including the ivy and am putting down mulch to keep the beds tidy and manageable. Now this plant is a specimen piece, taking up a lot of space but grand where it is in the morning light. You have to give it plenty of credit, surviving under the butternut tree. Even though there are signs of decay in the towering tree, it’s home to several sets of squirrels and a major artery for running from the spruce to the oak for them. I’m noticing too that there are a lot of little bugs who like the composting tree stumps, so I won’t be burning them, rather putting them in corners where they’ll decay naturally. Saw a toad today. Wonder if he’s the same one? Here’s another white bellflower doing well.
I have blue ones as well. Problem is, they have to be staked. I think I transplanted these. The peonies didn’t last long. They will be divided as soon as the last bloom has been flopped to the ground.
Southern Ontario, and especially the Toronto area, is a winter mecca for European starlings, much to the dismay of detractors who claim the birds are undesirable vermin.
Though they number more than 200 million in North America, they are not native birds. But since their intentional introduction more than a century ago, their population growth and rapid range expansion confirm they are among the most successful birds on the continent.
Southern Ontario is a winter starling hub. According to Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count data, over 255,000 starlings winter in the Golden Horseshoe area, about half of Canada’s total wintering starling number. Since about two-thirds of Ontario’s starlings migrate to warmer U.S. states during the coldest months, the winter figures represent just a small fraction of the total Ontario breeding population.
But the winter flocks bother people; they’re noisy and their droppings festoon parked vehicles, statues, buildings and sidewalks.
European starlings were introduced into North America in 1850, in Pennsylvania; 1872 in Ohio, 1889 in Oregon and 1890 in New York City. The latter introduction was the most infamous. It involved 100 starlings released by the Acclimation Society of North America in an attempt to establish here all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays. (Starlings are in Henry IV.)
The introduced stock spread rapidly. The birds first penetrated Canada near Brockville in 1919. By 1927 they were firmly established in Ontario and Quebec. Huge urban populations developed. According to recent Audubon statistics, Toronto hosts about 11,000, Hamilton 12,000, Kitchener 7,000. Up to 250,000 are on the Niagara Peninsula. Other starling hotspots are Abbotsford, B.C. (11,000); Ladner, B.C. (10,000); and Halifax (7,000).
Starlings are hardy, and about 15,000 brave the brutal winters on the Canadian prairies.
But while the perception of the birds as nuisances is long-standing, new research suggests that the slurs are unwarranted.
For instance, widespread allegations of crop depredations by starlings are significantly exaggerated, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A recent report indicates that the beloved American robin is about twice as destructive of grapes and cherries as are starlings. There are similar recent findings by Simon Fraser University biologist Oliver Love.
Those observations are not new. A 1927 study by Harrison Lewis, a biologist at the University of Toronto, noted that starlings can be “pugnacious,” but they “do not have destructive feeding habits in Canada.”
According to the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, large wintering congregations of starlings in the Niagara Peninsula could potentially damage grapes, though migration studies show that most winter starling congregations in that area do not occur until December and January, long after most orchard crops are already harvested.
Project Feeder Watch, coordinated by the Ornithology Lab at Cornell University to document bird activities at winter bird feeders, has found starlings frequent up to 70 per cent of Canadian winter feeders, where they often bully other birds, muscling them away from food. But, since starling visits at feeders are brief, the impact is not considered to be significant.
Meanwhile, food-study research confirms that almost 60 per cent of the diet comprises harmful insect pests, and that the birds rarely consume grain. According to an extensive U.S. Department of Agriculture analysis, the starling diet includes many very detrimental insects: Japanese beetles, grasshoppers, weevils and scarabaeids.
Starlings regularly nest in tree cavities and nest-boxes used by native North American birds. According to research by Kerrie Wilcox of Bird Studies Canada, such behaviour can be disruptive to the nesting activities of other birds.
But a range of research and experience suggests the birds’ positive contributions deserve a hearing. Among other things, starlings are legendary songsters. Since the time of the ancient Romans, starlings have been kept as pets, often for their extraordinary singing capabilities. Emperor Nero and Agrippina had pet starlings that had vast singing repertoires and large vocabularies of human words.
According to neurologist Lauren Riters of the University of Wisconsin, starlings have among the longest and most complex songs of any birds in North America. They continually incorporate new sounds into their vocal arrangements, often mimicking frogs, goats, cats and even other birds. The result is an admixture: warbles, creaks, squeaks, whistles, throaty chirrups, twitters and raspy trills.
While singing, the starling syrinx vibrates in two separate parts, which allow one bird to sing harmonizing duets with itself. “Starlings sing because it makes them feel good,” Riters explains.
“Most other birds only sing in spring, but starlings sing all year.”
They are also among the most chivalrous of birds.
Research at France’s Centre d’écologie shows starlings are among the few birds capable of detecting odours. According to work by Helga Gwinner of Max Planck Research Unit for Ornithology, gallant males woo female starlings with aromatic bouquets of flowers, often lavender.
European starlings have also been successfully introduced in Africa, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. In some areas, recent population declines have been documented (in the United Kingdom, numbers have dropped by 66 per cent in the past 40 years).
Scientists are not sure why starling numbers are falling in some areas. In North America, counts have declined by about 1.5 per cent a year for a decade, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. The Ontario starling population, which doubled between 1980 and 2005, is declining at the annual rate of 1.8 per cent.
Globally, starling numbers have fallen by more than 50 per cent in the past 30 years, especially in the bird’s native Europe. Some blame pesticides.
The degree of loss in such a hardy species is ominous, pointing toward ecosystem damage that may be impacting seriously on wildlife.
The global decline is so acute there have even been suggestions that starlings be listed as endangered.
Robert Alison, now retired, was an avian specialist with the Ministry of Natural Resources.
It’s now August and I had 
to stop cutting the grass round the fountain as the baby toads were hopping all about. There were at least 6 everywhere and hard to catch in a photo. Glad that they finally are able to get out of the pond and make it into the grass but one needs to have lots of care when running around. That’s one of the advantages of having a water fountain, the attraction of birds, squirrels, nesting pairs, doves in the winter and the soothing chirping of mating toads in the spring.
Plenty of rain this summer means more flowers and lots of butterflies and moths. I’ll have to plant milkweed to attract them to nest.