Back to Basics Nature Alliance

06/11/2026

Welcome to the Back to Basics Nature Alliance Wildlife Refuge! It looks like we are off to a good start preserving wildlife and getting back to the basics of nature!

06/04/2026

Watersnake, Hockhocking Adena Bikeway.

05/18/2026

Five plants most people pull out of the yard are the ones birds actually depend on when feeders run empty.

The feeder helps. These are the source.

🐦 Pokeweed — tall magenta stems with dark berry clusters in autumn. A major fuel source for catbirds, mockingbirds, and thrashers heading south.

Virginia creeper — five-leaved vine with deep blue berries. Often confused with poison ivy and ripped down. Poison ivy has three leaves. This one has five. Dozens of species time their fall migration around the fruit.

Wild grape — small dark clusters in late summer. The bark strips double as nesting material for orioles and vireos. One vine feeds and houses.

Staghorn sumac — fuzzy crimson fruit clusters that stay on branches all winter. When every other berry is gone in February, sumac is still standing.

Evening primrose — yellow flowers at dusk feed sphinx moths. The seed heads stay all winter, feeding goldfinches and chickadees when the ground is frozen.

Five plants. Five seasons of food the feeder can't replace 🌿

05/08/2026

05/06/2026

There are so many ways to support wildlife and nature.

The healthier the soil, the more microorganisms it can support, along with greater diversity that helps cycle nutrients and support plant growth. In poor soils, both the number and variety of microorganisms drop, which weakens the soil system and reduces its ability to support healthy plants. 🪱🤎

04/11/2026

04/04/2026

03/11/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/1CHzmqGSc6/?mibextid=wwXIfr

The opossum in your yard just gave birth to twenty-five babies. Each one is the size of a honeybee.

After only twelve to thirteen days of pregnancy — the shortest of any North American mammal — she delivers up to twenty-five young at once. Blind. Deaf. No fur. Barely formed. They look like pink jellybeans with oversized front arms.

The moment they're born, they crawl. Unassisted. From the birth canal to the pouch. Three inches of fur. For a baby the size of a bee, that's the longest journey of its life.

They can't see. They can't hear. They navigate by instinct and gravity alone, pulling themselves forward with those tiny arms until they reach the pouch and find a ni**le.

She has exactly thirteen ni**les. Up to twenty-five babies are making the climb. The first thirteen to latch on stay attached for the next two months. The pouch closes around them and they fuse to the ni**le while they finish developing — eyes, ears, fur, everything that wasn't ready at birth forms inside the pouch.

This system has been running for roughly seventy million years. Opossums survived the extinction event that ended the dinosaurs. They outlasted saber-toothed cats, giant ground sloths, and every ice age since. The short pregnancy, the massive litter, the pouch — it's not primitive. It's the oldest working reproductive strategy on the continent.

She only lives one to two years. She compensates by doing this twice a year. The math works because it's been working longer than most mammal lineages have existed.

🐾 If an opossum is in your yard this spring:

- A mother with a swollen pouch is carrying developing young — she's not injured or sick, she's working. Leave her alone and she'll move through your yard on her nightly route
- By late spring, the babies ride on her back — up to thirteen small opossums clinging to the mother as she forages. It looks precarious but they rarely fall
- If you find a baby opossum alone and it's smaller than seven inches nose to tail, it needs help — contact a wildlife rehabilitator. Larger than seven inches and it's likely independent
- Opossums eat ticks, carrion, slugs, and fallen fruit. A mother with a pouch full of young is doing more pest control per night than almost anything else in your neighborhood

That slow quiet animal crossing your yard tonight is running the oldest reproductive system in North America. And she does it twice a year 🌿

02/23/2026

⛄️🫣

02/19/2026

What a great day for Bette to deliver a second egg! Photo credit to our Eagle watchers. We do appreciate the time invested. Let’s keep rooting for LMC #10/11! Watch at www.littlemiami.org/baldeagleslive