That autumnal chill in the air means one thing for many homeowners: the season of leaf raking is at hand. Thoughts naturally turn to cleaning up the yard in that annual ritual of outdoor orderliness. But before you pile a season's worth of leaves, tree limbs, and garden debris by the curb, consider the year-round needs of your wild neighbors. You can make a difference in restoring and preserving wildlife habitat in your communities, and creating a brush-pile shelter for wild animals is a simple way to start.

Throughout the year, wild animals need dense cover in which to hide from predators, rest, nest, and seek shelter from severe weather. When deciduous trees and shrubs lose their foliage, permanent sources of cover become even more important. Creating a brush pile is an inexpensive and easy way to provide critical shelter and cover for ground-nesting birds, reptiles and amphibians, chipmunks, rabbits, and other small mammals.

While haphazard piles of limbs, leaves, and twigs may be used by wildlife, a carefully constructed brush pile will provide a much more useful habitat. The idea is to create ground-level pathways into the brush with internal spaces where creatures can find a quiet corner or perch safely off the ground.

There are two basic ways to construct a brush pile: as a pallet or as a teepee. The more frequently recommended version uses a pallet of material as a base and stacks tree tops, old Christmas trees, flower stalks, limbs, leaves, and twigs on top to form the pile. The most common type of pallet brush pile is made by stacking two to three layers of 6-inch diameter logs at right angles to each other. Logs should be about 6 feet long and should be placed about 10 inches apart within each layer. Several tree stumps or 12-inch rocks also can work as pallets. The teepee version uses about eight 6- to 8-foot untrimmed branches arranged in a teepee fashion, either standing alone or over a tree stump.

Tips for Creating a Better Brush Pile

• Isolated piles are not likely to be used. Choose an area with good drainage; near a forest edge, along a stream, or at the edge or back corner of a property; and close to existing food sources and shrubs.
• Ideal piles are 4- to 8-feet tall and from 10 to 20 feet in diameter.
• Brush piles are flammable. Keep them away from buildings and trees.
• On larger properties with little natural cover, create three or four brush piles per acre.
• Plant native vines such as wild grape, honeysuckle, and trumpet creeper as an attractive cover for the brush pile, or border the pile with wildflowers.
• Rot and decay are a normal process of brush piles. As they rot, they attract more insects, providing additional food for birds. The piles should be inspected yearly to see if the state of decay is such that a new brush pile should be constructed.