Trees, shrubs, and other woody perennials offer many benefits for the earth, with one often overlooked value being the protection this greenery offers wildlife. The Wildlife Habitat site lets visitors to Arbor Day Farm see just how the South Table Creek Forest provides food and shelter for countless living things, as guests see and hear some of the birds and animals that call Arbor Day Farm home. It also explains the layers of a forest, and the plants and animals that live in each layer.
More than 165 species of birds live in or visit the South Table Creek Forest, along with mammals large and small. These include white-tailed deer, raccoons, fox squirrels, red fox, rabbits, opossum, groundhogs, and muskrat. It's possible to sight a coyote, skunk, beaver, or one of the many small rodents that thrive in the forest.
Arbor Day Farm is also rich in plant life. As well as seeing the famed apple trees, visitors will discover such trees as the white mulberry, honeylocust, tuliptree, hackberry, black cherry, catalpa, hazelnut, shagbark hickory, linden, osage orange, green ash, and several varieties of oak.
The Wildlife Habitat interpretive site offers fresh insights into the rich life of the forest, from the upper canopy to the shrub layer or understory, to the field layer, consisting of ferns, grasses, and flowers, and to the forest floor itself. Each region is home to its own unique life forms, a world visitors to Arbor Day Farm can explore in a personal, first-hand way. Such an understanding of the habitat value of Arbor Day Farm is an appreciation of the best the Farm has to offer both its human and wildlife guests.
