A Home For…

Trees.

They are glorious things. Trees provide us with oxygen, and use up some of our excess air pollution, like that nasty carbon dioxide stuff that we are so good at producing. They create shade in the summer, reducing our sweat equity, plus saving us money on air conditioning. Trees also bring us peace and tranquility, as they offer the potential for hours spent staring into their leafy canopy on quiet, tranquil days and warm summer nights.

And they provide homes for lots and lots of creatures, great and small. Animals that call trees Home are known as Arboreal. Here are just a few of those animals that call different species of trees home.

Trees: Homes for Many

Plenty of birds, like this woodpecker, perch, eat, sleep, and nest in trees

• Birds (robins, jays, owls, eagles, martins, orioles, woodpeckers, flycatchers, wrens and more)
• Bats
• Beetles
• Raccoons
• Chipmunks
• Squirrels
• Opossums
• Porcupines
• 

  A female Canadian Lynx will often choose a hollow log or uprooted tree to raise her young in

  Larger mammals like Foxes, Canadian Lynx, Skunks & Badgers all make dens underneath trees

• Insects (think caterpillars, wasps, ants, gypsy moths, spider mites, aphids, etc.)
• Salamanders
• Spring Peepers
• Spiders
• Snakes

And that’s just in North America! You can find other animals that call trees home around the world, like…

A Tree makes the perfect home for this Lemur

• Birds (Parrots, Quetzals, Cockatoos, Toucans, Kookaburra, & Xenops to name a few)
• Koalas
• Lemurs
• Aye-Aye
• Reptiles (like Tree frogs, Iguanas, Chameleons)
• Tree Snakes (Anacondas, Bush Vipers, Emerald Tree Boa, Gold’s Tree Cobra, Indian Pythons, etc.)
• Kinkajous
• Pangolins
• Leopards
• 

  Found in the Rainforest, Margays spend most of their lives in trees

  Margays

• Monkeys (Spider Monkeys, Orangutans, Gibbons, Chimpanzees, Mandrills and more)
• Sloths
• Giant Pandas
• Tree Kangaroos

What else uses a tree as a home? How about these Epiphytes, otherwise known as plants that grow on other plants, like trees;

Moss on Tree

• Algae
• Lichens
• Mosses
• Fungi
• Ferns
• Mistletoe
• Orchids
• Bromeliads

And don’t forget the wee folk that live, breathe and sleep amongst trees as well, our friends the fairy folk…

A Fairy Home at the Base of a tree