When you sew native pollinator seeds, stop mowing, and allow natural meadow to emerge an replace a lawn, you will have many visitors.
I’ve noticed that since my yard now has many songbirds and chipmunks and shrews and rabbits, there is usually a hawk or owl watching it hungrily.
Needless to say, I see many types of wildlife at night, but never rats. When I see rats, I see them making bee lines from the storm drains to the birdfeeders in the more conventional lawns around me.
Also, since I installed my mosquito fish ponds, I can go out in my back yard without a shirt for hours. When it was a standard lawn of Saint Augustine grass, it was swarming with mosquitos, mostly invasive Asian tiger mosquitos.
Native ecologies work.
Pictured above are joe pye weed and cup plant in the foreground and Mexican sunflower in the background.