Introduction

On Monday morning, I sat at my dining room table drinking tea, and I counted ten different kinds of birds in my backyard. Despite the gray cat from next door lurking in the bushes, and a busy red squirrel shuttling itself off the garden fence and over the branches of the ash tree, these birds busied themselves at the bird feeders and tree trunks, sharing my breakfast hour for their own repast.

Among them were, of course, blue jays, as well as gold finches, a mockingbird, both a downy and a red-bellied woodpecker, and everyone's favorite yellow-bellied sap-sucker. Later in the evening, I tried to identify the hawk whose shadow glides daily across the snow-covered lawns of the neighborhood. I believe she is a Cooper's hawk, but a definite identification remains to be made.

I include this roster in my introduction because it typifies my backyard: a variety of birds, a handful of wild mammals, and of course the cat (at least one) who stalks through the flowerbeds. Even today, when the thermometer never passed the 10°F mark, the wildlife kept the view through my well-insulated windows active and entertaining.

I look forward to watching the guest list change over the spring and summer months: which birds migrate north and which ones come back to Pennsylvania after a sunny winter elsewhere; how many rabbits dare return to a yard inhabited by both hawk and cat; and how my presence, a weekly observer on the garden swing, will affect everyone else.

A good plan might be to stock up on birdseed.