It isn't just the kitchen window, but that one looks out at the wildest part
of the yard where nobody ever goes.

We live in the city, just outside the beltline, so between the city and the
modern suburbs, really. All around us are
manicured lawns and careful plantings. In yards where trees prevent enough
sun to grow grass, the ground is swept or raked clean of acorns and leaves
and every stray thing in many yards. I have seen one guy out there with a
shop vac after the acorns fall every other year or so.

We are, well, a little slack about yard work. I grow things, but tend to get
busy and so they go a bit wild. The result is, we have wild yards full of
leaves and things growing berries, roses I did not deadhead that have grown
hips, lots of deep brown wonderful soil with mulchy leaves and acorns in
various states of decay on top, just about everywhere except in the weedy
remains of what may have been grass at one time, and parts of the flower
beds where the oakleaf coverage is not sufficient to smother weeds. Voles
and moles abound. Bugs and worms thrive. Birds come for the berries and
bugs, and squirrels and chipmunks for the acorns. Rabbits eat the weeds and
once, I saw a red-tailed hawk sitting in a tall oak watching out yard,
presumably for rodents.

So when I look out the kitchen window over the sink, I see squirrels
playing, hanging from branches, chasing one another through crackly leaves,
finches and robins and towhees and mourning doves eating berries and
competing for feeding ground. There is a large family of chipmunks that
keeps growing. The're cute and fast, with those little racing stripes on
their sides, and any time anyone goes outside one or more darts across our
paths.

We kind of suck at gutter cleaning and ivy removal, too. So the other day
I was washing the celery and a little goldfinch peered at me from his perch
on the window edge. He has a nest under the eave, apparently. Yesterday when
I came home with groceries I surprised a fat brown rabbit as I entered the
driveway. Every now and then the neighbor's cat crosses some birdee boundary
and blue jays scream and divebomb her. Catbirds call all day. Mockingbirds
go through their litany of calls at night.

We had to call the bat man a few years ago because we had a colony of bats
living in the attic; they entered through the vent. He waited until they
were all out for the evening and covered the vents with mesh. I kind of miss
them, but not the bat poo they left in front of my back door.

The latest thing: we have a pair of downy woodpeckers nesting IN the wooden
siding of our house, just outside the master bedroom. The drumming started
about three years ago, in the fall. (I told you we were slack!) It rarely
started until I was out of bed, so it wasn't really a nuisance. I thought a)
the bird is confused or b) we have termites. When I thought about it at all.
An increase in the commotion this year led to my *actually* walking around
the side of the house, wading through the ivy and leaves and taking a look.
There is a perfectly round, golfball shaped hole in the wood siding. At the
end of a day of drumming, the female visits and appears to comment on her
mate's handiwork. I can hear her chirping through the wall. It sounds like
he is beating his little birdy brains out.

I plan to get a tall ladder. When I get around to it. Plug the hole and
nail a woodpecker house up there. Woodpeckers are protected here in North
Carolina, you know.

"cybercat" > wrote in message
...
> It isn't just the kitchen window, but that one looks out at the wildest
> part of the yard where nobody ever goes.
>
<snip>

Well, it sounds like you have the perfect bird sanctuary. Just start
telling people *how hard you worked* to develop such an inviting environment
for our furry and feathered friends! They will be impressed. (Maybe.)

MaryL