I can see a lot of nature out my kitchen window. It is 4 feet wide and its bottom is low so I can see the ground close by. First is the back yard, with a blue heron walking through, rarely, and lots of birds on the feeder that is suspended from a wire. Beyond the backyard is a creek that floods when a lot of rain comes down. Then 800 feet of hay field and a wooded ridge beyond. Once a heron caught a mouse near the house and executed and ate it.

I used to get a lot more English sparrows that swished their beaks sideways to push seeds onto the ground, attracting rats. A downy woodpecker likes to store seeds by packing them into checks (splits from drying) in the fence post, just left of the feeder, driving them in with its bill. Then a hairy woodpecker, an inch longer, also with a red spot on the top of its head, would chisel some seeds back out to eat, on a snowy day. A big Blue Jay would hang on tight to the small feeder, and Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal, stop by for fill ups. But the seeds on the ground attract rats, but birds ate grounded seeds too. More bird types are seen in the summer like Baltimore orioles.

The heron caught a frog in the summer, near the house, and threw it on the ground a few times so it wouldn’t be alive and wiggle inside it. It did the same when it caught a 6-inch fish. One year a white egret visited too, but the egret and heron ignored each other. It is hard to think that such big birds as herons make nests high in trees.

Sometimes in the fall a few deer would graze the hay field late in the day, usually after third cut. They mostly come at night and their prints in the snow can be seen the next day. Also, fox and bobcat and other night tracks are found.

On the top of the ridge is the solstice pine tree. The sun slants down from the south and goes down behind the roots of the tree on 22 December, from the kitchen window. If I sit on the porch to the left of the window, the sun sets to the left of the tree. Then watch its progress north from the tree all winter and spring, till the point of Summer Solstice, when the sun “stands still”,

All summer, the sun sets further south and days get shorter, as the sun heads to the Solstice Tree, and the sun sets at the same spot (stands still) for a few days.

Peter Grant

Bristol