We never know what we will see when we look out our windows. Around mid-day, Jim said, “I think there is a moose, or some big animal in the bushes next to our backyard.” Looking out the wavy glass panes that are the earmark of an ancient home like ours, I saw another “big animal right behind, heading in the same direction. It was a deer!

Funny, we almost never see deer during the day. They hung around in our yard quite awhile, eating fronds of dead foliage, and browsing the cedar trees that mark a pseudo boundary between our neighbor’s land and ours.

When I was about twelve years old, I lived on a farm in Deerfield, New Hampshire. My brother and I would get up early to see the large herd of deer that appeared just over the “rise” about 20 acres away from the kitchen of the farmhouse, on our land. In fact, when it came time to choose a gravestone for him, I chose that deer be inscribed on a black granite stone. It was a fitting image for someone who loved nature as much as he.

Today, one of the deer is limping badly. I don’t know how she incurred an injury, but after trying to scrounge for food in our yard, the two deer made it over to the neighbor’s field where they have been resting as silently as statues now, for hours, in the pale cold of a winter’s day. There is a coating of ice on the snow, making walking through it a difficult task for man or beast. We are keeping our eye on them, and hope for the best.

May we all survive this winter! The seed catalogs that have come in the mail give us hope for a brighter, warmer season.

Patricia Cummings

This morning, when I looked out the window, I saw the first bird I have seen in months. The little nuthatch was simply devouring a piece of suet that Jim had placed in a suet feeder, hanging from a sturdy Lilac branch. In better weather, it sports flowers.

Always, I have wondered where the birds go in inclement weather. With up to an inch of ice, clinging to branches in some areas of New Hampshire, causing downed power lines, and bad traveling conditions, I think about the wildlife and the birds. Where does one go when one’s habitat is under attack?

Maybe the nuthatch will spread the news that the food source is in place. We used to supply bird seed, until we realized that four legged critters were accessing fallen bird seed under the snow. They were also entering our home in great numbers, seeking a warm place to stay, between feedings. Mice can scoot inside via the tiniest cracks or fissures in the granite foundation of this house. As much as we try to cement up known areas of access, they always find a way to come in.

With deer and other wildlife struggling in conditions such as this, it is even more important to keep your domestic dog under control. Only irresponsible pet owners allow their dogs to run wild. In most, if not all New Hampshire communities, there is a leash law. Groups of dogs injure and kill deer, or worse for themselves, tangle with a porcupine, the results of that being painful to the dog and expensive for the dog owner.

We love Nature in the winter. Feeding birds with only suet means that we see only the little birds like juncos, chickadees, woodpeckers, and nuthatches; not the usual customers of Bluejays, Cardinals, mourning doves, and other birds. Everything in life involves a choice, and we choose not to issue a special invitation to the mice to enter our home. For now, I will enjoy the birds I see, as I await Spring and the chance to see Lilacs again, in their place.

Patricia Cummings