Between the Rabbits and the Robins

Saturday evening, I noticed a cottontail hunched over preparing a circle of freshly dug earth in the middle of our lawn. Meanwhile, a robin's nest was being built on the spotlights under the eaves in the back of our house. Mother robin had been working on it for the better part of two weeks, patiently fitting twig into twig with her yellow beak. Between the rabbits and the robins, the backyard was about to become a maternity ward.

Before Sandy blew into town last October, a giant maple tree had stood in our backyard, stretching its arms to the sky and beckoning red-winged black birds, cardinals, sparrows, squirrels, chipmunks, and bees. A tall pine stood guard at the southeast corner of the yard, and these two trees, along with another maple on the east border, bathed our lawn in dappled sunlight on spring and summer mornings.

Weekends, our now treeless backyard is still a pleasant place to breakfast, or read, or oil paint. Even weeding the patio is a pleasure. Mockingbirds, goldfinches and robins provide music; listening to an iPod out there would seem like a desecration.

Some animals, such as possums, groundhogs, and an occassional raccoon are just passing through. We were even visited by a herd of young deer one May afternoon, many  years ago when they were constructing new houses in a nearby wood. Amazing animals; they could leap a three foot high fence from a standing-still position, as graceful as ballerinas.

Rabbits abound in our neighborhood, but their population is kept under control by possums, red-tailed hawks, and automobiles. Early spring, the bunnies go into their mating ritual. The female sits, gnawing grass, as the male runs towards her. Suddenly, from a relaxed sitting position, she leaps three feet straight up into the air, as he runs underneath. Eventually, he catches her.

A few years ago, I was getting the yard ready for summer and came upon a nest of four baby rabbits in an abandoned oversized flower pot. Their hole was lined with grass and rabbit fur. A week later, I watched them jump out of the pot and take off for parts unknown.

“Earl” the squirrel and his relatives keep trying to raid our bird feeder, and “Zippy” the chipmunk will stop by the patio to stuff his cheeks with the sunflower seeds I leave out for him. One winter, my wife made me put “Earl” on a diet, as he was getting too fat and his stomach was dragging on the ground when he ran around our yard. He didn’t scamper; he waddled. (One of my friends has a crabapple tree in his front yard and suspects that one year the fallen apples had fermented; his local squirrel was seen eating them and then staggering around on his front lawn.)

I have a few relatives who are birders – that is, they go bird watching with binoculars and journals. I wonder if they realize that the animals are also watching us. I was doing some yard work on a brisk March morning some years ago and happened to look up to see a chipmunk sitting on the limb of a pine watching me. As long as I didn’t get too close, he was content to sit there and supervise.

We must be as fascinating to these critters as they are to us. There was a mockingbird that used to sit on the peak of the roof of our house and watch my wife and me gardening, doing his impressions of other birds to entertain us. (Mockingbirds have also been known to imitate cell phones ringing.) This spring as we dug soil in the garden, two robins watched us and grabbed the earthworms that we dispossessed with our trowels - once we were a safe distance away.

It seems like this spring’s crop of backyard denizens are very eccentric – more so than other years. The other morning, my wife and I were having coffee on the back patio when “Earl” ran across my lap, followed closely by a very angry robin – most likely protecting her nest.

Next afternoon, we had a very annoyed carpenter bee hovering around a guest sitting on the patio in one of our metal bistro chairs. We figure it must be near the bee's nest, but wherever we moved the chair and guest, the bee followed. Our guest finally stood up and walked away, and the bee landed on the chair and crawled through a screw hole into the hollow left arm brace. The chair itself was the nest.

As for this year’s cottontail, after she had dug the hole deep enough, her body quivered and she started giving birth, all the while calmly chewing on a blade of grass. One of our two local robins watched the whole thing with keen interest. When she was finished, she started clearing another circle nearby, taking the grass in her mouth and stuffing it into the hole. The bunnies are perfectly safe in their hutch, and mom comes by under cover of night to feed them.

In a few weeks, they’ll be big enough to go off on their own. A few will become food for predators, but enough will survive to create the next generation.