At left you see some recent visitors to our garden. These are rose-breasted grosbeaks which have paused here for a few days on their annual trip from their winter home in Mexico to their breeding area in New England. They appeared late last week and made themselves at home in our backyard community. These two males were aggressive at the feeder, chasing away other species as well as making their own females wait in the branches for a chance at the sunflower seeds. By yesterday morning they were gone.

For most of my life I paid little attention to birds. In the city neighborhood where I lived as a child the basic bird was the pigeon, a variety not generally welcomed. My violin teacher lived in a suburban house with a large garden and some old trees. Her sister was an avid birder. Miss Genevieve knew the popular and scientific names of all her visitors, their feeding habits, their migration patterns. She kept binoculars and a field guide on a shelf in the kitchen, and often she would call me to the window while I waited out my sister's lesson. We'd look at the birds together, and she'd help me listen through what seemed like noise for their distinctive songs.

For a long time after I moved to this house we had cats, so attracting birds would have been pointless as well as cruel. There was an occasional blue jay's nest in our big walnut tree. The mother would screech and cackle at the cats as they walked out to the field, sometimes swooping down to peck at them, unaware that they were unaware of her nest.

A few years ago someone gave us a hand painted birdhouse. It was blue, like our house, with a large sunflower decorating the opening. Both cats had passed on, so we hung the house in the walnut tree. It wasn't long before some wrens took up residence. We got two more houses, and then two feeders, one the (ha! ha!) squirrel proof metal box seen above, the other the finch feeder seen at right.

We now have a thriving community of birds ranging from the brilliant, like the grosbeaks and a breathtaking cardinal, to the ordinary -- little brown wrens and swallows which aren't showy but nevertheless make their contribution. In one of nature's paradoxes, it seems that watching even their sometimes frenetic activity can be relaxing.

We've had another visitor in recent days, one we're unlikely to capture with the digital camera. Last week we came down in the morning to find both feeders pulled from their branches. The finch feeder was intact, but the square feeder had been pulled apart and emptied. Deer, perhaps? We rehung them, both a little higher than they had been.

Last night around 9:00 I heard some noise from out back, and then a little while later I saw some flashes of light. I thought it was our church neighbor having some activity.

Soon, however, the doorbell rang. It was a township police officer, telling us that he was investigating reports of a bear roaming in the neighborhood. Ron went out to discover that the square feeder had once again been pulled down.

Bear sightings in this neck of the township are infrequent but not unusual. There are two developments at the base of Blue Mountain, one nearly forty years old. New areas have been opened in each. The building lots (called "home sites" in pricey Mountaindale) are large and only partially cleared, but each incursion into virgin land changes the balance in the ecosystem and takes that many more acres away from the animals which have occupied this land since before William Penn was born.

To get to our neighborhood a bear has to come down off the mountain, cross busy Route 39, traverse even busier Progress Avenue, and begin its search for food and shelter among houses built three or four to the acre. Last week a battered and bleeding bear was seen on the grassy divider of the interstate. Animal control had to come out and finish the job the whizzing traffic had begun.

I've come upon deer sometimes during the daylight. A family of four lives in a thicket just beyond our meadow -- they appeared in this space in the piece I wrote for March 3.  They've developed a certain comfort level with us Woodridgers, and we with them. I'm not sure the bear will fare so well.