I came around the corner of the house and stopped. A young bear, shiny and slender, a perfect ingénue, was crossing the road. She hung in the middle for a moment as she turned back for one, two, three (!) reluctant cubs, who came tumbling out of the underbrush and followed her across the road from the mountain on the Hallenbeck property to the streambed on ours. Everyday, my neighbor tells me, the bears cross back and forth from our property to his, sometimes in front, sometimes in back of our houses. Seeing them is serendipitous—looking up or looking out on the correct side of the house at the exact, right moment. In mid-September I looked out in time to see one of the cubs, three times as big but still a roly-poly bundle of fur, bounce across our backyard. Was he on his own or had the others preceded him moments before? No way of knowing.
Yearling bear, Mohawk Trail State Forest
And so it is with all nature encounters at Mill Brook House, although our chances of seeing wildlife seem greatest when mothers are tending to babies. One April, as we were working with a friend and his tractor to remove some trash from our front woods, we almost stepped on a nesting woodcock, who blended in perfectly with the forest floor and never budged from her nest, despite the tractor operating no more than six feet away. We returned later that afternoon with a camera, and some weeks later I determined that the eggs had safely hatched.
Woodcock on her nest
Another year, in early June, we flushed a doe from our back meadow and subsequently discovered the reason she had let us get that close: a large brown patch near our mowed path turned out to be a newborn fawn. We took pictures while Mama skulked in the back woods, moving from shadow to shadow but never leaving. Newborn fawns have no scent: our dog Nellie, with us on a leash, never noticed the baby lying three feet away. Only later in the afternoon, when our house fell completely quiet, did the doe move her fawn to a less conspicuous location.
"Kinda wobbly, ain't 'e?"
The opportunity to photograph a deer close up comes rarely, but we nevertheless witness fragments of deer drama from the house, never quite knowing the beginning or the end of the story. One year, three fawns played in the tall grass in the front meadow day after day, ignoring me painting on the porch and men working on the roof. Some days their moms joined them and one day moved them on.
Fawn in the front meadow
A pregnant doe checks out the back meadow
In the same spot at the end of the back meadow where we found the baby deer, Nellie flushed a mother turkey, who, it turned out, had been hiding with her babies. Each of what of I subsequently learned were sixteen or seventeen chicks, was individually wrapped, dug into its own little nest of grass and completely invisible. Although already starting to sprout their black feathers of adulthood, they could not yet fly. Three weeks later, when Nellie flushed them from the back of our woodpile, over a dozen black, gawky teen turkeys flew up into the nearby trees. Mama fled across the small brook that partially encloses our back field, and eventually they joined her.
Wild turkey chick
Every spring phoebes nest under the eaves, and yellow-bellied sapsuckers pound on dead trees to attract mates and announce their territories. More quietly they build nests, raise young, and soon our trees are full of pint-sized little sapsuckers. Hawks and hummingbirds also nest in the nearby woods, while song sparrows, chipping sparrows, and common yellowthroats, cheeky, black-masked warblers that scold prodigiously from low branches when we come too near, nest in the tall impenetrable weeds near our mowed paths. One year neglect allowed the weeds in my lupine garden to get so thick that the yellowthroats found it an ideal nursery. Gardening one day, I discovered the babies running through the lupines. Like the parents, who fly up from their nest to perch on low tree branches, the chicks instinctively hopped up on the sturdy stems of the lupine leaves, where I caught them with my camera.
Common Yellowthroat chick
Less serendipidous are the babies born regularly in our birdhouses or under the front porch. After Hurricane Irene, the phoebes moved. Did they have a nest with young when walls of water from the misdirected brook slammed against the back of our garage where they had nested for a decade or more? In any case, they moved to the front and took up residence under the front porch. That put them at eye level, and the first year they freaked and abandoned the nest but returned to the same spot the next summer to try again. They fussed and fidgeted when we came near, but stayed to raise two broods. The following summer they were back....
Phoebe nestlings
Ready to fly
Every year bluebirds and swallows battle it out for the birdhouses. Fortunately, the bluebirds get a headstart, but the swallows are agressive and often take over at least two of the three nest boxes. One of the houses can be opened in situ, which permitted me to snap this photo of a surprised youngster almost ready to fledge.
Baby tree swallows
2015: Once again we have a bird nursery with bluebirds and swallows in the bird houses, goldfinches, cedar waxwings, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, indigo buntings, common yellowthroats, hummingbirds (and no doubt many other species) hatching babies in our woods. Baby turkeys accompany their parents from open field to open field throughout the neighborhood, and a yearling bear made its way across our lawn from the neighbors’ apple trees (and barbecue pit). Twice this spring we’ve surprised mother deer with still scentless fawns and watched the mamas bound off while the babies lower themselves to the ground, where they remain completely motionless, though wide awake.
This fellow wanted to run but couldn't keep up with mom; he left to join her as soon as we went inside.
Each year the magic repeats itself, and each year we wait to see what new delights spring and early summer will bring.
(all photographs copyrighted by Steven Sternbach and Kathe Geist)