Nature can get closer

 Here’s something I should have mentioned in talking about John Burroughs’s essay “Nature Near Home.”

A piece of suet on a tree in front of your window will bring chickadees, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, brown creepers, and often juncos. And what interest you will take in these little waifs from the winter woods that daily or hourly seek the bounty you prepare for them! It is not till they have visited you for weeks that you begin to appreciate the bit of warmth and life they have added to your winter outlook. 

Burroughs was writing before the days of fancy birdfeeders. I used to smile at “elderly” people, meaning those over 60, who kept birdfeeders and talked about them constantly.

I now have a birdfeeder, a fancy one, and spend hours watching the show. If I had to choose between unforgivably extravagant expenses — buying bird feed in farmer-sized sacks vs. cable TV — well, that decision was made long ago.

• Source: “Nature Near Home” was originally published in Field and Study in 1919. It was reprinted in American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau; New York: The Library of America, 2008.