Immediately after sitting in our sun porch, I hear them-the birds singing and talking up a storm. Such a sweet sound to be hearing while also feeling the warmer breeze and seeing the hint of sunshine seeping through the clouds. I am in my favorite room of the house, the sun porch. It’s my favorite for two reasons. The first is that it is the first place to get really warm, sometimes even on days it’s actually really cold outside. The second is that the walls are windows, hence the “sun” part of its name. I guess that second part is the cause of the first, but they are still two separate reasons for it being my favorite room. I get to be warm even when it’s not so warm and I have a complete view of the backyard.

Today as I take in the view, I notice one of our favorite creatures, the grey heron. He is a gorgeous bird who is very interesting to watch as he hunts for his favorite creatures in the water. You may be imaging a lovely creek or small pond when I say water. Instead, what I see in our back yard is …a drainage ditch. Although it is man made and mostly filled up with yucky, often stagnate water, it brings us many visitors that we love and enjoy observing. Our grey heron, or ‘the grey bird’ as we call him, will stand as still as a statue for quite some time until he decides it’s time to move closer to his prey. His steps are almost as slow as a sloth and as smooth as his motions through the sky when he flies back to his home base. He’ll take three…four…five slow steps and then slowly stretch out his neck so that his beak is as far out as it can go, ready to grab what he finds. Finally, if you are patient enough to catch the final step in his process, he’ll reach down into the water with a lightning strike movement and come up with his meal wiggling for a moment before he swallows it down.

We are lucky enough to not only have our grey friend visit us often, but also our friend the egret. They are quite similar in size and actions, yet the egret is all white and a bit slimmer than the grey bird. They never visit us at the same time. I guess our ditch isn’t big enough for the both of them.

Today, I also see the geese. Right now, it is just one pair of them, meandering around together. Other times we have an entire flock camped out for the day, walking, squawking, eating grass and flapping their wings at one another when one of them gets too close. They aren’t my favorite visitors, but they do make me laugh. Our dog, Reese does enjoy running down the steps and barking at them every so often when he’s feeling active. They get a bit worked up and fly away from him, although they don’t leave. I guess he’s not really a threat.

Over the years, our ditch has had snakes, a snapping turtle, ducks, a hawk and of course deer, but my favorite visitors will always be the ducklings. One spring and one spring only, we were lucky enough to have ducks lay eggs on the edge of the ditch. For a few weeks after they hatched, we had the pleasure of watching those adorable little ducklings swimming and waddling around our yard. It was the best! Every spring I hope it will happen again so I can delight in those little birdies.

When we first bought our house, the only thing I considered about the ditch was that it may be a hazard for our future children. I never imagined it would bring us so much joy and times of family togetherness. Bull frogs and I’m sure other kinds of frogs also live in the ditch, although we hardly ever get to see them. You can hear them though, and when you get too close, they all jump in the water from their bed of mud on the side. When our kids were little, we would silently creep up closer and closer to the edge, trying to catch them off guard so we could actually see them as they jumped in. We had so much fun doing that together.

I wonder what I’ll see from my favorite room tomorrow…

The View from My Sunporch

My Saturday