We have many “snowbirds” on campus during the summer.  This led me, during 21 and 24 January, to hike every street and trail on our campus except for the line of trees on the ridge between Meadowlark Valley and the cottages along the east side of Meadowlark Road.  I was involved in the “Sport of Kings:”  a scouting and counting venture meant to impress all of us with the number of wild creatures with whom we share our campus during the “growing season.”

I, of course, missed some in each category, but did observe 52 bird nests, 19 squirrel leaf-nests, 11 squirrel tree trunk dens, 9 bird tree trunk nests, 3 bat shelter boxes, and 46 of those closely-branched, yew-like, globe-shaped shrubs, either in front of or beside buildings. Several bird species, especially robins, like to nest in these shrubs.  I did not look for and count these shrub nests.  I didn’t bother looking for nest remnants from those several bird species that nest on the ground.  I skipped potential nests and dens in and under fallen trees.  Also, the tiny, fragile nests for such as hummingbirds and blue-gray gnat-catchers have long since been destroyed by winter weather.  And winter winds may account for my not seeing a single pendulous oriole nest. Orioles do visit our feeders.

For the 60-plus species that may nest on our campus, the average clutch size is 3-6 eggs—and most of them probably hatch and fledge. And we know that some bird species have several breeding pairs on campus each summer.  We also must include the many deer mice and prairie voles, the opossums, skunks, raccoons, fox squirrels, the several species of other wild mice and rats that most people don’t know to be natural residents of our area—and the coyote I saw (on the 24th) using our new Natural Area asphalt trail.  And something high in the top of one tree made me take a very careful binocular look before discerning the object to be a wind-filled plastic bag of a species I have named Targetus manhattanensis.

We really notice but a fraction of this huge group of wild neighbors.  And for these few, we rarely “see” any of them long enough to sense the designs of their various lives.  I am reminded of Brueghel the Elder’s painting Icarus.  In his poem, "Musee de Beaux Arts,”  W. H. Auden comments that those on the ship nearby must have seen the boy falling into the sea—but the ship did not slow.  Like us, the ship “had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."