This week, I learned to identify opossum scat. This happened one morning when I took my dog out to the back yard and discovered that some unidentified creature had been hanging out on the lower portion of my deck long enough to poop. And poop quite a lot, actually.

So of course I grabbed my handy internet device and did a quick search on “opossum scat.” This was a good guess on my part, as it turns out. Opossum scat, in fact, it was.

Communing with Mother Nature

False potato beetle

This was just one aspect of my natural history education and experience this week. For me, it’s one of the advantages of sheltering at home. I spend a lot more time in my own yard then ever before—and I’m a person who has always liked my yard. In addition to my close encounter with opossum scat, I also met a new-to-me insect and, I believe, two new-to-me birds.

• Insect: False potato beetle
• Bird: Black-and-white warbler
• Bird: Common yellowthroat

The name common yellowthroat is for me either misleading or a slap in the face. I’ve lived in Illinois my whole life, a good portion of that in rural Illinois, and never to my knowledge seen one before. Common? Pfui!

Life in the front room

I think one reason I’m seeing birds I’ve not noticed before is that I’m spending a lot more time on my front porch. I’ve always been a back yard person, but I think I’m craving public space, and the front porch is as close as I can get. So I’ve set up Adirondack chairs, plants, and even a metal shelving unit, and my front porch has transformed into my new “front room.”

This is especially handy for me when it’s raining, as I love watching a storm and breathing storm-fresh air. Getting wet is usually a deterrent, but now I can do it with a roof over my head.

When it’s not raining (and I’m not working), I sit in my new “front room” with a book, and read and watch the world carry on. I’ve learned that a different collection of birds frequent my front and back yards. In back, we have lots of robins, cardinals, goldfinches, house finches, and sparrows. The side yard is preferred by the mourning doves, and occasionally we get a Cooper’s hawk looking for a meal.

In front, though, I have all of the common back yard birds plus more. So far, in just the last couple of weeks, these have included a pair of wrens, an occasional nuthatch, the two birds mentioned above, one grey specimen with white belly that I’ve yet to identify, and my first hummingbird of the season. I also have a catbird.

The catbird seat

Let’s talk about catbirds a bit—because this is my very favorite front yard visitor to date. That might seem odd, because catbirds aren’t particularly uncommon. But they’re very friendly. I would even say sociable. Also, they tend to return to the same breeding ground year after year, so a catbird friend is a kind of friend for life.

I really became familiar with catbirds a few years ago when one befriended me in my back yard. I would sit on my back deck reading for hours on end during the weekend, and this catbird started hanging out with me. He’d perch less than 6 feet away and chip at me for such a long time that I would just stop what I was doing and talk to him. Far from being frightened, he’d just chatter back. I didn’t see him the next year, so it’s quite possible that he didn’t survive the winter. This is the first year I’ve had another catbird since then, and I’m hoping to make another fast friend. Already he perches with 10 feet of me and chirps. And it’s only May; we have the whole summer ahead of us.