Spending time in nature with its wild creatures has always been a way for me to rejuvenate my creativity, to fill my soul with happiness, tranquility, and relaxation. A way to let go of stress and worries, even for just a little bit. Recently I wondered how I could give back to the wildlife that makes itself at home around our five acres, to help it co-exist and thrive. Wanting to keep this little ecosystem as natural as possible, I came across the web page of the National Wildlife Federation’s Garden For Wildlife.

Mountain goats, which aren’t actually goats but are considered “goat-antelopes” and whose closest relatives live in the Himalayas, prefer to live above the treeline and in high alpine meadows, beyond the usual range of predators like mountain lions. Beyond the range of many humans, too. They are one of the least-studied large mammals in North America.

I was ahead of my husband when I spotted a bear standing in clear view, close by on the gentle slope that led away from the trail. I stopped and smiled as my brain tried to make sense of why the bear was so short and broad…and why were its legs and back darker than its tawny sides? My jaw dropped when the synapses connected. It wasn’t a bear. It was a wolverine!

One June about seven years ago, my husband brought home a bitterroot plant. It was stuck to his irrigation shovel by the clay soil from the hay fields near our house in the Helmville Valley. I marveled at the beautiful hot pink blooms and planted them in the flower bed, where they rarely reappeared.

Early in April, I had just spied a fox squirrel eating pine seeds from a ground cache when I felt a shadow gliding overhead on silent wings. I looked up yet saw nothing. When I looked back, there was an indistinct gray form, an apparition, in the shadows where the squirrel had been. The apparition turned its head toward me and peered with two large golden eyes. Tufted horns now held erect confirmed it was a Great Horned Owl.

What do tree swallows, starlings, pigeons, hummingbirds, and mallard ducks all have in common? Besides being birds, of course, each of these species sports iridescent feathers that glimmer and shine when the light hits them.

As spring rains tame the dust of the Montana plains and rinse the grasses briefly to green, spadefoot toads (Spea bombifrons) will stir for the first time in a year and clamber from burrows beneath the soil’s frostline to the surface. There they will congregate in pools of snowmelt and rainwater, and they will sing.

After several long moments the bird erupted out of the water, landing on its stone while droplets rolled off its tightly woven feathers, a look of nonchalance twinkling in its chocolate-brown eye. I blinked. A diving songbird? I thought I knew water birds: ducks, ospreys, bald eagles, kingfishers. But here was a robin-sized bird using river stones as diving boards, doing who knows what in currents too strong for me to cross.

One warm, sunny day I saw a crow squatting low on a large ant hill, head high, wingtips outstretched and fluttering softly on the ground. I had never seen this behavior before and I wondered if she might be injured. I watched her with concern before she stood up, briefly picked at her feathers, and flew away.

One afternoon while balcony-bird-watching, my attention was captured by a tiny black speck aggressively pursuing much larger birds, undeterred by the threat of sharp beaks and deadly talons. With equal measure, he intimidated crows, Osprey, eagles, vultures, and herons away from his territorial claim along the riverbank. With my binoculars and guidebook in hand, I identified him as a male Red-winged Blackbird after he flashed the telltale red and yellow striped epaulets on his shoulders, and loudly sang, “CONK-LA-REEEEE!” when he settled on a shoreline tree branch.

Many little creatures are decomposers and their lives depend on the death of others; such is the cycle of life. Recycling in its truest form!

Bird surveys in my backyard. I look forward to doing them every morning when I wake up. What species will I get today?