In the center of our backward a giant maple tree stretches its arms to the sky and beckons red-winged black birds, cardinals, sparrows, squirrels, chipmunks, and bees. A tall pine stands guard at the southeast corner of the yard, and these two trees, along with another maple on the east border, bathe our lawn in dappled sunlight on spring and summer mornings.

Weekends, it’s a pleasant place to breakfast, or read, or oil paint. Even weeding the patio is a pleasure. Mockingbirds, goldfinches and robins provide music; listening to an iPod out there would seem like a desecration.

It was Saturday night, June 30, 2007 at around 7 when I noticed the cottontail hunched over in the backyard in the middle of a circle of freshly dug earth in the middle of our lawn. Once again, our backward was about to become a nursery.

Wildlife still abounds along the Jersey Shore. We’ve had possums and wood chucks – and even an occasional skunk - pass through our yard, on their way to somewhere else. One morning we had a lost duck on the back patio that ate the cheerios we threw out for her. She was similar to the canvasback I had photographed on my way to work one morning in Piscataway, NJ. The Piscataway duck had ten ducklings that followed Mom across a street and up a divider, tumbling down the other side like a scattered box of quacking tennis balls.

My late father, who lived near the edge of the Jersey Pines, used to put out a pan of bird seed in his backyard – which backed a small creek – for any animals that showed up. This soon turned out to be, on a daily basis, two different braces of ducks, two rabbits, two chipmunks, five squirrels, a groundhog, cardinals, sparrows, titmice, brown headed cowbirds, and an occasional heron. One time, a snapping turtle lumbered onto the scene by accident.

“Earl” the squirrel and his relatives keep trying to raid our bird feeder, and “Zippy” the chipmunk and his mate "Tippy" will stop by the patio to stuff their cheeks with the sunflower seeds I leave out for them and the squirrels. One winter, my wife made me put “Earl” on a diet, as he was getting too fat and his stomach was dragging on the ground when he ran around our yard. He didn’t scamper; he waddled. One of my friends has a crabapple tree in his front yard and suspects that one year the fallen apples had fermented; his local squirrel was seen eating them and then staggering around on his front lawn.

We’ve even been visited by a herd of young deer one May afternoon a few years ago when they were constructing new houses in a nearby wood. Amazing animals; they could leap a three foot high fence from a standing-still position, as graceful as ballerinas. That same May, I discovered a nest with three baby cardinals in one of our pines. Two weeks later, they had flown.

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One rainy afternoon, while taking out the recyclables, I found a black and red tree frog in the backyard, a long way from his leaping grounds. I wondered what made him decide to get up and take a trip into alien territory.

Rabbits are all over our neighborhood; the population kept under control by possums, red-tailed hawks, and automobiles. Early spring, they go into their mating ritual. The female sits, gnawing grass, as the male runs towards her. Suddenly, from a relaxed sitting position, she leaps three feet straight up into the air, as he runs underneath. Eventually, he catches her.

Two springs ago, I was getting the yard ready for summer and came upon a nest of four baby rabbits in an abandoned oversized flower pot. Their hole was lined with grass and rabbit fur. A week later, I watched them jump out of the pot and take off for parts unknown.

I have a few relatives who are birders – that is, they go bird watching with binoculars and journals. I wonder if they realize that the animals are also watching us. I was doing some yard work on a brisk March morning some years ago and happened to look up to see a chipmunk sitting on the limb of a pine watching me. As long as I didn’t get too close, he was content to sit there and supervise.

We must be fascinating to these critters. There was a mockingbird that used to sit on the peak of the roof of our house and watch my wife and me gardening, doing her impressions of other birds to entertain us. This spring as we dug soil in the garden, two mated robins watched us and grabbed the earthworms that we dispossessed with our trowels. They hang around all the time, and don’t appear to be afraid of us.

It seems like this summer’s crop of backyard denizens are very eccentric – more so than other years. The other morning, my wife and I were having coffee on the back patio when “Earl” ran across my lap, followed closely by a very angry robin – most likely protecting her nest. Next afternoon, we had a very annoyed carpenter bee hovering around a guest sitting in one of our metal bistro chairs. We figure it must be near the bee's nest, but wherever we moved the chair and guest, the bee followed. Our guest finally stood up and walked away, and the bee landed on the chair and crawled through a screw hole into the hollow left arm brace. The chair itself was the nest.

As for this year’s cottontail, after she had dug the hole deep enough, her body quivered and she started giving birth, all the while calmly chewing on a blade of grass. One of our two local robins watched the whole thing with keen interest. When she was finished, she started clearing another circle nearby, taking the grass in her mouth and stuffing it into the hole. The bunnies are perfectly safe in their hutch, and mom comes by under cover of night to feed them.

In a few weeks, they’ll be big enough to go off on their own. A few will become food for predators, but enough will survive to create the next generation.