Heidi Watts

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Ruffed Grouse

A few years ago, in early May, when the sun was surprisingly warm, and the trees newly leaved in a golden green, I took a walk into the woods on an old walking trail. I had been walking for about thirty minutes when a bird flew out of the brush front of me. I froze in my tracks. To my surprise, instead of assuming the “if I don’t move you won’t see me pose”, or flying off, the bird began advancing toward me very slowly. It was a ruffed grouse, the size of a very small chicken, with stripped reddish brown and white neck feathers, a wide fan shaped tail with a bright black border ,and a little crown or tuft on the head. The brown and white stripes in her feathers gleamed in the sunlight and occasionally she spread her tail out like a black-bordered fan. I stayed as still as I could – how often do I encounter a creature in the wild? – as she advanced very slowly, until she was about six feet from me. Then, still strutting very slowly, bobbing her head and and displaying her fan, she b

Old Beady Eye

My name is “Old Beady Eye and this is my story. I am a heron, a great blue heron, one of the tallest creatures on this shoreline, tall, silent, regal, and you may never notice me, because I have the power of such steadiness that your eyes may slide right over me and beyond. Only if I make a move, stab my long beak into the water in one quick jab to catch a little silver glimmer, a fish perhaps, or a small sneaky crab sideling silently through the shallows, or I may decide enough is enough and silently raise my great wings to leave the scene – only then will you notice me. You will say, “Oh, Look, there’s the great blue heron”, but I will be gone before your companion notices me. My power comes from concentration, though a sharp beak, reflexes faster than the speed of light, and large loft bearing wings also help. I earn my dinners by doing nothing. I sail overhead, locate a hopeful bit of shallow water, glide in for a landing as quietly as the fog itself, and wait, all bea

Life and Death in the Middle Island Cove

I look out the window in the kitchen and what do I see? I really woke up on this morning, when a passing glance out the window and across the cove revealed a small movement in the little cluster of tall, supple poplar trees, disappearing into the grove of bent and stunted hemlocks indigenous to these islands. I am alone on this no longer inhabited island in the north Atlantic and, for one thing, there should not be poplar trees. The islands are largely spruce and hemlock, with only an occasional deciduous tree: these foreign trees must have been planted by the first descendants of the first settlers a little over 100 years ago. And, there should not be an unfamiliar movement in those trees. As I watch anxiously a largish black bird waddles out of the underbrush followed by a procession of small black creatures – ah! ducklings. Mama Duck (we must assume it was a mama) was headed straight for the water and in a long line, reminiscent of a kindergarten teacher leading her children t

The Truth About Warblers

Warblers are irritating, and that’s the truth. It’s a beautiful spring morning, the mist just disappearing and the sun promising a full Monty. I take my binoculars and stroll quietly down to the mailboxes and, just like yesterday, there is a yellow warbler singing full bore, "whichety, whichety, whichety." Where? Must be right there in that bush. But I can’t see it. No. Have I ever seen that bird there? No. She/he flits from branch to branch veiled by the baby yellow-green leaves of spring, barely hatched. The sound has moved. I try to scan with the binoculars. The sound is close, here by my ear, no, over there to the right, "whitchety, whitchety, whichetey…" out of the corner of my right eye I see a tease of yellow. Ok, be like that. I’ll try another spot. I walk slowly up the trail, listening for sound, looking for another swipe of yellow, or any color on the wing, and at the crest of the hill, right there on the lowest branch of the big maple, right where t

A Maple Branch

When my friend Phyllis looked out a window she saw a painting. This morning I looked out a window and saw a painting: The leaves on a branch of the maple tree, green, filigreed, And quivering, yes, but with the sun upon them, pure gold not the whole tree, just the branch of a tree, reaching out in front of a forest of trees, an army of greens, marching in place. Catching the occassional ray of sun, Moving as the breeze moves the burnished leaves intricately cut and alive waved to me with a tease of the breeze, golden from a brush of the sun. Phyllis painted, not the tops, nor the bottoms but whatever part of a tree might be captured within the limitations of a window frame. It was the frame that made the picture , the frame and the skill of the painter. Fingers bent and twisted could hardly grasp the paintbrush, (Phyllis had rheumatoid arthritis). But sense of color sharp to the end , they applied paint to suggest wonder and

That first summer, June 1968

I was unprepared for the beauty of a June day on the La Have islands: old homesteads surrounded with perennials: daffodils waving bravely in a fierce wind; narcissus decorating stone outcroppings and perfuming the air; blooming lilacs drawing in as much of the surrounding land as they could manage in a year and so slowly eating up the paths and fields around them; wood trails carpeted with four petaled bunch berry, the white petals morphing into red berries by winter. I was unprepared for just about everything that first summer in Nova Scotia. The previous summer we had traveled by VW bus like a mess of itinerant gypsies to stay in my sister’s house on Bell Island. I had two small children, my English mother-in-law and an increasingly difficult case of morning sickness; Simon had a broken wrist and his arm in a cast but managed, nonetheless, to put the small sailboat we were trailing behind the bus into the water and sail off (literally) single-handed to explore the islands