Good Neighbors

An essay with plenty o' photo and video evidence

At about 7 a.m., Uša and I start on a two- or three-mile walk. I can count upwards of 33 neighbors^⁠¹ sitting in lawns, nibbling on something or other. Forty-five minutes into our walk this morning we see our first human being, a younger female, walking toward us, but she crosses the street to walk on the other side. As we pass each other by, she wears her headphones and stares into her phone. No greeting exchanged.

I wonder if she’ll see the special neighbor we saw just around the corner or if she’ll continue immersed in her phone and not in all the action happening around us.

I like my neighbors. They chatter and chirp about worries and dreams. They gossip, eye strangers suspiciously, cackle with joy, and bicker. Some days they stroll across my lawn or scurry to cross the street. Some nights they eat sunflower seeds and drink water in my yard. Some days they fly.

This year brought, as every year does, changes. I did not know the Merlin app was also the name of a bird I could identify until two of them nested in the penthouse in my tall, tall pine tree this spring. Their call is distinctive, almost like they’re yelling at me when I’m in the front yard, and their presence has encouraged the colony of house finches that occupied the hedge to disperse. The Merlins haven’t left though I believe their first brood has also dispersed. Do they have more than one in a year?

Behind the opposite corner of my house, in the little cypress-looking tree, the one I’ve been meaning to cut down because it was a “volunteer” tree and chose a spot I wouldn’t have chosen for it, if I had been looking to plant a tree in the back yard a few years ago, which I wasn’t, Robins built a nest and raised a brood. Keeping the dogs away from the tree, watching the eggs, hearing the peeps, and seeing the fledging fall off the roof, landing unhurt in the human neighbor’s shrub kept us entertained in May and early June. House Wrens have made one of the four birdhouses hanging from the same human neighbor’s porch their current parenting corner and the peeps of their little ones can be heard far and wide.

Four Perfect Robin Eggs to One Fledgling Robin

And don’t get me started on the ridiculous ducks.

Ridiculous ducks, for whom I have to change that water at least three times a day. But they’ve stopped coming, presumably raising some chicks somewhere.

Four-legged neighbors likewise reproduce in my yard. Baby bunnies in the front yard meant the dogs had to be happy with the back yard for a spell. I’ll never know where the bunny nest was; one day while I was watering plants, baby bunnies started darting everywhere. The dogs were then sequestered.

A baby bunny as surprised as I was.

Squirrels have established themselves and have raised little ones (both grey and black little ones!) in a cavity high in the maple tree in previous years, but this year a couple of feisty red squirrels act like they might take over a bird house on a different maple tree. No nesting yet.

The list of bird neighbors is long, and the bird feeders get a lot of action, but the unusual is noteworthy.^⁠² Deer sometimes wander the streets and see if the menu includes something they’d like to nibble on.

And despite the abundance and entertainment my current neighbors give me, the wildlife of the UP beckons and I will have new neighbors someday.

I recently visited the UP to check out a few potential multi-acre properties.³^⁠ Much like during my Montana trip, my car served as my mobile domicile. I camped at a human-run camping site on Highway 2. A couple of deer watched my nocturnal pilgrimage to the toilets. Who knows how many deer or other critters watched me on the trips when I left my flashlight in the car. The deer in the video below were obviously not in the camping site and the music was supplied by local radio. (If you want to watch the full video, click here.)

I picked up a very local paper, the Ottawa Shopper, which offers insight into UP life, including wildlife. One headline: “2025 Bear Season Yielded Larger Than Average Bears.”

Hunters in Mich. harvested 1,952 black bears in 2025, according to DNR data—lightly above the state’s 5 yr ave. of 1,911 bears/year. Some bears recorded this year included 20 bears over 400lbs and 8 were 500lbs+. Demand for bear licenses is at an all-time high. The DNR uses hunting as a primary way to manage a sustainable black bear population of ~ 12,500 statewide. In 2025, 83% of the bears harvested in Michigan were in the U.P. That’s 1,522 bears during the September-October hunting season.

Do bears leave yurts alone? It probably depends on what’s in the yurt. Maybe I’ll build/get a “real” house first.

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My hand-drawn HI logo

1. “Neighbors” here means “bunnies.” Aren’t footnotes fun?

2. This can be a problem for historians: people tend to note the unusual, not the ordinary, so it’s difficult to get a clear sense of everyday life in different eras.

3. None of them has worked out.