A birdbath is an ocean, and an oak tree is a skyscraper, bustling with little beings making a living. Despite our grumbling that the lawn is a silly imitation of a fantasy ecosystem, an awful lot of lives are humming along out there.
As a nature and science writer, I've wallowed in any number of ecosystems — Costa Rican rainforests, Mongolian deserts, even the bottom of the ocean, where no light shines so all the animals are white, and blind. None of these explorations has been more surprising, nor more downright addictive, than the world I discovered outside my back door. (And inside my back door, for that matter, since Nature creeps, drifts, and scampers through very small holes.) Where I once saw a generic squirrel hopping around with a generic acorn in its jaws, I now see Stumpy, his tail bitten off in a mating chase, sniffing each acorn for soundness before pretending to bury it in three different places lest a lurking spy should try to steal it. And the oak tree, formerly my stoic hero, I now recognize as a scheming giant whose patient goal is to starve Stumpy's family, then dump down a bumper crop of nuts when there's no one left alive to eat them. I didn't say it's a gentle and lovely ecosystem. It's a natural ecosystem, with all the blood and glory, passion and death that you'd expect from the Serengeti or the rainforest.
This book recounts a year I spent immersed in the lives my out-back neighbors. From the get-go I made close friends: the crows who sat on their begging branch to bray for dog food; the chipmunk who skittered into my kitchen, then into my pockets. But more frequently, and especially as winter sank its claws into the earth, I was simply dumb-struck by my subjects. The ability of a small bird to survive a winter night leaves me breathless. The communication method practiced by the tree she perches in is just as astonishing. And the ability of a relocated mouse to find its way back to its territory and food stores is worthy, in my opinion, of Homeric verse.

The year I spent observing these everyday plants and animals was the most engrossing year of my life. If the resulting book amuses and enlightens you half as much, I'll count it a cawing success.