I never used to care about birds. What is about aging that turns us into bird-watchers?

One of my favorite feelings is awe. I love when I’m going through normal everyday life, eating my yogurt or walking outside under the sky, and I’m struck by a wave of wonder, a flush of the soul that that makes me feel lucky to bear witness to the world.

This happened to me yesterday. I’ve finished the garden. I’ve cut back and bundled all the old stems from last year’s flowers. I’ve spread three tons of much on ten flower beds. I’ve mowed, I’ve edged, I’ve planted flower baskets. And at the end of it all, I placed the bird bath basins back on their stands and filled them with fresh water from the hose. I poured black oil sunflower seed into the feeder hanging from the oak, scattered millet and grain in the platform feeder at the top of the hill, and snapped a suet cake into the wire cage hanging from a dogwood branch.

As I crouched to sort laundry in our bedroom yesterday, I caught a glimpse of scarlet through the window. I looked up and saw a red cardinal, not six feet away, eating at the suet buffet. I felt a surge of joy to know that this bright little bird, red as a poppy, felt safe being so close to our house to feed.

The rest of the day, homebound because of rain, I sat or stood at windows, marveling at birds who hang out in our yard. From our bedroom window, I watched an eastern bluebird, its back the color of lapis lazuli, perch on the rim of the birdbath and dip its head, alongside a sparrow, to drink from the fresh bowl. Meanwhile, three little brown birds swung from the suet cake. Soft taupe doves strutted on the ground below. From the table when I ate my lunch, I watched blue jays out back at the platform feeder, first having a bite to eat, then, cobalt cabochons with wings, flitting up into bare branches in the overhanging trees. I watched female cardinals at the hanging feeder, their beaks a fiery orange against their dusky brown feathers, and a male cardinal, a flare of red, perched in the spicebush at the top of the hill, observing his kingdom.

Back at the bedroom window after lunch, the dogwood was now full of blue jays. Back at the hanging feeder, house finches with blushing pink heads clung to the wire cylinder and pulled sunflower seeds out. Later, a goldfinch like the blaze of a tiny yellow sun perched on the swinging feeder’s rim. As I sat and wrote from my new perch by the front window, a robin hopped through fresh mulch in the rain, its back brown like the wet bark, its breast a curve of rusty orange and its beak a bright carrot when it turns toward me.

The garden is a massive amount of work. I originally thought I labored over it to grow flowers for my own pleasure and to create habitat for butterflies. But as the birds and bunnies, chipmunks and squirrels also pass through, I feel lucky that they feel comfortable enough to hang out here. We’ve made ourselves a home inside, and we’ve made them a home outside. I don’t know what it is about these little creatures that so captivates me, but I get a tremendous amount of pleasure watching them do the most mundane, ordinary actions: eat, hop, drink, peck. Bob, strut, bound, soar. Wiggle, twitch, stand still on hind legs, observe.

I admit that I wasn’t looking forward to my gardening vacation as much this year as I have in the past. I felt overwhelmed by the task and didn’t want to do all the work involved in cleaning up and spreading mulch on a steep hill. But I listened to birds sing while I worked, and I reread The Goldfinch on my breaks, and as my To-Do list shrank and my Done list grew, and as the birds started visiting more — or at least became visible because all the clutter was cleared — I remembered why I love our garden filled with scores of different plants instead of a vast monoculture of lawn: the variety brings the insects and small mammals and birds to our house and gives them safe haven. They in turn bring color and texture, movement and life. Life that I get to watch live.