When connecting with nature, think small!

We’ve all heard the old saying that “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” And in the case of learning how to connect with nature, that’s a good one to keep in mind, although in the reverse.

Sometimes, something big jumps out at me...like a bald eagle soaring high overhead on the wind currents or a coyote appearing outside my living room window without warning. But more often than not, it’s when I’m doing what I call scanning that I spot the smaller miracles and wonders that I might otherwise have missed. As the word implies, scanning simply means allowing your gaze to wander in a certain steady pattern from one side of a scene to the other. But more about that in a bit.

There are a few tricks to this, and as with everything else in life that we try to get better at, “practice does make perfect,” or at the very least, it opens up new possibilities that I definitely would have missed when I was too busy looking at the bigger picture.

And the “devil isn’t always in the details.” Often, the details are what improve an otherwise dull or bleak picture. Like the other day, when I spotted an American Robin hopping around near my neighbors rain downspout. From a distance, it looked pretty innocuous, doing what robins do, which is poke around the bare ground to see what tasty treats it might offer up.

Well, I hit the jackpot with this one. I grabbed my camera just in time to catch the robin snagging a big fat earthworm and then proceeding to gobble it whole. I’ve seen that often during the summer, particularly after a heavy rain that coaxes worms and other tiny creatures out of the wet soil. But at this time of the year, when winter is still dragging its cold feet, watching a robin pull a worm out of the ground is quite the spectacle. I could almost feel that bird’s glee at having hit the jackpot so early in the season.

But back to scanning, which is an activity that involves more than just vision. It can involve some of the other senses, too, such as hearing and smell. As you get better at it, you might learn to identify certain birds by their calls, such as the melodious tinkling of the Northern Cardinal or the sweet little song of the Carolina Wren. A rapid tapping sound from the woods is most like the sound a woodpecker is making to look for food or attract a mate.

Other times, it can be something as subtle as a tiny rustle among the leaves or dry grass or the sound of a flutter on a quiet day. Your sense of smell will tell you when a skunk is near, although those fragrant animals have been known to be detectable sometimes a mile away. And I learned recently that opossums also give off a very putrid odor when they feel threatened. It’s nothing like the skunk’s scent, but it is just as unpleasant.

As for visual scanning, I am always on the lookout for slight disturbances in trees that I know are not caused by the wind. Leaves have a distinct way of moving in the breeze. And unless it’s very windy, they always just sway from side to side or drift in a pretty straight direction to the ground. If it’s something moving from tree to tree or branch to branch, then it’s worth a closer look. This is where one’s peripheral vision comes in very handy indeed.

Chances are, if you catch some type of movement, then there’s something there worth checking into.

In a garden, a small movement can indicate some type of insect on a plant or a on a flower. I’ve noticed tiny pieces of leaves moving across the pavement, seemingly on their own, which of course leaves cannot do. In this case, an industrious ant is moving them from one place to another in the eternal and determined way that ants have of working.

So yes, in nature and our appreciation of it, small can indeed be better. The more we engage in stopping “to smell the roses,” the better our chances get of spotting something else in the process, even if it is only to discover how intricately designed most flowers are.

Rachel Lovejoy is a nature columnist who enjoys sharing her insights with the community and who currently lives in Saco.