Summer evenings at dusk I sit on the patio and watch chimney swifts circling overhead before they dive into my chimney. Every year in April they migrate from Central America, raise their young in the chimney, and head back to Central America in late September.

Their numbers at my house have declined precipitously from over 25 a few years ago to only six this year. The mosquitoes that they eat are still here, but most people in Chapel Hill and elsewhere have capped their masonry chimneys, and the old-growth forests in which they once nested have disappeared.

When my family moved to Burlage Circle years ago we heard the whip-poor-will and barred owls. The whip-poor-wills are long gone, but the call of the barred owls continues to thrill me. Mid-April each year I await the wood thrush in my back yard. This year he did not arrive. All of this makes me sad, and I sometimes think my generation has had it better than those succeeding me, and not just in an appreciation of the life around us.

Nevertheless, all is not lost if we are successful in teaching young people the joys of nature. Some families are doing this, others not only know little about nature, but their children know even less. There is a growing chasm between the young and nature.

About a year ago I noticed a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation that children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of 6.5 hours a day with electronic media. Part of this is attributable to parents' lack of time and fear for children's safety. Some parents feel that if they don't have their kids in scheduled activity all day they will fall behind in their race for Harvard. Others are scared to death of "stranger danger" and are afraid to let their kids roam free.

My kids grew up near a creek, and they would be gone for hours at a time exploring the woods and creek. They had hours of unstructured, imaginative play, most of their young lives that many kids today seldom experience. I read recently that teens average over 2,000 text messages per month on their cell phones. The study from MIT showed that constant texting is distracting and keeps teens from having time to think things through. In addition, it discourages autonomy by making it easy for them to contact friends when making even minor decisions.

Exposure to nature is therapeutic for everyone. It has been shown that there is a human cost of alienation from nature, including diminished uses of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of emotional and physical sickness. One study showed that joggers who exercised outdoors in natural settings felt more restored and less anxious or angry than people who exercised indoors. Another study reiterated what teachers have known that children who spend more time outdoors tend to do better on testing and tended to play more cooperatively.

One simple thing we can all do is to feed the birds. It is amazing how the simple act of watching birds come and go at the feeder will lead to a new appreciation of nature.

Some years ago I gave a bird feeder and a simple bird book to a single father who said he did not know the names of any birds or anything about them. I saw him recently and he said that he and his daughter knew the names of all the birds that came to his feeder and were discovering other birds by walking in Duke Forest. He told me "just feeding the birds made me and my daughter appreciate the beauty that is in this world."

Perhaps these two people will pass on their discoveries to others. As long as I am a part of this world I hope to remain in awe of its beauty.