Think about “live streaming.” What a great expression. We should have had it in our vocabulary long before the Internet. It conjures up wonderful images. Close your eyes and say it to yourself. Some people may think of their blood coursing through their bodies, others may think of skiing down a snowy slope or swimming in a current. I think of nature and all its complex and wondrous connections.

One of the most common metaphors used in teaching ecology to children is a web, like a spider web, with the sun, water, air, plants, animals and insects all caught in it and joined together. The children gradually come to understand how everything is connected, and how movement in one part of the web vibrates through the whole. The idea of this “web of life” is not new. In fact, writers from Henry Thoreau to Rachel Carson, Native Americans, and environmentalists and scientists have all used this term.

Looking out my window at the Sandy Point Discovery Center on Great Bay in Stratham, I can see the web in action every day. The numerous birds that visit the bird feeders filled with sunflower seeds and thistle seeds are joined by red and gray squirrels. Sometimes, both the squirrels and birds sit in the wild rose bushes eating the rose hips left over from fall. Several times we have seen a pattern in the snow from the wings of a hawk right under the bird feeder with a few feathers strewn about, and just this week, a red shoulder hawk was waiting above the feeder. All over the grounds below are the tracks of fisher, deer and fox.

Further out I can see the shoreline of the Bay. Along the edge, a flock of crows is interested in the remains of a dead fish that washed up the day before. This winter we had three immature bald eagles come down and try to pull a dead seagull out of the ice. Out on the water are flocks of Canada geese, black ducks, mallards and greater scaup. The geese tip up to eat the nutrient rich eel grass, and the black ducks and diving ducks consume small clams and crustaceans and all the while, in the current, smelt are moving upstream. Usually in winter bob houses would be set up on the Bay and its tributaries and men would fish for the smelt. These tasty fish are excellent fried, a source of protein for humans.

So when I hear the words “live streaming on the web,” what I think about is all this live streaming in the web going on right outside my window, in the real worldwide web of life.

This guest essay is by Sheila M. Roberge, volunteer coordinator at Sandy Point Discovery Center in Stratham.