Birding as a Competition

On Saturday, May 10, hundreds if not thousands of New Jersey residents will rise and seek out as many birds as they can find. But this will not be the usual weekend during peak northbound migration when the warblers, vireos, tanagers, flycatchers and many, many others are passing through on their way to breeding territories.

(Margo D. Beller)

This day will be the World Series of Birding, started in Cape May, N.J., in 1984 by Pete Dunne and others as a charitable competition with the aim of finding as many birds as possible in a day and collecting money based on how much is pledged per bird. The winnings go towards bird habitat conservation.

There will be teams starting off at midnight and traveling from High Point at New Jersey's northwestern tip to Cape May in the south. There will be people sitting in one place and tallying what they see and hear. There will be yet others who travel to bird specific areas, such as my home county where Great Swamp, Troy Meadows and Jockey Hollow are located. They'll compete, raise money, then report their findings on eBird in the name of "citizen science."

No thanks.

Charitable as I try to be, I tend to avoid official competitions like this. Too many people zooming around, ticking off birds on a list and trying to find more birds than anyone else. It reminds me very much of the narrative of "The Big Year," a nonfiction book (later made into a movie) describing how three guys competed to get into the record books for seeing the most North American birds in a year. 

This is not birding, this is listing.

I admit to some competitive spirit. If I look at the eBird reports for my county and see things listed in places near me, I'll go out and try to find them - strictly for my satisfaction and not to report to eBird because I don't like counting how many birds I'm seeing. Like ticking off a list without looking at the birds for more than a second and a half, counting how many robins or whatever I'm finding detracts from my enjoyment of being outside with my binoculars.

I also admit to using the Merlin app, when I can get it working, to help me hear and/or identify some of the sounds I hear if they are not familiar to me. I have to take Merlin with more than a grain of salt because it is not always correct in its "suggestions."

World Series of Birding "Big Stay" team at Scherman
Hoffman, 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

I am a Luddite compared to others. Ever since Covid got people outside and noticing the singing birds, birding has become more popular. I am seeing more people when I go out. I am reading more posts on eBird. I wonder how they are finding the birds.

They have help.

We are far beyond the time when all you needed were binoculars and a pair of eyes (and maybe a spotting scope). Besides apps like Merlin there are social media feeds where someone finding a rarity can send out an alert and 100s of people will be at the spot in a matter of minutes. Gadget technology is big, too. Hang a bird feeder with a camera on it that connects to your phone and you can get information on what you are seeing with the push of a button. Field guides? That's so last century!

Every birding organization from magazines such as Birds and Blooms to the National Audubon Society will be more than happy to show you the latest gear including camera attachments, gloves that will allow you to use your phone's touchscreen without removing them and the most effective mosquito repellent.

To me this is a bit much. As I've written before, there are limits to technology.

In years past, when I've seen Pete Dunne in the field, he has his binoculars and his decades of experience to guide him. Too many newbies think they have to become instant experts. When I see them in the field, more often than not they are holding cameras with long lenses rather than binoculars. They are going off the path, bushwhacking, destroying habitat and risking tick bites. 

Pete Dunne at Scherman Hoffman, 2019
(Margo D. Beller)

I can be obsessed about birding at this time of year now that I have the time to rise most weekday mornings and travel to where I (and Merlin) can hear the birds that will soon either be gone or sitting quietly on nests. Seeing what Merlin heard and I didn't can be humbling. It makes me want to listen to the calls more often so I can learn them. In that, I am competing with myself.

So have fun with the World Series of Birding, fellow birders. Raise untold thousands of dollars. Find rarities that may be passing through the state on May 10.

I wish you all luck. But this birder will be back in the field on May 11.

Depending on Myself

It is an unfortunate fact, one I hate acknowledging, that I will no longer see 20 again. Or 30. Or even 50. 

What led me to this reluctant acknowledgement is feeling the pains in my neck and legs after taking long, slow walks outside to find the birds in my area on their way to northern breeding grounds.

Today's Merlin home screen
(RE Berg-Andersson)

Yes, it is spring migration season and every day there are different birds now coming to my feeders that weren't around over the winter - purple finches, chipping sparrows, even white-throated sparrows that may have been intimidated during the winter by all the juncos. Meanwhile, the number of juncos is down as they head north to breed.

My husband (MH) is slowing down and there are many days I can't get him to come birding with me. He is a late riser and his knees are balky. When he does consent to accompany me, he tends to lag behind and depend on me to point birds out rather than using his eyes and ears to help me find them.  

So now that I have the time to do this, most mornings I go birding alone. Until recently, though, I had some help.

I wrote last year about using the free Merlin app created by the birding people at Cornell. Along with my eyes and legs, my hearing has been declining after decades of blaring music through headphones to dull out the noise from commuter trains. The app hears things I don't always hear right away. It gives me something to look for. Yes, it gets things wrong, such as identifying the calling Canada geese overhead as the smaller, darker brant geese. It makes "suggestions" after all.

This is as much technology as I care to use when I go birding. I found Merlin to be a helpful backup -- until it stopped working.

A sighting of that rare bird, MH. (Margo D. Beller)

A couple of weeks ago MH and I went birding, I heard something, I put on Merlin. It shut off. I tried again. It shut off again. MH opened the app on his phone. It crashed. I tried opening it on my phone once we got home. It crashed again.

MH and I uninstalled the app from our respective phones. I looked on some online forums and found others were having the same problem. Had Cornell made some change so it wouldn't work with my phone? I wrote Cornell and never got an answer.

Some people suggested clearing the cache on my phone. Didn't work. I loaded Merlin on my tablet, even adding packages of bird data from way outside my area. It worked on the tablet. I uninstalled Merlin from my phone again and reinstalled it. Same problem.

MH, meanwhile, decided it wasn't worth his trying because he always birds with me and I am the more active searcher. So Merlin is off his phone.

For a couple of weeks I was back to birding the way I once did - depending on my eyes and ears, with maybe some help from MH if he deigned to go out with me. I was still finding things but the searching up and down did a number on my neck, a phenomenon birders call "warbler neck" because these little birds are always moving around high in trees starting to leaf out. 

(RE Berg-Andersson)

Without Merlin I was no longer taking off my gloves so I could carefully pull my phone out of my jacket pocket so as not to lose the list of what Merlin had picked up. I was no longer walking with a phone in my hand, looking at it every few minutes. I began to think I would only use Merlin on the tablet in places where I would really need help, such as during our annual trip to Old Mine Road where the cacophony of calls makes it hard to identify the individual breeding birds. 

Periodically I would try Merlin on my phone. Sometimes it would have trouble finding my location and then crash. Sometimes it wouldn't even get that far. 

I was resigned to depending on myself - bad eyes, ears and legs - to find birds, bothered by thoughts of what I could be missing because the calls were too faint or high in pitch for me to hear. 

This story has a quasi-happy ending. Merlin still does not work consistently. In fact, it has been about as easy to get Merlin to accompany me as MH. I've gotten Merlin to work on my phone after multiple crashes by turning the app on, leaving it alone long enough to load all the things it needs to work and then hitting the record button as a bird sings overhead. But this does not always work. I now have to be patient to use this app, and patience is not one of my usual traits.

So when it comes to technology I've been reminded it is better for me to trust the computer in my brain, enjoy what birds I can find on my own and not fuss about what I can't. 

Rebirth

This is the time of year when I am always amazed my plants have survived the winter, especially the older trees and shrubs in the backyard. The apple tree, lilacs, pear tree and viburnum are leafing. The dogwood is showing buds that will become flowers two years after half of the tree died and had to be cut down. The daffodils, after several false starts when the weather turned cold, have bloomed in profusion. Many of the irises I moved to another plot last year are growing despite chipmunks at first digging them up. 

After the haircut (Margo D. Beller)

As usual in the spring deer found a way to get through a weakness in the netting to eat some of the euonymous bushes as they started to put out fresh growth. So the fence posts were straightened and increased, the netting restrung. Before doing that I hacked the euoymous shrubs back severely. The plants are secure but now I wonder how I'll be able to do maintenance when the daffodils die back in a few weeks.

I have not dealt with putting the canna pots out front yet because we've had weather see-sawing between above and below average temperatures. With the chipmunks in mind I am going to limit what pots I put out front, including any herb or vegetable I may buy to grow.

Finally, I had to give my houseplants a haircut after leaving them untended (except for watering them) all winter. They won't go out to the enclosed porch before Memorial Day, and I plan to be very careful to monitor for any insect invasion, such as last year's fungal gnats.

Before it was brought inside for the winter in 2024.
(Margo D. Beller)

The most problematic, as usual, was the big houseplant.

You'll recall I had allowed this once-small houseplant to get so big it had become very difficult to move in winter, especially up and down the three steps to my front room. Last year I tried leaving it outside but when the wind blew it would fall over, despite its bracing. I moved it inside the porch into the corner where it would get a few hours of sun. Alas, when it got very cold the plant became very stressed. I've never intentionally killed a plant and wasn't about to start. So I brought it inside to the kitchen, but it didn't get any natural light there. I wound up moving it into a corner of my vestibule where it would get some light from the front room.

After several months a strange thing happened: Despite dim light and dry heat, it started growing new leaves for the first time in years.

First that growth was at the top, the new leaves scraping the ceiling. But then the plant started growing from the bottom. Now what to do? Well, when the top leaves started dying en masse, it was easy to decide to use my lopper and chop down what had become an unwieldy tree. With the braces that had held up the plant now gone (and used to reinforce the deer fencing) it was much easier to move the pot to the front room.

Spruce at right, watching the big plant.
(Margo D. Beller)

The other morning I told Spruce Bringsgreen, the blue spruce we planted in 2007, what I had done and why his plantmate would not look the same when back on the porch this year. Last year Spruce had watched over this plant once I moved it inside and fretted about what to do as winter approached.

"That's OK," he said. "I understand why that had to be done. Rather than kill it outright you gave it a new chance to live and grow."

True, I said, and that's what Spring is all about - rebirth.

Saving the Daylight

Daylight time, a monstrosity in timekeeping.

-- Harry S. Truman

At 6 a.m. today, as the sky started to lighten, I went outside to the front yard to listen to the birds. I've been hearing a lot of birdsong lately as the amount of daylight has increased. Once dark by 4:30 p.m., now it is light until after 6 p.m.

In the distance I heard a cardinal - no surprise here. It has been my experience that, except for robins and perhaps a mockingbird, the cardinals are the first to start singing, just before dawn. Then I heard another cardinal singing a bit closer. I went back into the house and continued out the back door. More cardinals singing. All of them are proclaiming their breeding territories for the year - No Trespassing!

NO Trespassing, says the cardinal. (Margo D. Beller)

I put out the feeders and, as I stood on the porch, a cardinal started singing from the apple tree.

A week from today, this scene will be taking place at 7 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time.

I hate Daylight Saving Time (DST). It was not created for early risers. Birders, farmers, people with early work hours - now we are either rising in the dark at our usual time or, if we tend to wake with daylight, we are rising an hour later.

People who like DST are night owls like my husband (MH) and parents who can send their children outside after supper to burn off excess energy. Next week these same parents will be pulling their kids out of bed in the dark to get them ready for school.

I used to think DST was created to allow people in the South to have extended time for evening cookouts. According to what I have read, it was created to conserve energy during World War I, first in Europe and then in the U.S. In January 1974 the U.S. enacted year-round DST during that year's energy crisis, but it proved to be so unpopular it was repealed by the end of the year. 

I prefer the early morning sun. (Margo D. Beller)

When we "spring forward" and "fall back" has changed over the years. I can remember when we turned the clocks ahead in April and turned them back in October. Since 2007 we have turned the clocks ahead the second Sunday in March - less than a week from today - and turned the clocks back the first Sunday in November (Nov. 2 this year). 

The birds, of course, don't have to worry about setting clocks ahead or back. Their day starts at first light and ends at dusk. So the cardinal will sing at the same time, but it will be an hour later on my clock.

No matter when DST happens, it seems to take place just when I finally have enough early daylight to rise and go about my business outside. Then I lose the earlier light for about three weeks. It means going out on the porch later for the sunlight. The longer afternoon light means I have to remember to bring in the feeders at a new time. 

"Gaining" an hour for a day is nice (later this year; for now I lose an hour), but I'd rather we leave the daylight alone.

Cutting the Grass

We had a warm period in late February that melted all the snow and ice, including the hazardous area behind the enclosed back porch that gets little in the way of sun. The melting allowed me to put out feeders for the first time in a week. Birds were singing in profusion and I knew spring would be here soon.

The largest of the three ornamental grasses, October 2023
(Margo D. Beller)

So would the spring chores.

There are certain plants that should be left alone over the winter, and there are plants I don't bother to cut back in autumn because it is tiring to work around, over and behind the deer netting.

Now that I have more time to go birding during the week, I have little inclination to go out on the weekend when plenty of people with kids are at the parks. So on March 1, knowing from the weather forecast the wind would start blowing and the temperature would fall during the day, I went out into the garden. 

There are many chores I do in the spring. One is digging out finished compost, which I do sporadically. (I did it last year.) Another is deadheading the plants I left standing. The most important, however, is cutting back the ornamental grasses. 

Ornamental grasses are wonderful plants. They grow tall and wide and the deer don't eat them because the leaves, at least on the type I have, are thin and spiky. But like all plants, including my beloved daffodils (another plant deer don't eat because all parts are poisonous, including the flowers), when the growing season is done there is foliage to cut back. A lot of foliage.

After a long period of dryness we had rain in November
2024 and the grass went from brown to more of a gold
color not seen well in this photo.
(Margo D. Beller)

I was not ready to start work in the garden but I knew this had to be done because eventually the daffodils and other plants in this particular area were going to start growing. The three grasses I have were pummeled by rain, snow and especially wind. The northwest wind blew hard for much of the winter, another sign of changes in the climate as the Earth's oceans continue to warm.

So I planned to attack the plants from the rear. Except I discovered behind one of them that the daffodils had started growing much earlier than usual, even before the crocus, thanks to the unusual pattern of warm weather than followed this season's very cold winter. I also found the irises I had put here after dividing the ones in the front yard were growing, too. So on this particular grass my strategy had to change. (Getting to the other two to cut them back was easier.)

I was glad to see the plants had survived, tho' disturbed by how early they had shown up. The other week I was walking along one of my usual birding areas, Patriots Path, once the ice had melted and saw a phoebe. This flycatcher, a harbinger of spring migration, should've shown up in mid-March, not Feb. 25. And yet here it was, in an area by the Whippany River where I have seen and heard them before. Now that it has become cold and windy again, will it find the food it needs to survive?

I wondered that about the yard birds, too, when I couldn't risk falling on the ice to put the feeders out (a hungry squirrel that could jump over the baffle was another factor). But they managed and were quickly at the feeders once I put them out.

The largest of the grasses before the cutting in 2024.
(Margo D. Beller)

Back to the grasses. It took about two hours to cut the three of them, the largest of them taking the most time. When I was nearly done with that one the wind picked up strong, forcing me to hold down what I had piled in a large pail for composting until things calmed down. But now you can see the growing daffodils the foliage had covered.

As for the other grass - the lawn - it is still brown from its winter dormancy. Eventually it, too, will green and grow and the area will be filled with the noise and smell of lawn mowers. For now, in the renewed cold, it is quiet out there.

Which reminds me, once again I need a spring haircut, too. 

Grasses cut, daffodils exposed after last
March's cutting. (Margo D. Beller)

Snow More

So far this year 2025 has been filled with cold, snow and ice. And yet, according to my home state of New Jersey, January was one of the driest in history.

Says NJ.com about January, "Many areas of the Garden State have picked up less than an inch of total precipitation so far this month. That includes rain and all the liquid from melted snow and sleet, according to data from the National Weather Service." 

Scene from a recent snowstorm
(Margo D. Beller)

It was also very cold for a number of days. According to NOAA, "For those living in the southern, central, or eastern parts of the nation—who might have forgotten what winter could be like following last winter’s record-warmth—Mother Nature provided a hard-hitting reminder during January. Temperatures averaged below normal from coast-to-coast during the month, but periodic intrusions of Arctic air were most prevalent into the central and eastern U.S." 

Now, it's February. As I write the temperature is above freezing and it is raining. Our last snowstorm the other week dropped three inches of snow and one of ice, making it harder to shovel the front and back paths. Since then temperatures have risen above freezing during the day and then dropped at night, freezing the snow and making it more hazardous to get to the bird feeders. It is miserable out and, unless everything is washed away, it will continue to be icy for days.

According to NOAA again: The temperature outlook favors well above average temperatures across the southern and eastern parts of the nation, as well as in northern and western Alaska. Below-average temperatures are favored across parts of the northern and western U.S., as well as in southeastern Alaska. The precipitation outlook favors well above average precipitation in the Pacific Northwest, Northern Rockies, around the Great Lakes, in the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, in the Northeast, and in western and northern Alaska, with below-average precipitation favored only in parts of the Southwest and Florida. (emphasis added) 

One of the redtail hawks I've seen near my house.
(Margo D. Beller)

The birds do not seem to mind all this strange weather. Several times I have seen a pair of redtail hawks flying around and landing in trees near my house. At this time of year they would be pairing, mating, creating a nest and having a brood. I have not found the nest yet, but I haven't had much opportunity to go out looking for it. (I haven't found a nest since 2012.)

In weather like this, when it is either raining heavily or extremely windy, the feeders are inside and the smaller birds have to fend for themselves. I don't like this but I can't fly over the ice to get to the poles, and the rain rots the seed.

Unfortunately, there is another reason for keeping them inside - one of the local squirrels has figured out how to jump on the baffle on one of the feeder poles and grab hold of the long feeder I put out after big snowstorms. (It holds more seed and I don't have to worry about leaving it out overnight because the bears are hibernating, but that will end in March.) The last time there was so much snow and ice the squirrels couldn't get to their stashes and the birds didn't drop enough for them to eat was in February 2014. That was a bad winter. The squirrels used the ice atop the snow piles as a step. This year the snow is a bit less but the one squirrel (who might be a female eating for six) is just as desperate.

This was from 2014. The feeder is the same, the
squirrel far different. (Margo D. Beller)

I used to like snow, until I became a homeowner who had to shovel it or pay someone to plow it from the driveway. Snow looks pretty until it starts to melt or, as is currently the case, gets rained upon. We have had more snow this month than we've had the last two winters. That's a good thing considering last September's drought but even with all the rain and snow we've had, my region of New Jersey is considered severely dry. Other areas are worse.

Thanks to climate change my area of the country has had milder winters with little in the way of snow, which contributed to the drought. What we're getting now is more "normal," though historically we are still getting far less snow than when I was a child. 

So, much as I hate to say it, I can only hope for more snow, ice and rain to ease the drought, and enough dryness in between to feed the birds.

Greeting the Dawn

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. -- Marcus Aurelius

A few weeks ago my husband and I spent a few days on Cape Cod, the windswept peninsula of eastern Massachusetts sticking out into the Atlantic Ocean. We spent the daylight hours birding. One day our travels took us along the western coast of the peninsula, which faces Cape Cod Bay, far beyond which is the mainland.

This particular day we stopped at the many beaches, with a break for lunch. Our last stop, late in the afternoon, was First Encounter Beach in Eastham. What we found surprised us - not ocean birds blown closer to shore in the strong wind as we found at other beaches but a parking lot full of cars pointing toward the water. Even as we slowed down more cars came in behind us and parked.

We realized these cars were coming to watch the sun go down.

We have seen this in other shore areas. Find a west-facing beach and you'll see people arriving to watch the sunset. The sun lowers into the ocean and when it disappears people applaud. Then they drive home.

Sunrise, Florida, 2010 (Margo D. Beller)

First Encounter Beach was a perfect spot for locals, and maybe other tourists visiting or renting nearby houses for the summer. We got out of there before the cars would be departing on the one narrow road and were back at our room by dark. We returned well before sunset a few days later to do our birding, with few cars in the lot.

I don't understand why people want to watch the sun set, and why they applaud, as if this is a show put on for their benefit. When the sun sets the darkness comes and I am not a night person.

I prefer watching the sun rise. When I started birding and could do it only on weekends I'd leave the house early on a spring morning and drive to a particular location where the rising sun would be accompanied by bird calls. It is peaceful and quiet on a marsh and I would feel blessed to be alive to enjoy it. It's also peaceful and quiet early on a winter morning at my house.

In winter the sun comes up in a position to hit me full in the face as I sit in my chair on my enclosed porch. I watch as the light increases, shining on the steam rising from my neighbor's chimney. Then the sun slowly appears at the edge of my neighbor's roof and the light washes over me. At this time of year, when the sun rises later, I don't get the full benefit for very long on this porch. If I'm lucky I get five minutes of sun before its arc brings it behind a tree. 

As the sun rises the birds become more active at the feeders, the bigger or the more aggressive birds pushing others away. When the sun is at its brightest I close my eyes and enjoy the warmth while i can.

Perhaps the people applauding the sunset are just happy they made it through another day. Maybe they prefer sitting in their cars late in the afternoon to waking early to catch the dawn. Maybe they like the sunset colors or a feeling of fellowship with strangers, like sitting at a drive-in watching a movie.

That's their choice but not mine.

Montauk (L.I.) sunset, 2017 (Margo D. Beller)

The rising sun is a symbol of new possibilities and another day to exist while, to me, the setting sun means an ending. It is the same reason why I prefer to see the colors of the budding trees in spring to the gaudy colors of the dying leaves in autumn. 

Rebirth will always beat out death, even vividly colored death, every time.