Bearly There

On this last day of 2017 the air temperature is in the teens, some 20 degrees colder than the average for this time of year. When I wake at 6am it is dark and, because I have lowered the heat and it won't come on full until 7 am or so, it is cold. I am curled up under two quilts, a sheet, with one fleece blanket below me and a smaller one over me. MH snores by my side. I am not inclined to rise before 7am and so stay huddled up in a ball until forced to leave my warm bed.

Just like a bear.

(Director Mike Anderson took this picture in 2014 at New Jersey
Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary in Bernardsville)

Ever wonder why you feel more sluggish at this time of year or eat fewer cold salads in favor of mashed potatoes, squash or anything covered in thick gravy? It is our body telling us that, like the bear, it is time to fatten up before a harsh winter when there is less food to be had and less daylight to find it. When I had to rise at 6am to commute on the train I needed an alarm to jolt me awake. Not now. But even with daylight it is a struggle to leave my "den" for the outside world.

I put out the feeders. Many mornings it is my only reason for getting out of bed.

At this time of year the bears should be hibernating but this intense cold is only recent. It was relatively warm for November into early December and there was a 16-day bear hunt that lasted until Dec. 16, so I thought the bears might be on the move and would menace my feeders and feeder poles, as they have done at least four times that I know of (one of those times a bear nearly destroyed my pear tree as it tried to climb to the one small pear still on it). I have been taking the three feeders in every night. Now I don't have to although I know the deer may put their front hooves on a baffle and attempt to knock the seed feeders enough to drop seeds for them to eat. At least one baffle was destroyed that way.

And yet, the number of bear complaints is down. According to a Star-Ledger article quoting the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, as of Dec. 20, "the activity of 965 black bears has been reported to the DEP, a sharp drop from the 2116 of 2016, the department's bear activity report shows.

"In addition to 261 sightings where nothing happened, 695 bears caused 'damage or nuisance' in 2016, a more than 50 percent drop from the 1,394 problem bears last year.

"In 2016, 722 bear sightings resulted in the animals simply leaving the area without doing anything."

My only reason for rising most mornings
nowadays (Margo D. Beller)

It was in 2016 that the pear tree was damaged. It was in 2015, on a bright late September afternoon, that a bear ambled through my yard, snapped off an iron arm from a feeder pole, nearly destroyed my house feeder and then ambled off to the next street. I guess that is considered not doing anything.

Still, despite the "few" bear sightings and the lower number of bears killed 409 versus 2016's 636, during what might be the last hunt for a while (the incoming governor pledged to suspend the hunt, at least for now), the thought of even one bear foraging in my yard is enough.

No, better to brave the cold at night and in the morning.

The intense cold is as hard on me as the high heat and humidity of summer. Bears have a thick coat to withstand the cold while they hibernate. They have the right idea, which is why you'll find me huddled in my quilts and blankets and flannels on this winter's night.

It is expected to be 5 degrees when I put out the feeders on the first day of 2018. Happy new year. 

'Interesting' Times

"May you live in interesting times."
  -- purported Chinese curse

As I write late in December 2017, the rain is falling and the temperature is expected to rise to 50 degrees. Not the type of White Christmas people in the New York area seem determined to have no matter how much trouble snow causes for travelers.

I sit on my porch, bundled against the damp coolness, trying to breathe it all in before re-entering my warmer, dryer house. Birds come to the feeder poles to find no seed outside today in the downpour, and their contact calls and the occasional cars driving by are the only sounds I hear. No leaf blowers. No lawn mowers. No shouting kids or barking dogs.

I think about this year. It started with a health crisis for me. On my birthday my main source of income dropped me and most of the rest of my co-workers. We lost two loved ones, a friend of 40 years' standing and MH's father, within three months of each other. 

Some would like to see a White Christmas. I do not. This is from several
years ago. (Margo D. Beller)

But there was also good. We got to New Hampshire to visit family more times this year, even though two of those visits were after, or because of, funerals. We celebrated our grandnephew's first birthday and learned that he will soon have a sibling. Our nieces, nephew and their spouses or boyfriend are gainfully employed, an increasing rarity for their generation.

We saw many friends including others from college days and some who have been friends since we worked together at other jobs, sometimes many other jobs. MH and I celebrated another anniversary and we explored much of the far end of Long Island.

And we saw the underpinnings of democracy be weakened by a president determined to blow up the good, rational parts of what makes our country work and replace it with lunacy - hollowing out whole departments by forcing out the knowledgeable, longtime people and not replacing them, or bringing in the type of political or religious hack (often a mega-donating billionaire) with no experience except a stated preference for closing the department he or she now runs.

We do not live in the age of statesmen, particularly in our highly partisan Congress, where working with people from the other political party is worse than a serious affront, it can lose you any power you've worked to gain through consistent re-election. Thus a tax bill that will hurt people in my home state, which already pays out more in taxes than it receives in government aid, while benefiting GOP-leaning states (and income brackets) that pay out far less and get far more in return. A tax bill that may result in my health insurance becoming too expensive for me to afford at a time when I am too young for Medicare and too old to be hired in the workplace, age discrimination laws notwithstanding.

This is more like what we expect for Christmas 2017.
It adds a bit of prettiness. (Margo D. Beller)

What do you do in such times? You hope. You hope the midterm elections bring about more people to undo the damage. (For how we got to this point, read Kurt Andersen's "Fantasyland." It explains a lot and is an easy but disturbing read.) You hope your grandnephew and the rest of his generation grow up to make the world a better place. You hope you live long enough to see it.

This doesn't have much to do with birds, does it. Well, here's something: My new year's wish is to see more birds for the first time and thus add to my life as well as my Life List.

Happy holidays.

Birding for the Soul

The natural world is a gateway to the timeless and the infinite. We can never understand it completely, and so for us it serves as a bridge to the infinite.
 -- Thomas Moore, "Ageless Soul"

"These are the times that try men's souls," MH tells me as we slowly walk down a gentle incline, kicking through beech, red oak, white oak and tulip poplar leaves, trying to avoid the rocks and roots. He is not talking about what's going on in the world now. He is quoting Thomas Paine regarding George Washington and the War of Independence.

Looking back up from the hollow. (Margo D. Beller)

We are on a narrow trail through woods at the Morristown (NJ) National Historic Park known as Jockey Hollow. Washington and his army camped at Jockey Hollow twice, the first time for a few months in the winter of 1777 and then for a longer period starting in the winter of 1779 - much more time than the better-known winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pa.

I do not like winter, and since my last post on the subject, MH's father died. As we walk in the woods, past tall, century-old trees that sprang up after Washington's army left after clearing the original trees to build huts and cook their food, it is cold and quiet, only us except for the occasional dog walker.

There are a lot of hills and valleys in this park. This particular trail, named for the New York State Brigade, is leading to what may be THE hollow for which this park is named.

Our hike here was not planned. I stopped here because I like driving the paved tour road through Jockey Hollow when we are headed elsewhere, and then I had to make a stop to adjust something. MH suggested we hike the path near us. Our motivations were different. I was looking for a place for us to walk and maybe hear a few birds. He was thinking of our recent hike at Washington Crossing State Park, the area where, on Christmas 1776, Washington brought his army across the Delaware River into New Jersey to surprise the British at the Battle of Trenton. We hiked near the river after looking at the artifacts at the park's museum. I was not expecting to find any unusual birds but I was pleasantly surprised to find a yellow-bellied sapsucker - a woodpecker I rarely see in our backyard - and a brown creeper.

Brown creeper, front yard (Margo D. Beller)

So here we were at Jockey Hollow. We walked a long while before we heard the contact calls of black-capped chickadees, tufted titmice and juncos, but MH heard something else - the scream of a red-tailed hawk. I did not hear it the first time but I did the second time, and so did the birds, which went quiet. I set about trying to find it with my binoculars. We slowly continued along the path.

Then, it flew from one tree to another.

I watched it watching me. It called several times. It must've been a juvenile - a male, judging by its size (female red-tails are larger) - because an adult would know that screaming would not get it any supper, winged or otherwise. Finally, it got tired of watching me and flew off. A minute or so later, the small birds started chattering again and MH said he wanted to start the hike back up the hill to our car.

I did not want to leave. A few winters ago I had to have surgery, and in the long recovery afterwards I only started to feel like myself again - well - when I went to the local park and started walking along the familiar trail and tried to find the birds I heard calling, something I enjoy doing.

Another red-tail in another tree
(Margo D. Beller)

In his new book, "Ageless Soul," Thomas Moore makes the point that there is a difference between aging well and getting old. As with the other book I recently read about global warming, this book has made me see another view of what I consider a negative experience. You can't change time. You can't make yourself younger, no matter how many pills you take or how much plastic surgery you have.

What you can do is enjoy the world around you, expand your horizons and make a difference.

"Work without play is a burden," he writes. "Play helps relieve some of the weight of labor."

For me, play is going outside for a walk and trying to find and identify birds, even if they are familiar ones I can see at the feeder from my kitchen. Birding is good for the soul and has been a way to help me heal through several winters of personal and professional changes.

The starkness of winter, Jockey Hollow (Margo D. Beller)

I think of all those Saturday mornings I felt compelled to get up and out of the house and go birding after a particularly hellish week when I was working in the city, away from home for 12 hours a day including work hours and the commute. Since working from home I sometimes feel a waning in my birding interest. "I've seen all these birds before. Why bother going outside?" I thought. That, I now know, is the wrong attitude.

As Moore writes, "[I]f you work without play, that soul work is neglected, and your work doesn't age you well. You get older as the years pass, but you don't get better as a person."

Like Scrooge on Christmas morning, I now know I can change my ways before it is too late.

Two Ways of Looking at Global Warming

The Carolina wren flies to the porch and pokes around the overhang, looking for bugs. But this wren has flown to a porch in central New Hampshire. According to the owner of the property, this is the first Carolina wren he's ever seen in the state.

 As the name implies, Carolina wrens were once primarily found in the southeastern U.S. However, they are a common sight at all times of the year in my home state of New Jersey, which is north of the Carolinas and south of New Hampshire. These wrens, unlike the marsh and house wrens I see every summer, don't fly south for the winter. As long as there are feeders to provide suet and seed when the snows cover any insects, these wrens will survive.

Carolina wren at feeder in winter (Margo D. Beller)

Northern cardinals, despite their name, is another species once only found in the south, as were the northern mockingbird and the redbellied woodpecker. They are common backyard birds in my part of the country now. They have come north along with their food sources, managing to survive in northern areas in winter. I also happen to think that as global warming continues, as we are told more months of the year are the warmest ever, the birds can push north and stay, migrants no more.

If you've read my posts you know I am no fan of "development" and of the continued warming of the Earth, a process some call global warming but now has been dubbed climate change. Either way it means that average temperatures have been rising, weather has been getting more extreme, more 100-year disasters have been taking place more frequently and more carbon monoxide and greenhouse gases are being created, to the detriment of the atmosphere.

That's my usual glass-half-empty view because of what I see reported on the news, such as when the current U.S. administration thinks climate change is a Chinese hoax, wants to subsidize coal mining over cheaper and cleaner natural gas and puts in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency someone who wants to dismantle it.

Professor Chris D. Thomas of the University of York (UK) has another, more positive view. You could say he takes a much longer view than the mainstream press - several millennia, in fact. He believes that thanks to warming and other changes there is more species diversity in many areas.

"The world is one in which the specific combination of species and genes in any one place is new but the fundamental biological processes that are in operating are the same as before," he writes in his new book "Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Evolution."

Northern cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

Thomas is a realist. He knows there are areas of the world where species have become extinct. But he also knows that while climate change and excess pollution are things to fight, the long-term view is this is evolution, right out of Charles Darwin. Nature adapts, like the Carolina wren in New Hampshire. The state now has an additional species, adding to its diversity.

And it's not just birds. Many trees and plants have moved to other areas and thrived.

"Accepting that ecological and evolutionary change is how nature works means that we must contemplate life as a never-ending sequence of events, not as a single fixed image of how it looks today," he writes. "This dynamic perspective of life on Earth allows us to put aside most of our doom-laden rhetoric and recognize that the changes we see around us, including those that have been directly or indirectly engineered by people, are not necessarily fundamentally better or worse than the ones that went before. They are just different."

What is creating change is us, not just with more industry and suburban developments but by more subtle processes. The ships that brought Europeans to the new world brought with them diseases, and insects and vermin that stowed away. They brought plants and vegetables to remind them of home in this new world. Some of these plants thrived while others did not. Some had to "move" to other areas through mankind's movements to survive.

According to Thomas, those that do not evolve will die. At the same time, he disagrees with those who want to eradicate "foreign" species, such as the American trees brought over to Europe and now thriving. They want to bring things back to the way things were. Impossible, says Thomas.

Prothonotary warbler, increasingly found
in NYC, as this was
(Margo D. Beller)

"We are living in a fundamentally human-altered planet, and there is no longer any such thing as human-free nature," he says. "We cannot reverse time. Instead, we should appreciate changes that are positive as much as we regret any losses."

This is certainly a different way of looking at the changes we humans have created - inadvertently and intentionally - in this world. So in future I won't be overwhelmingly negative when another bird that normally lives farther south starts making regular appearances in my area, such as the southern yellow-throated and prothonotary warblers. It's evolution in action.

At the same time we must work hard to keep the losses of different birds and other species to a minimum and encourage the positive. Everyone can do something, however small. For instance, buy and put out feeders to keep the Carolina wrens and redbellied woodpeckers of the world thriving when they visit your yard this winter, wherever you might be.