Dawn Chorus, With Junco

It is a cold dawn with slight fog as I stand on my back patio, listening. There are many robins singing, the occasional high peal of a cardinal. They are greeting the day in their own ways, proclaiming "I am here, this is my territory, stay away unless you are a potential mate."

Singing cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

Robins are the early birds that catch the worms, but there are others in this dawn chorus that join in as more daylight comes. More cardinals, the "here, here" of a titmouse, the "oh Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody" of a white-throated sparrow now in breeding colors (his throat and "eyebrows" are a very bright white and you can see the yellow close to the eyes, an area known as the lores).

In the old days, when I walked early in the morning to the train to take me to work, I would listen to the birdsong. Some birds I could easily recognize, others I would come to learn over the course of a decade. The chatter of goldfinches, the "tea kettle, tea kettle" of a Carolina wren and the cascading warble of its smaller relative, the house wren. The "hey sweetie" of a black-capped chickadee or the raucaus "thief!" of the blue jay. It took years of searching trees and walking through the woods to learn which calls were made by which bird.

White-throated sparrow in nonbreeding coloring
(Margo D. Beller)

Now, standing still in the growing light, I hear Canada geese, the high-pitched squeal of a red-bellied woodpecker, the three-note "tzee-tzee-tzee" of a golden-crowned kinglet, the drumming against four different trees by woodpeckers proclaiming their territories. Here are the mourning dove, the fish crow, the larger American crow and the rattle of cowbirds. The slight differences in call between a downy woodpecker and the larger, nearly identical hairy woodpecker.

Once in a while there is something unusual -- a sharp-shinned hawk flap-flap-soaring overhead, a raven's guttural croak, the high-pitched "hank" of a white-breasted nuthatch. The longer I stand outside, the longer I hear another soloist come to the foreground of this chorus. For me it ends as I am going inside to warm up and get some coffee and a flicker does its long laughing call.

Spring is my favorite time of the year. The birds are noisier as they start looking for a suitable nest site and a mate. The migrants are passing through my area, heading north from their wintering grounds. Ruby-throated hummingbirds have been reported as far north as New Jersey, despite our unusually cold March and April weather. When the instinct says go, you go.

Depending on where you are located, you will hear different birds calling in the dawn or at dusk. My patch is a suburban town in New Jersey. In a few weeks, if I'm lucky, I might hear the softer songs, clicks and buzzes of the warblers and other migrant birds foraging in the treetops as the first rays of the rising sun hit that area. There are many songs I still can't identify, even after all these years.

House finch in feeder, junco at top right, female
cardinal at top left (Margo D. Beller)

One of the interesting "problems" I have is telling the difference between four different birds whose songs are very similar. What I heard the other morning as part of the dawn chorus was a small black and white sparrow with a pink bill called a junco or, to give it its formal name, a dark-eyed junco. This is a winter visitor, and in my part of the country it is only the male birds hanging around. The browner females stay farther to the south. The idea, I think, is the males can get north and find the best territories faster if they stay farther north. So they and the white-throats come to the feeders in winter and are soon replaced by summer visitors including the catbird and the chipping sparrow.

The junco's call is soft, high in pitch and musical. The chipping sparrow will call more loudly, longer and the call is not as musical. Some refer to it as "dry." To me, and this dates me, it sounds like a person using two fingers to tap tap tap on a manual typewriter keyboard, kind of mechanical. As noted, the chippy arrives around the time the junco is making ready to leave and you'll often hear their calls during that time.

Chipping sparrow in nonbreeding coloring (Margo D. Beller)

There are two other summer visitors with similar musical calls, so I have to work my memory a little harder to remember them. I don't have many pines growing around my area and I don't live near a swamp, so I have to travel elsewhere to hear pine warblers or swamp sparrows. Pine warbler song is high in pitch and very sweetly musical. The ornithologists at Cornell describe the swamp sparrow call as "a slow trill consisting of two or more pitches repeatedly sung essentially at the same time." To me it sounds like a chippy or a junco.

As problems go, trying to remember the different songs of four birds is a minor but enjoyable challenge.

Triumph and Disaster

Every spring I am pleased to hear the dawn chorus of birds and amazed when things start growing in my garden, particularly after a very cold and/or snowy winter. This year, "winter" seemed to concentrate itself in the month of March. But even now, in April, it has been colder than average here in New Jersey.

Glory of the snow, April 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

Still, no matter the year my first reaction in spring is usually the same: "Wow! Look who's here! You survived!"

First come the crocuses and the snowdrop. Both bloomed when they were supposed to, in late February, as the first daffodil shoots started coming up during some unusual warmth. Then came the March cold and four nor'easters, the second dumping 20 or so inches of the white stuff. But the snow melted and these flowers re-appeared and continued to bloom.

Then came the glory-of-the-snow, a small blue flower with a white center I planted in one part of the garden years ago and then moved, only to forget where I put it until it suddenly showed up. It does so every April.

Another surprise: Last year I bought a peony root and put it in a large pot. It did not do very well. I left it in the pot for most of the summer until I read more about how it likes to grow. Since deer allegedly don't eat it - peony flowers are showy and highly perfumed - I dug a hole and put it in one area of the garden I do not net. I marked it with a small flag and hoped for the best. Walking over to the compost pile one recent morning I checked and found two small, red shoots. Signs of growth! I hope the deer don't discover them.

Look closely. There are two red shoots here. Maybe the deer
will miss them. (Margo D. Beller)

One year I put the cannas I keep in two pots on my enclosed porch for the winter, covered in plastic. I later learned I had made two big mistakes - cannas are supposed to be kept cool but not subfreezing, and they are not supposed to get damp or they will rot. Plastic covering kept them damp and that winter the average temperature on the porch was 32 degrees. It took some time but the plants, once divided, managed to survive and grow. Since then I've stored them in the garage, which provides more shelter.

But for every triumph there seems to be a disaster.

This year the potted rosemary kicked the bucket after 10+ years of providing me with fresh herbs. Did it get too much water or two little? Too much dry house heat? I don't know. I did nothing different than I had in previous winters but even perennials die at some point. So now I have a glass jar full of dried herbs after I took off as many leaves as possible before struggling to get the plant out of the pot and into compost.  A friend let me take two cuttings of her plant, which had come from my plant, and I'll try growing rosemary again.

Then came the white flies.

I have a bad habit of trying to keep so-called "annuals" going over the winter. This started when I kept one pot of peppers indoors and the next year it grew more and bigger peppers. So each year I keep at least one pot of peppers. I have also been known to try to keep annuals going beyond most people's expectations. I kept a mum going for over 10 years, for instance. This past winter I tried that with begonias, coleus and ageratum, with little success. The begonias, ageratum and two of the six coleus died.

Last fall I found a tomato plant growing near my compost pile, perhaps a seed sown by a chipmunk or squirrel. I dug it up and put it in a pot. It grew very fast -- too fast. It had to be caged, staked and tied. It started to flower in December. Unfortunately, like all tomatoes, I discovered it was a white fly magnet.

The previous winter I had a terrible time with white flies. They infested all the plants, which had to be taken outside and shaken, cleaned and quickly brought back. The peppers were banished to my enclosed porch until I could put them outside. They were composted that fall.

Tomato, before composting. (Margo D. Beller)

This time I had kept two plants going, one of which provided me with small but good peppers during the winter. The other has started growing its own fruits. No flies, or so I thought, until I accidentally kicked one of the pots as I cleaned up rosemary debris after moving that pot. I had noticed but ignored some important clues. Some of the pepper leaves had started to brown. "Honeydew" was showing up on the front window. Now I had flies and, worse, I had hundreds of flies on the suddenly wilting tomato.

So the peppers were whisked outdoors, shaken and put on the back porch, where they were wrapped against the cold expected that night. The tomato was taken to the front yard, hit with a spray of water and put behind the deer netting, wrapped. The next morning the peppers were brought indoors, even though there are still some flies around. The tomato was a disaster. I put it on the enclosed porch and today it went back to the compost pile.

From compost came ye and to compost will ye return. I'll be buying my tomatoes from the farm market.

Signs of Destruction, Signs of Life (Updated)

(Updated with a postscript at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, April 2, 2018)

The weather people say March 1 is the beginning of meteorological spring. The calendar says spring begins around March 20.

Flowering maple, March 31, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

This year, for me, spring began on March 30 when it was mild enough for me to sit outside on my patio in my robe and listen to the dawn chorus of robins, cardinals, two types of crows, titmouse, mourning dove and Canada geese. Except for where the snow had been piled the highest, all of it was gone, I could see the flowers on the maple trees and Ifelt as though winter was finally over.

But that mildness meant something else -- migrating birds.

It seems like a lifetime ago that we had warm weather, but it was only the end of February when MH and I went down to Barnegat Light to take pictures, walk the beach and celebrate an unusually warm day. Then March came and with it four nor'easters. The first brought the strongest winds since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, toppling trees and taking out power lines. The second brought about 20 inches of snow, pummeling my fence posts and burying the snowdrops and crocus that had begun to blossom. The next two were glancing blows, giving us "only" about six inches.

In the last week, however, the temperatures, while still below normal for March, were above freezing and the snow slowly melted. The winds started blowing up from the south. I could see the winter damage to be repaired. The snowdrops and crocus reappeared and continued blooming, now joined by an assortment of daffodils. The iris showed signs of life. The feeder birds were joined by others I only see when they pass through in spring or autumn.

Damage from the second nor'easter (Margo D. Beller)

I sat on my patio and heard a golden-crowned kinglet's call as it followed the chickadees through the yard. Then came the soft "seeees" from a flock of cedar waxwings up in one of my trees. (I could not see them until they took off in a group.) A phoebe flew to a lower branch in the apple tree looking for insects. It flicked its tail a couple of times and then took off. I rarely get phoebes in my yard because they prefer areas near water. But a hungry phoebe that has just arrived and not picked a nesting territory yet is not choosy.

For many people, phoebes are the first migrant of spring, soon followed by tree and barn swallows, chipping sparrows and palm warblers.

The mild air coming from the south opened the floodgates for northbound migrants unable to head to their breeding grounds because of the persistent cold blasts that had pummeled us up until that moment.

Sewer line, across from dog park (Margo D. Beller)

So on Saturday I went for a walk. I started on the fringes of what I still call Greystone, even though it is now officially the Central Park of Morris County. There were 27 cars parked at the dog park, which meant at least 27 people and 27 dogs. But of course there were more because people were bringing their spouses and/or their children and many had more than one dog.

As they enjoyed their time outside my attention was drawn to the other side of the road, where it was obvious there had been a lot of destruction, all of it man-made. During the winter I had seen pipes laid out along the road. Now they were all buried underground and a sewer manhole had been put in near the brook. The trees closest to the road, the brush that once hid birds, the dead stump where I saw a pileated woodpecker hunting for carpenter ants, gone.

Worse, the little tree that had been struggling to grow on its small hillside for years was gone, buried under rubble or uprooted. Despite the birds chirping around me, I was saddened. I do not know why this sewer was put in by this town (next to mine) but I do know roads are being put in to expand the park's use. Perhaps a larger bathroom facility is planned? As usual, when there is development even in a park something goes by the wayside. Farther up the road there were woods where I once found a variety of birds including bluebirds and several types of flycatcher. They are gone now, replaced by a large field for soccer.

March 31, 2018. A tree once stood here (Margo D. Beller)

February 2018. (Margo D. Beller)

More people and dogs, fewer trees. More soccer fields, fewer places to walk in quiet. Parks don't pay taxes so to pay their way they must offer a range of activities. Even the most famous Central Park, the one in New York City, does that. But that Central Park is far larger than this one, and this expansion closer to home rankles.

I continued on. A pair of mourning cloak butterflies flew by as I watched the cowbirds, which will soon be dropping eggs in other birds' nests, to the detriment of the nests. Once I left the shade of the trees and the calls of song sparrows and cardinals the sun beat down from a cloudless sky. I was not the only one out. People running, people walking dogs, people raking or blowing last year's leaves off their lawns, kids playing in the yard. Men in long shorts and women in sweatshirts while I, not quite believing it could be so warm at last, was in my light parka, small binoculars in the big pocket. Turkey vultures and fish crows flew overhead. The first forsythia flowers were blooming.

Spring is here. The signs are everywhere from the birdsong to the heightened outdoor activity and the noise that goes with it. The days are getting longer and at some point the temperatures will go from below average to where they are supposed to be.  Each year at this time I am amazed that winter or my lack of care didn't kill off my garden plants.

It is time to start planning on repairing fences, putting down wood chips, pulling weeds and moving the pots of peppers and tomato outside. Time to plan on rising and traveling to the nearby hot spots early to listen for arriving migrant birds. Planning is conditional, however. I plan to do this and other things but I know nothing is certain, including the warmer weather.

Already I've seen reports there will be snow tonight. It's April, TS Eliot's cruelest month.  I've barely begun my garden cleanup.

Postscript: Yes, it snowed. Again.

April 2, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)