Make Way for the Monarch

Birds are not the only creatures heading south for the winter. Monarch butterflies are filing the skies, heading to winter grounds in central Mexico. The changing colors of the tree leaves get most of the attention of travelers in late September into October, but for those with the patience to stop and look around comes the reward of seeing the majestic orange and black wings of this large butterfly as it stops at fall asters, sunflowers, goldenrod and other flowers for food to power its trip south.

Biddeford Pool, Maine, Sept. 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

Think about it: This butterfly, which weighs next to nothing, has to travel thousands of miles if it is going to live to fly north in spring, find plants suitable for laying eggs and then die. The travel is treacherous. Winds blow them off course, forcing them to use precious energy to keep going. I've seen monarchs traveling over water as they hug the coast, such as the dozens MH and I saw along the coast of Maine, undeterred by strong northwest winds pushing them from the side.

Monarch and bees on sunflower, Morris Townwhip, NJ, Sept. 2018
(Margo D. Beller)

They must avoid other hazards - hungry birds, spider webs (I've saved many a monarch from a web laid across a thick bush of dune rose. Have you?), careless humans accidentally or intentionally catching and killing them. Like the birds, they keep going. They are programmed to do this. If you provide them with suitable plants, they will stop in your yard and then continue. I've seen monarchs take advantage of all the flowering autumn mums currently offered by garden centers for suburban front doorways, for instance.

We hear about the importance of milkweed to the life cycle of monarch butterflies and other pollenators, and I've been seeing more and more of the plants growing in local parks and roadsides. But the flowers still blooming at this time of year - coneflowers, butterfly bush, asters, goldenrod - are, to me, just as important because without them the butterfly would not be able to travel far and would be killed by the inevitable cold weather.

There are many other butterflies, of course, but monarchs are threatened by habitat loss in Mexico. Up here, in my part of the world, unless you have planted many types of flowers to draw butterflies, you won't see them much if you have the usual kinds of nonflowering shrubs planted to make it as easy on the homeowner (and landscaping crew) as possible.

(Margo D. Beller)

This year's weather was not kind to my butterfly plants, which is why I have seen few monarchs in my yard. The spring rains washed out a lot of the soil where the joe-pye weeds grow, resulting in few, spindly plants and fewer pink flowers. The orange butterfly weed - a type of milkweed - bloomed and busted earlier still. I no longer grow asters - something I should rectify - and the type of goldenrod I grow did most of its blooming in the heat of summer.

Luckily, I have seen many other flower gardens elsewhere that have been drawing monarch butterflies, and for that I'm grateful.

Like a Goat in Clover

Goats at work (Margo D. Beller)

There was a time when New Jersey's trees were felled for settlements. White settlers brought flower seeds from the old country. When the flowers bloomed, they eventually went to seed and some of those seeds flew off miles away thanks to wind or birds. These now-wild flowers were joined by those tougher plants we now consider to be weeds, growing wherever they had access to water, sun or, in some cases, shade.

As farms were laid out and fenced, cattle, sheep and goats would roam the pastures. They would graze on grasses and weeds. But as farms have been sold and become housing developments, farm animals no longer grazed, to be replaced by Canada geese despoiling lawns and walkways, and deer browsing store-bought and native understory plants, allowing invasives to thrive.

Pretty goldenrod surrounded by not-so-pretty ragweed
(Margo D. Beller)

When you find yourself with an overabundance of weeds, there are several things you can do. If you have a small bit of land, you can pull out the weeds or use a hoe or shovel to bring them out. But weeds are tricky. Many of them will come out with the roots attached but many more break off, leaving roots in the ground to create another plant the next year. Getting them out takes time and toil, and even then many weeds need disturbed ground to germinate. So pulling out garlic mustard in the spring will likely allow ground ivy or Bermuda grass to thrive in summer.

If you have a larger property, or don't care to spend the time and effort, there are plenty of chemical poisons to buy. However, a sloppy user may kill off good plants along with the bad, including your lawn grass. Weed killer on pavement leaves behind the shriveled remains of the plants, which you'll have to pull out anyway. Worse, the next heavy rain may wash traces of the poison down to sewers and then out to sea.

Weeds along the electrified fence (Margo D. Beller)

If you have more of an ecological bent and a very large piece of property, you can do a controlled burn to eradicate the invasive plants. But you will need a permit, experienced firefighters and just the right weather conditions - dry but not too dry, no wind, It will take many hours for the fire to do its work and you will be left with scorched earth. When the land recovers you will have to plant your natives quickly before the weeds can come back.

Then there's the old way - let the livestock eat it.

Lying in a pasture, surrounded by tall weeds, wildflowers, and staghorn sumac and ailanthus trees, four goats quietly chew. An electric fence surrounds them, protecting them from predators. There is a hut to shelter them, if needed. They hunker down in the weeds or walk around or climb up against a tree trunk to gnaw at the lower leaves. 

All they have to do is eat. It is an easy life. It is also their job.

The four goats from Antler Ridge Wildlife Sanctuary are in their four-acre enclosure just off the parking lot at the Land Conservancy of New Jersey's South Branch Preserve in Mt. Olive. They are tasked with taking down any weed found in their patch, be it the pretty, yellow-flowered goldenrod, the sneeze-inducing ragweed or others including mile-a-minute weed, mugwort, autumn olive, multiflora rose and oriental bittersweet.

According to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, generally 10 goats will clear an acre in about a month. So you can understand why the Land Conservancy is hoping the four goats can clear four acres over the next three years.

Look closely to see the goats in their element. (Margo D. Beller)

Watching the goats can induce calm and pastoral thoughts. That these thoughts come in one of the fastest "developed" parts of Morris County, NJ, where motels, residences and commercial strips have sprung up like weeds in the past two decades is no small irony. 

To be sure, even on the South Branch property there are still more than enough weeds that could take a goat or 20. Ragweed and goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace are among those standing sentry in front of the fencing, making it hard to see where to step if you want to get a better look at the goats. Along the property's hiking trail, native grasses, brown-eyed Susans, purple liatris and milkweed mix with blue chicory, globe thistle, wild asters, crown vetch and ground ivy. 

If you agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson that "a weed is but a plant whose virtues remain undiscovered," this is a pretty wilderness. Weeds are fighters that had adapted to modern life. But if you want native plants to thrive, the "weeds" are the bad guys and must be destroyed to eliminate the competition for water and light.

However, if you're a goat, you don't care either way. You just eat.

Bugged

If there is one thing I dislike more in summer than heat, humidity, weeds and deer, it is insects.

The huge amount of rain that fell in August spawned a bumper crop of mosquitoes that, along with the biting flies, hornets, gnats and no-see-ums, make walking difficult, even without heat and humidity. I walk in the bedewed grass in the morning and I come to the porch with bare ankles burning from bites. I walk along my favorite path and where there is standing water a cloud of mosquitoes follows, biting my arms despite flailing them around, or swarming around my knees, smelling the blood from veins near the surface.

State bird of New Jersey (a free picture courtesy of Pixabay)

The estimated ratio of insects to humans is 200 million to one, say Iowa State University entomologists. In the United States, the number of described species is approximately 91,000, according to the Smithsonian Institution. One site that catalogs the bugs found in New Jersey says there are 584. They include the pretty butterflies, the not-so-pretty cockroaches, beetles, spiders, the aphids that will suck the life out of your plants, the ladybugs that will eat the aphids, the almost prehistoric-looking praying mantis and the ticks that are the bane of hikers who go off-road or travel through long grass and rough terrain. The cicadas call during the hot days, the katydids during hot nights and the crickets at all times.

There are also the many types of wasps, hornets, yellow-jackets and bees plus the midges known as no-see-ums, sandflies and chiggers. Travelers to the shore must contend with biting green-headed flies, whose numbers can force birders to look from inside their cars, windows rolled up.

When it comes to mosquitos we are told to remove all standing water. In my case that means frequent changing of the water in the dish I keep out for the birds, the ant moat that keeps insects from covering (and drowning in) the hummingbird feeder and emptying out the excess water from saucers underneath potted plants. But the other bugs I can't see or hear are worse. I push aside the large leaves of the potted canna to water the soil and something bites my arms. I walk in the grass to pick up brush and something bites my ankles. I cut back the overgrowth of the multiflora rose or a vine and something bites my elbow. 

Yes, I know, bugs are part of the circle of life. They are food for birds. While some have been cutting chunks out of the leaves of my plants and shrubs, others have been eating the offenders. Many pollinate the flowers. A bite once in a while I can tolerate, but the increase in the number of bites I am finding on me (some of which don't start getting very itchy until hours after the fact) is, with the intense heat, forcing me indoors more than I'd like, and that has me bugged. 

MH rarely wears short-sleeved shirts in summer. He usually wears long sleeves to protect his arms, particularly when he mows the lawn and disturbs the many insects in the grass that don't appreciate the intrusion. Many of these insects also hide in my garden plants, such as the hornets I discovered using my pot of perennial geranium for their nest last year when I attempted to water it. 

So when the next cool-down comes and it is time to start cutting back the garden - very soon, I hope - I will have to do more to protect myself, too.

Why I Don't Like Cowbirds

It is the Sunday of Labor Day weekend and I am far from laboring. There is a large spider on one of the poles holding netting in front of the hummingbird feeder, taking in some sun. The squirrels don't seem as active in the trees. As usual, people are not rushing around in their cars or with their lawn mowers. There is the faintest tinge of red in the leaves of the dogwood, another signal that summer is ending, the days are getting shorter and soon I'll be closing up the garden and taking in plants for winter.

Male cowbird, Cape May, NJ (RE Berg-Andersson)

Birds should've ended their breeding and raising of young by now. Many birds are on the move southward, taking advantage of those recent cooler days when the wind comes from the north to give them a push along.

However, amid this sluggishness I hear a high-pitched chatter I recognize. Then I see them, the male cardinal flying across the yard with a begging, scolding, badgering cowbird chick close behind.

It has been some time since I've seen this. Cowbirds are a peculiar species, at least to me. The only way the species can continue is the female - a drag brown, easily overlooked or confused with something else - drops one of her eggs into another bird's nest. The egg hatches, usually ahead of the bird's own eggs, and the chick is usually bigger too. To make sure it gets fed, it can push the other eggs out of the nest, monopolizing the parents. This is what the cowbird chick in my yard was doing with the adult cardinal pair.

And yet, somehow when the chick grows to maturity it knows it is not a cardinal, a robin, a Carolina wren. It flies off and joins with other cowbirds in large flocks, frequently joining with even larger flocks of grackles, redwinged blackbirds and starlings in winter as a way of finding food and protection.

When the adults pair, they are not monogamous and the female can lay eggs from a number of mates in the nests of more than 220 species of birds, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (Yellow warblers have been known to recognize cowbird eggs and build a new nest and lay a new clutch of eggs over the old. Other birds toss the cowbird eggs out. Cowbird eggs placed in goldfinch nests don't survive because goldfinches eat only seed rather than the insects a cowbird needs.)

Male cowbird flock, Cape May, NJ (RE Berg-Andersson)

Some people find the male cowbird handsome but I do not. These birds were once found solely on farms, following cattle (hence their name). However, according to the bird people at Cornell, once the open grasslands became towns and suburban developments, the birds spread. Now you are as likely to see them at your feeders. I try to chase them off mine whenever possible.

I pity the cardinal. This species seems particularly vulnerable to the parasitizing of its nests. It does not see a cowbird when the bird begs to be fed, it sees young and must feed it. The adult bird is programmed to do that. It does not "see" that this is not a cardinal. In fact, both parents are "blind" to that fact. All they know is the bird must be raised to fledge and then fed until it can take care of itself so it can mate and continue the species next year.

Luckily, cardinals, unlike several other types of birds whose numbers are down because of the cowbird as well as habitat destruction, are far from endangered. They will have several broods a year. There are many cardinals. They will come to my feeder and I will keep it filled for them. 

Unfortunately, cowbirds aren't endangered either. For now, I will have to put up with hearing the continual, annoying, badgering, high-pitched begging whine until something in the cowbird's mind tells it it's time to go find more of its own kind.