Stakeout!

When I was a kid, I'd watch (in black and white) the daily 4:30 (pm) movie on over-the-air TV, the only kind we had back then. The movies would be cut up to fit into 90 minutes including commercials. One type of movie I enjoyed was the gangster film, usually with Jimmy Cagney or Humphrey Bogart in his pre-"Casablanca" days.

"Black-headed Grosbeak male" by K Schneider is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Usually, there would be one scene where the cops (or the feds) would be in a car or van outside where the gangsters were holing up, waiting for someone to arrive or depart. This would be the "stakeout" scene.

Recently, I was part of a stakeout. It didn't involve criminals but one particular bird.

The black-headed grosbeak is a bird of the west. Like its relatives the evening grosbeak and the rose-breasted grosbeak, this bird has a large, thick bill for crunching seeds. A male, like the bird seen above (not the bird of this stakeout), had been reported at the feeder of a house not that far from mine, as the crow flies.

Whenever an "accidental" bird shows up, it makes me wonder how that happened. Was it caught up in the recent strong winds and blown too far east? That is most likely. But who really knows? What is known is that once the bird was reported, birders came running to the house. The owner, who was kind enough to publicize the bird's sudden appearance at his feeder, allowed people to walk up his driveway and wait for the bird to appear. From what I gather from the number of the eBird reports I read, quite a number of people did in the first weekend.

I waited until mid-week, once I determined how to get to this particular house in the hills of Morris Township, NJ.

I arrived with one man as several people left. The bird was coming at 45-min. intervals and had left 10 minutes before, we were told. We walked up the driveway to find a couple sitting on folding chairs. They had seen the bird but were staying because they had driven all the way up from Forked River, about 35 miles away, and wanted to see more.

Roseate spoonbill, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

This is the first thing I learned about a stakeout: bring a chair. Luckily, the woman wanted to stand and I wound up in her chair for the next hour and 10 minutes. Others showed up as we sat and tallied the other birds in the yard: purple finches, house finches, robins, titmice, among others. Two men had cameras on tripods supporting very large and long telephoto lenses. I can understand them wanting a record of a rare bird sighting. One man said he had come up from Metuchen, not as far as Forked River but not close by either.

I have mixed feelings about seeing these accidentals. While it is nice to see these birds close to home, I wonder what happens to them next. Usually it is only one bird that arrives and many times it is a juvenile. It is on its own in a strange place and won't be mating. One hopes that if it survives it will use the maps in its head to get back to its usual territory.

However, now I don't have to go west to see a black-headed grosbeak, just as I don't have to go south to see a roseate spoonbill or white pelican or to Europe to see a northern lapwing.

When the grosbeak arrived, it was high in an oak tree, eating seeds. When I saw it from below I thought it was a robin at first, until I saw the white on the wing, which a robin lacks. I pointed it out and everyone hurriedly trained their cameras or binoculars on it. Unfortunately for my neck and the photo people, the bird stayed high and did not come to the feeder where it would've provided a striking picture. I watched it for 10 minutes until I could take no more of the pain in my neck. I thanked the man for his chair and he thanked me for being first to see the bird.

I took my leave even as others were arriving. The bird was seen for the rest of that week and into the next weekend. Now, according to what I see on the bird lists today, it left as suddenly as it appeared. My hope is it flew to a more hospitable environment and will give other people a chance to see something wondrous.

A Very High-Tech Treasure Hunt

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 22, 2015, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

The other week, MH and I went to a relatively close-by park that was once the estate of the billionaire Doris Duke. Since her passing her mansion has been torn down and other buildings have been made more ecologically friendly. In fact, the whole park is a model for eco-friendliness. For instance, we went looking for a newer trail map and discovered these are not printed anymore, to save on paper. (Luckily, we had brought our old paper map.) A tram that would take people to some of the more notable landmarks on the property had been discontinued to save on fuel and pollution (and the cost of maintenance, no doubt).

Duke mansion (Margo D. Beller)

I mention all this because one brochure that was available related to geocaching. What is that, you might ask? It is a form of treasure hunt except you use your mobile phone's GPS to locate the prizes at specific locations. According to one site I found, there are 4,422 geocaches in my area alone.

No thanks.

However, others love this stuff, not just in my area but all over the world. Since this is an activity that you do by getting off your couch, leaving your home and getting outside, preferably into nature (albeit with a phone in your face), there are some nature organizations that want to take advantage of the foot traffic and don't mind hosting some of these geocaches if it promotes their parks. Duke Farms, I now know, is one of them. At least in 2015, so was the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary of New Jersey Audubon.

Here is what I wrote about geocaching for the Scherman Hoffman blog. I took all the pictures:

The treasure hunt has gone high-tech.

The Northern New Jersey Cachers (NNJC) held a “meet and greet” at Scherman Hoffman on May 31, a unique partnership between a group dedicated to expanding interest in using satellite technology to find caches and a sanctuary that, as its website says, is “focused on nature.”

If you see an inherent contradiction here, you’re right.

For this treasure hunt, called geocaching, you need global positioning satellite, or GPS. Ever since the Clinton administration stopped scrambling government satellite data, the use of GPS has exploded.

According to NNJC President John Neale, once GPS took off it was just about inevitable some techie wonk would make a game with it. That happened in 2000, in Oregon, when a couple of hikers found an old bucket in the woods. Instead of passing it by and forgetting about it, they put the coordinates -- good old longitude and latitude -- on a website for others to find.

From those humble beginnings the movement has grown to 220 countries, 2.5 million active caches and over 6 million geocachers worldwide, according to geocaching.com. Neale told me that in New Jersey alone there are 16,000 caches. His group has over 500 members and there are separate organizations that cover central and south Jersey.

The cache can be anything, of any size. Some are big enough to fit into ammunition boxes. Some are “nano-caches” that can be easily concealed in big cities. Griggstown Grasslands has caches concealed in the false bottoms of a few bird boxes. Typically, it’s a plastic lock box that contains a pencil and pad of paper for signing your name. The cache can be anything from a toy Jeep (many are sponsored by Chrysler dealerships - it’s good publicity) to a manhole cover. If you take the cache you must leave something of equal or greater value.

Then you log your finding in your logbook and log the experience at the geocaching.com website.

So on a lovely Saturday morning more than a dozen people chatted, ate cookies baked by one of the long-time cachers and waited for the coordinates of the 10 Scherman Hoffman caches to “go live” so the hunters could check their phones and then their GPS and start hunting. 

The event was intended to bring newbies and more experienced geocachers together. Neale said that besides being a fun activity for people of all ages there is a competitive aspect. Case in point: One older man he pointed out is ranked ninth in the world in finding geogaches. Like a lot of cachers, this man goes by an alias, IMSpider. Neale - whose own alias is Old Navy - told me IMSpider took up caching with a vengeance after his wife died years ago. Now he doesn’t even bother using the pencil when he finds the caches, he stamps his name.

Any birder who has been involved in the annual World Series of Birding or has read The Big Year or To See Every Bird on Earth knows that competitive aspect too well.

Bird watching has also become more high-tech. There are bird calls that can be stored on mobile phones for checking in the field as well as GPS, high-tech cameras and sites such as New Jersey Audubon’s eBird, which allows you to check what has been found and where, including coordinates.

We’ve come a long way from a walk in the woods.

Ironically, that’s how Neale got into geocaching. Neale loves to hike and gained a love of nature traveling with his mother when she worked at Watchung Reservation. She worked with Dorothy Smullen, now a teaching naturalist at Scherman Hoffman and the point person on the meet and greet.

Smullen said the route of the caches runs along the Dogwood (Red) trail, crosses the driveway heading toward the vernal ponds near the NJ Audubon headquarters building at 9 Hardscrabble and then along the River (Yellow) trail (see below). Each cache has letter(s) inside the box tops. When unscrambled, the letters complete a phrase that cachers can use for a discount on some merchandise in the Scherman Hoffman store. Cachers could also buy a collectible "path tag" with the NJ Audubon logo to keep as a souvenir or drop at their next cache.

The Passaic River running through the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary.

Smullen told me the hope is the cachers discover the sanctuary, see the beauty of the place and then come back. Many of the cachers I spoke with had never been to Scherman Hoffman before, much less Bernardsville, NJ, where it’s located.

Once the cache coordinates were published, I followed one small group (2 men, 1 woman and 2 boys) to the first location. “Third boulder from the trail,” one of the men read from his phone. (Warning: In the woods, you’re likely to lose your cellphone signal.)

The boys started counting and then turning over rocks somewhat off the path. By the time they had found the cache we were joined by a larger group, who now - one by one - signed their names in the cache notebook. IMSpider used his stamp and then strode off to the next cache, up the steep hill, other cachers scrambling to keep up.

Among them were Carmine and Maria, of Jersey City and Mountainside, who have been geocaching for a year. “That guy is hardcore,” Carmine said of IMSpider with some awe as he puffed up the hill. Maria told me she’s a teacher. Trying to find some way of engaging her tech-literate students, she read about geocaching in a magazine and got them involved. That’s how she and Carmine got into it.

I think I told Carmine and Maria as much about Scherman Hoffman as they told me about their geocaching.

 

By this time we’d gotten to the top of the hill. But instead of veering left along the Red trail, the group continued on Patriots Path (the White trail) into the Cross Estate, which is not part of the private Scherman Hoffman but is part of the federal National Park Service's Morristown National Historical Park (Jockey Hollow).

This brings up one of the problems I find with geocaching. The official route might’ve been along the Red trail but if the GPS says the quickest way is cutting through a federal park, you follow it. Neale told me people placing caches are supposed to get permission from landowners and at least warn states and the federal government there will be caches and people looking for them. But that does not stop people from using shortcuts.

One geocacher told me he does not believe in bushwhacking and puts all his caches within five feet of a trail. He also gives clear clues on the geocaching website so people don’t harm the environment looking for the cache.

I gather he is unusual.

Just as you will see birders putting themselves and the environment in danger by bushwhacking after a bird, you will see people put caches in inappropriate places and searchers do quite a bit of harm -- despite the organization’s rules to the contrary.

It’s part of the “game’s” competitive spirit, I guess.

Scherman Hoffman Director Mike Anderson told me geocachers inundated New Jersey’s Kittatinny Valley State Park with caches. Before the state knew it, hundreds of people were overrunning the park.

That’s the main reason NJ Audubon got involved with the NNJC -- to have some sort of control and minimize that kind of damage, Anderson said. NNJC maintains the caches. NJ Audubon trail maps, program schedules and other flyers were there for the taking, to encourage NNJC members to come back again.

I’m not sure that will happen.

Leader with box turtle

The cachers running up the hill were too busy following the leader -- IMSpider -- to stop and listen to the birds around them or even notice the beauty of the woods.

Not everyone is like this, of course. I later found a geocacher alone on the river trail - unlike others, he came from the area - who said he doesn’t like finding caches in packs because it takes the fun out of it when others find them first. However, he showed less interest in the nearby veery I pointed out than in his ringing cellphone.

As with everything else, it is too easy to forget technology is merely a tool. Too often I see people use an iPod - even in the car - to block out the world, or stare at a game on their phone to avoid eye contact on the street. And don’t get me started on drivers blindly following GPS instructions to the exclusion of sense.

I do not use GPS (MH is my GPS) and I was glad when the cachers left me alone in the woods with the birds.

Earlier that morning I had been on the weekly bird walk with naturalist Stephanie Punnett. Our group stopped for long periods of time listening to and looking at all sorts of birds. At one point one of the younger group members looked down instead of up and found a wood turtle.

Wood turtles are threatened in NJ, and Punnett said this female was new to her because it hadn’t been marked for tracking. She put it in her bag so it could be marked and then returned to the same spot to get on with its life.

Now this was a cache worth finding.

The Fish Hawk

The habits of this famed bird differ so materially from those of almost all others of its genus, that an accurate description of them cannot fail to be highly interesting to the student of nature. 

-- John James Audubon

Osprey with menhaden, Cattus island, April 13, 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

There are times you must leave your home territory if you are going to spread your wings, as it were, and broaden your horizons. Now that the spring northbound migration is in full swing, I have been following a pattern of going myself to local bird spots and then traveling farther afield with MH. But with his knees, I am limited in where we can go. 

So it was I consulted one of my hiking books and found a reference to Cattus Island, which hasn't been an island for a very long time but a peninsula that juts into Barnegat Bay in Tom's River, NJ.

Osprey by John James Audubon

The land was originally a nearly 500-acre tract granted to Gawen Drummond, a Scotsman, in 1690. It changed hands over the years and was bought by county officials in 1973 for a bit under $3 million. Apparently there were plans to put in campsites, but there was so much vandalism to some of the original buildings on the property that this plan was shelved. Perhaps ballfields and other recreational sites? Luckily, that didn't happen either.

Instead, the land was left for "passive" recreation - aka walking. An environmental center was built and trails were blazed. 

Those trails are flat and travel through different types of habitat, making it perfect for MH's knees and my desire to see birds in an area, Ocean County, that is some distance south from my home area and thus closer to northbound birds. Also, the types of birds I would see would be shore birds such as herons, egrets and ducks. 

As it turns out, we saw far more than that because Cattus Island is known for its many successful osprey nests. There are 10 nests on the property and each was occupied by a pair. 

One of the many Cattus Island osprey nests (Margo D. Beller)

Among raptors, osprey are unique. They only eat fish, hence their nickname of "fish hawk," and will dive into the water to catch their prey. They are such good hunters, lazier hunters such as the bald eagle will frequently harass it into giving up the meal. That didn't happen on our trip because we saw no eagles. In fact, aside from an American kestrel, the smallest of the falcons, osprey were the only raptors we saw over the property.

The other shore birds found included great and snowy egrets plus some we hadn't seen in years: little blue heron, green heron, Louisiana (tricolored) heron (ironically, the more commonly seen great blue heron was apparently not around.) There was a huge raft of bufflehead ducks (with some greater scaup) on the calm waters of Silver Bay but out in the choppier waters of Barnegat Bay were long-tailed ducks and two types of scoters, black and surf. We didn't lack for land birds either: the woods provided us with bluebirds, brown creeper, blue-gray gnatcatchers, Carolina wren, four types of woodpeckers and a towhee. There were also warblers: pine and myrtle, which I expected, and an orange-crowned, which I did not.

Osprey hovering before diving for supper (Margo D. Beller)

But the fish hawks were the biggest thrill. They were everywhere. When not on their nests they flew over our heads or sat in trees just about begging for us to take their pictures, which we did. They hovered, constantly flapping their large wings, as they sought a suitable fish and then dove to grab it and bring it back to its mate. They were constantly calling to each other or to warn off other ospreys or to show their displeasure when I stood too long relatively close by and took their pictures with my long lens.

About the only downside to this place is I wanted to walk everywhere. MH and I took the main trail to the end, and then I walked on a side trail to see the ducks on Barnegat Bay. By day's end, when we'd seen 43 types of birds, I was footsore but happy.

Now, to find another region to explore for next time...

Up for the Birds

“If you are pining for youth I think it produces a stereotypical old man because you only live in memory, you live in a place that doesn’t exist."
 -- David Bowie

I have found there are those who feel the weight of advancing age and those who do everything they possibly can to ignore or avoid it. I find myself somewhere in the middle.

At this time of year, when daylight comes before 6 am and the southerly winds are blowing in warmer temperature and northbound migrants, I put out the feeders and stand and listen to the chorus. Then I sit on the porch and watch which birds come. When I am restless and not tired, I think of my Old Self who would rise in the dark, dress, get in the car and rush out to Great Swamp to hike in the dawn's early light to find the birds that like that type of habitat such as yellow warblers. 

Wren nest box, awaiting the next tenant. (Margo D. Beller)

My Old Self, or my Crazy Self as MH calls it, felt compelled to do this because I worked five days a week a long way from home and weekend mornings were the only time I could do any birding. That hasn't been the case since I started working from home. 

Now I have plenty of time. What I don't have is plenty of energy. There are some mornings the only thing that pulls me out of bed is putting out the feeders for the birds. 

My New Self feels aches and pains every morning. While my mind is restless and eager to get out there and see (and hear) what I can find, my body doesn't always want to accommodate. So I stick to my house in the early morning and, after all those car commuters who must get to work have gone, I either walk in the area or take the car to a birding spot hours after the dawn chorus has ended.

It is a hard thing to acknowledge to yourself that you are aging and can no longer do the things you once did without a moment's hesitation. Nowadays, My New Self feels that hesitation all too often. What if I fall again? What if I get lost? What if I have a medical problem? What if I run into a predator - two- or four-legged? I usually travel alone because MH is not an early riser, but when we do travel together he is limited by his own physical ailments. I worry when we are out because if he is attacked, I'll be the one who will do the defending. Will I be able to keep us safe?

Blue-gray gnatcatcher, Cattus Island, April 13, 2019
(Margo D. Beller)

You can't live that way, MH tells me. And he is right about that. But right now I am compromising, doing my birdwatching from my property.

And what nice birdwatching it is. Today, a day after bird reports prompted me to put out the nest box, a house wren was singing in the backyard, soon to bring a female over to check out the accommodations. A Carolina wren was singing down the street. The male cardinal sang until it saw the feeder was out, at which point it flew down. Robins sang or ran across the yard. All told, I heard 22 different types of birds singing or calling, including four types of woodpeckers, all before 7 am. I even heard a blue-gray gnatcatcher, the first in my yard this season.

So it's not that bad, I tell myself. You make your accommodations and enjoy what you have.

But then, as I sit in my chair, I can't help but wonder, what am I missing out there?

Prowling for Owls

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 22, 2017, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

In mid-March 2017, MH and I went on an "owl prowl" that took place at a Somerset County park. I have always been fascinated by owls because they are nocturnal and thus difficult to see or hear if you are a person who, like me, is more of sunshine lover.

But I have had my contact with owls. During the time I would have to rise long before sunrise to work an early shift I would hear great-horned owls, screech owls and the occasional barn and barred. Driving on a causeway in a marsh at dusk a short-earred owl flew over the car. A long-earred owl was reported at Central Park and I traveled a long way to find it, once a sympathetic birder told me which tree and another, sitting on a bench, pointed it out. 

Great Horned Owl (Photo by Joe Pescatore)

And then there was the snowy owl that came down to a NY pier one winter and just sat there, occasionally flying down to grab a ruddy duck (or so I was told; I didn't see it happen although we did travel to see the owl. We've seen other snowys during winter irruptions since then).

So I've seen almost all ones expected in NJ except for the smallest one, the saw-whet. But soon, I hope.

Here is some of what I wrote about the owl prowl:

Why are we so fascinated by owls?

Is it because some of them are very small and, with their round heads and big yellow eyes, look cute and cuddly?

Is it because we remember the Disney cartoon "The Sword in the Stone" where Merlin turns himself into a "wise, old owl" -- a Great Horned Owl -- to instruct the young, soon to be king Arthur?

Or perhaps we think of Hedwig, the Snowy Owl Harry Potter receives when he arrives at Hogwarts.

Or, maybe we are fascinated that these are birds of the darkness, which attracts and frightens us. After all, our human eyes lack the many additional rods owls have to see in the darkness and the asymmetrical hearing they use to hunt (depending on the species) mice, insects, rabbits, even other owls. (Great horned owls hunt skunks because the owls have no sense of smell.) There are many superstitions about owls, according to "Owls: A Wildlife Handbook" by Kim Long. For instance, the hooting of an owl is seen as a sign of impending death in some cultures.

Screech owl. As usual, someone had to point the bird out to us because
we'd never have found this ourselves. (RE Berg-Andersson)

There are 286 different types of owls around the world, from Iceland to the Falklands and across northern Europe and Russia down to Africa, but in the 950 acres that comprise the Somerset County (N.J.) Park Commission's Lord Sterling Park, which is adjacent to the federally run and much larger Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, the most commonly seen owls are great horned (GHO), barred and eastern screech owls.

And that was why 30 or so owl enthusiasts were standing in the dark, shivering on a subfreezing night, under a nearly full moon, listening to park naturalist Ben Barkley or Mike Anderson, director of the New Jersey Audubon Scherman Hoffman sanctuary (also located in Somerset County), try to fool a screech owl into calling to us by imitating it. We were a split squad and I was part of the 15 or so in Barkley's contingent.

"Why are we fascinated by owls? The darkness, and the cuteness factor," Anderson said before we headed out. An owl is cute, "unless you mess with it."

As he prepares us inside for the Owl Prowl outside, Barkley's enthusiasm is infectious. When he was a high school junior, in 2010, he and Mike Anderson identified raptors during the Scherman Hoffman hawk watch on the platform of its education center. Less than a year on this job now, he can watch and listen for birds as he walks to work. "I am very lucky," he told me. (Yes.)

Before leading us into the dark he tested our owl knowledge. Who knew the 25-inch GHO is only 6 pounds? He showed amazing video of a Serbian long-earred owl (LEO) roost where at dusk 140 birds flew out of one tree. He amused many in the crowd by showing how "cute" some owls -- such as the 11-inch burrowing owl and the 6-inch elf owl -- can be.

Don't be fooled, however. Just like the turkey vulture and the redtailed hawk that hunt by day, owls are raptors. They have sharp claws for killing and sharp bills. They will eat prey whole and then regurgitate the inedible parts in a hard pellet. Some owls hunt by day -- snowy, northern hawk and great grey owls are birds of the northern tundra where they can hunt in many hours of daylight in summer. In winter, if food supplies are scarce, they will frequently fly south in what is known as an irruption. Many "night owls" hunt at dawn and at dusk, such as the barn and short-earred owls.

But they are, in the main, creatures of the darkness, emitting eerie sounds ranging from the "Hoo-Hoo-Hoo" of the GHO to the weird barks and "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?" call of the barred to the hissing of the ghostly white barn to the whinnying and one-note tremolo of the 8-inch-long eastern screech.

Snowy owl we almost missed at Island Beach State Park
during a winter 'irruption.' (RE Berg-Andersson)

It was the screech Ben was trying to fool into calling, a process known as "pishing." But no owl was responding. Either it could see we were a group of humans (very possible with all those rods in its eyes) or the cold wind kept it at bay.

The West Observation Blind loomed over us. A pair of canada geese voiced their displeasure at our presence from nearby Branta Pond. Trails I've walked many times now looked ominous. Owls are very good at hiding themselves when they roost by day. They are even better hiding in plain sight at night.


As it turned out, the only owl MH and I saw that night was at dusk when a GHO (or perhaps a barred) hunting, likely to feed its owlets, flew over the road ahead of us when we were almost at Lord Sterling. But for me it was enough.

Bird's Eye View

Sitting at the top of a tall tree, the male cardinal sings out his territorial song just as the first light is coming into the sky. It is April and he is letting other cardinals know he has THIS territory for himself, his mate and any young that manage to survive. After a few long choruses, he looks down and sees a figure, dressed in the same red as he, putting a box up, the box with the seeds. He flies down to a smaller tree and the figure hangs the box, turns, looks at him and says something. Then, the figure goes back inside and the cardinal comes down to eat. 

He grabs a seed and jumps atop the iron feeder pole, eating as he looks around for any predators or rivals. His mate flies to a nearby shrub and he takes a seed to her, which she accepts. He flies back to one side of the box, his mate the other. They eat until they are full or something spooks them into the bushes. But they'll be back.

Female cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

In sports there is March Madness. For birders the madness revs up in April, when northbound migrant birds are heading for breeding territories and pass through my area. But this is also when the resident birds prepare to breed. Starting in late March, the birds in my yard have been arriving at the feeders in pairs, two by two like Noah: Two house finches. Two cardinals. Two titmice. A downy woodpecker male comes to the suet, flies off and is replaced by a female. Pairs of robins are walking over my lawn, looking for worms, grubs or insects. Sometimes the male in one pair will fly at the other male, jockeying for more space.

Not long after sunrise you can find me standing outside my back door after I have put out the feeders and water in my long, red robe. The male cardinal comes almost immediately to the house-shaped seed feeder, a hairy woodpecker to the suet. It is good to see both male and female hairy coming because that means a nest has been excavated out of a tree nearby. There was a time I would confuse the hairy with the smaller, similar looking downy. Not now. Other woodpeckers call - flickers, redbellys and the occasional pileated -  and I've been hearing more Carolina wrens calling.

Singing male cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

It is a fine time of year, especially when my many types of daffodils are in bloom. Daffodils are my favorite flower because all their parts are toxic, so the flowers aren't eaten by deer and the bulbs aren't eaten by squirrels or chipmunks. I wish these fine flowers - available in an assortment of colors, sizes, even petal types - grew all year. But they'll be gone soon, to be replaced by other flowering perennials.

When the red azalea blooms it will be time to think about putting out a hummingbird feeder. These birds are drawn to red flowers. As of April 16, according to one website that tracks the migration of all types of hummers in the U.S., the ruby-throated hummingbird (the only one regularly found in the east) has already been seen in the southern part of the state. Another warm day with strong winds from the south and the birds should be up where I live.

There are still white-throated sparrows around with the chipping sparrows singing in my front yard. Juncos are rarely seen now and the catbird has not made it up here yet. Soon.

Hummingbird at a friend's feeder (Margo D. Beller)

Same with the house wrens, so I haven't put out the wren nest box yet. The kinglets, ruby-crowned and golden-crowned, have come, as have the blue-gray gnatcatchers and the pine and palm warblers. Ospreys are on their nests. Fish crows are flying with nest-building materials in their beaks. Even a pair of cowbirds, those parasites of songbird nests, recently came to my feeder.

The recent heavy rain has prompted the oaks and other trees to flower and leaf out. (The maples have been in flower for some time.) Usually the reports of warblers increase once the tree is full of green leaves, making it even harder to find these colorful birds unless you know their songs.

This is why no matter how bad winter gets, how dark, cold and snowy, I look ahead to when it will finally be spring and the daylight will lengthen and the climate warm. But not too much. I am in no rush for summer.

Goodbye to All That

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.
   -- Yogi Berra

With April and the start of the spring migration I have traveled to several birding locations near me to see and hear what could be out there in the morning. Of late I have been going to familiar trails, as well as those I haven't walked in a few years. In the latter case I found things that were disturbing.

Atop Hawk Mountain, 2010 (RE Berg-Andersson)

I suppose it is a good thing so many people in my area feel the need to "get out" and go hiking. They like to dress themselves and their children in the latest outdoor gear out of the catalog of their choice and then scamper around, splashing through streams and bushwhacking off the trails on foot or, on occasion, on a mountain or other type of bike, taking pictures or filming with a portable camera to post to social media.

The problem is, in a national or state park or a sanctuary run by a private organization, there isn't always the money (or interest?) to repair trails worn down by all these people as well as the heavy rains that bring up tree roots and rocks or that have eroded ground around bridges and other structures.

The other problem is, I am getting older and afraid of falling. I've had several falls in recent years, including one just today in a national park located not far from me in New Jersey. I haven't broken a bone yet but I don't want a first time.

More birders on Hawk Mountain, 2012
(RE Berg-Andersson)

Back in September 2010 MH and I went to the north lookout at Hawk Mountain. On our climb up we found an assortment of warblers feeding during their migration south. After watching the raptor show we came down a second trail and found a life bird, a Bicknell's thrush. Two years later we went back. Thousands of people climb to the north lookout atop Hawk Mountain and it showed. The rocks were broken and worn. Maybe the hawk counters who know the area like the back of their hands didn't mind, or the rugged outdoor types or the ones who had no idea what they were doing but just wanted to be up there because they'd heard about it somewhere. But for MH and me the climb up and especially the climb down were full of peril, with several near-falls on my part. And that was when MH's knees were still good.

Never again unless we go to the south lookout, the one that is flat and wheelchair accessible.

I have also found worn and dangerous conditions at the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary run by NJ Audubon, a private group, and at the Freylingheusen Arboretum, a county park that was the first place I went to hike when I moved down the road over two decades ago. I wandered that place, usually alone, so much you could drop me anywhere blindfolded and I could find my way out. Now, all the paths I explored are blazed and filled with map-clutching people who want to walk in the woods and be "in nature," with or without phones on. Paths are eroded and not fixed, or they lead to locked gates or are closed entirely. Tree roots stick out. One uphill climb I did for the first time in years was so eroded near the top I had to grab the nearby beech until my panic ebbed. And now, today, my hike in the national park, Jockey Hollow, where the path I took was narrow and well traveled.

Scherman Hoffman, before the erosion (Margo D. Beller)

I know there are those who like a hiking challenge, the more extreme the better. I am not one of those people and I try to avoid them as much as possible. Luckily, to look for little birds during migration season it pays to get out early, before the mountain bikers and the hikers with their day packs and ski poles to steady them over rocks and ravines. It helps that I am now semi-retired and can travel on the weekdays during the school year and avoid the families who want to get their kids away from their phones and scramble up hills as tho' they were in a public playground.

The downside is, if I slip and fall, as I did as I was leaving a muddy trail up a slight incline to the road, I am usually alone. This fall was relatively mild. The next one might not be.

MH, bless him, is not too worried when I go off myself. His knees are such that there is no way he could've walked on any of the trails I mentioned above. After my most recent fall, I am not going back to any of these places either. For now, there are plenty of flatter places I can get to where, despite the erosion, I can find plenty of birds, and there's always out of state.

I'm not that sad to be saying goodbye to these old haunts. I'm just sad that I must.