The Secret Life of a Suburban Backyard (with two updates)

Who knows what goes on behind the picket fence?

The typical suburban backyard is not very interesting. The large lawn is mowed down to a small height. The weeds are either dug up by hand or bombed with chemicals. The shrubs are not particularly showy and designed to require little in the way of maintenance. Those with a fenced-in yard put the dogs out in good weather. Humans are only out there when they use the grill or perhaps play with toddlers.

Fawn 1, May 25, 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

Perhaps I am stereotyping my neighborhood but that's how my neighbors' properties appear to me. I doubt any of them know what the birds are doing in their trees and shrubs or the critters on their lawn unless they notice browsing damage or the waste left behind.

This morning I was distracted by three wildlife dramas I noticed taking place in my suburban backyard. One was quickly resolved, one is ongoing, one I don't know how it will end.

Drama One: Twin Problems

The first involved deer, this time twin fawns about a day old.

While most people think of Memorial Day as the unofficial start of summer, I think of the period as birthing time for does. I have found day-old fawns on the property every few years and I am usually on MH to get out and mow the grass before it can be turned into a nursery. MH likes to leave the grass longish so it will protect itself from the sun's heat.

But since I was the one who mowed the backyard only a week ago, I can't blame him for what happened when the rains made the grass grow back quicker than I expected.

I put out a bird feeder this morning and noticed grass matted down from a deer that used it as a B&B. I walked to the back door and listened to the many birds - robins, catbirds, cardinals, a few types of warblers. My reverie was broken when a big doe bounded across the yard into my ornamental grass garden, knocking over plants. I noticed the size and deep in my brain must've remembered another big doe. I shooed her away.

About 15 minutes later, I saw two fawns under the dogwood. I remembered the other big doe - the one who came to nurse a crying fawn that had been left in our long grass several years ago.

Fawn 2 (Margo D. Beller)

I don't know why but I went out to get the fawns to move off my lawn to someplace less open to the street. On their spindly legs they slowly went to a border shrub and hunkered down. I went inside. Later I went out and there they were again. One soon bedded down under the dogwood, invisible unless you knew where to look. The other, however, was far more active and started heading toward the street.

I have protection against grown deer and smaller pests like squirrels and rabbits around some of my garden beds but I didn't want this little thing to get caught so I went out to shoo it back to its sibling. To my shock it started after me thinking I was its mother! I ran back to the porch.

Later, I went into the front yard to make sure this fawn hadn't gotten caught in the netting. There was Mom looking at me from the lawn across the street. I was not surprised to see her about 15 minutes later leading off a fawn, preumably the one that had been under the dogwood. Since I didn't see the other one anywhere, I am hoping she took care of that one, too.

Drama over, at least for now. Soon the fawns will grow and, like any curious child, will come to explore. Any plants not covered with netting will be sampled, including supposedly "deer-resistant" plants. I've had many bites taken out of such plants and that's why this year what I can move are behind some kind of barrier.

(Update: I later found one of the fawns under my apple tree. I left it alone and went out for the afternoon with MH. I don't know which fawn it was but it was gone when we returned. I know the whole family will return after dark and bed down in the lawn until we can mow it.)

Drama Two: An Alien

For some time now I've been hearing the sound of begging from a forsythia shrub. Today, while repairing damage done by the big doe mentioned above, I saw the cardinal pair at my flood wall followed by a begging bird nearly as big as they.

Cowbirds struck again.

I don't like cowbirds, as I've often stated, because the female lays her egg in another bird's nest. This egg frequently hatches first and then destroys the competition. So the parents feed this alien until it gets big enough to feed itself, at which point it somehow knows to find other cowbirds and start the cycle all over again.

Male cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

By now I usually take in the feeders but this year I've been slowly decreasing the number, in part to allow the parent cardinals to find seed to give them the strength to find insects to feed this voracious youngster (cowbirds don't eat seeds). First the suet was removed and put into the freezer. Then the caged tube feeder came in. Now the house feeder remains. Few birds are coming to it when insects are so plentiful.

This cardinal pair, however, seems so dependent on the seed I provide the male is frequently on the pole as I open the back door to put out the feeder. The male feeds on one side, the female the other. Then the chick starts begging and one has to fly off to attend to it. There are no babysitters to help out this family.

Drama Three: Evict or No? 

We recently returned from a week away to find a strange situation at the house wren box I put out every year. The male, which had been singing up a storm in late April into early May, appeared to be gone. A bird I presumed to be the female would make a soft scolding call from a nearby hedge, fly to the box, go in and stay put for a long while. I wondered, is there a nest going and are the eggs hatched or did something happen?

The other day I saw the bird leave the box for a bush. I didn't see it come back.

Today, for the first time in a long time, a male house wren was singing around the backyard. It flew into the apple tree and around the box. It came to the opening and looked but did not go in. Significantly, nothing flew out to chase him off and there was no cheeping. The male wren flew to several places in the yard, singing. It came back to the box and again looked in without entering. Now, it is gone and I don't know if it will return.

My quandary - Should I empty the box so another wren pair can start over? Or, as MH said as I fussed about the twin fawns, will nature take its course?

House wren from another year (Margo D. Beller)

Several years ago, a chickadee took over the box before a house wren could find it. I came up my driveway one evening to find what looked like a squirrel tail streaming from the box opening. It was the chickadee's nest of fur. It had been pulled out by a wren, which soon filled the box with its stick nest.

But if there is already a stick nest in the box (filled with dead eggs or, worse, a dead bird), the wren isn't going to go to the trouble of pulling it out and starting over. It will just find another sheltered place. If I want another pair to use the box this year, I'll have to empty it.

For now, I'm leaving the box alone to see what happens. I'll let you know what develops next in this suburban wildlife drama.

(Update: I took in the feeder for the night and walked over to the box. An adult wren quickly flew out and scolded me. I apologized and went back into the house. So the box isn't empty, at least for today. But what will happen tomorrow?)

What We Found After a Week Away

Time isn't the main thing, it's the only thing.
   -- Miles Davis

In the greater scheme of things, a week is a very small period of time. It comes and goes before you know it. But after a recent week away we returned to find major changes had taken place in the small bit of ecology I call my backyard and in the behavior of the birds that live in it.

Before we went away the first full week of May to chase the northbound migrants closer to their breeding grounds, I could go out early in the morning and hear or see a host of birds feeding on the strands of seeds hanging from the oak trees. The locust trees appeared bare. The forsythia, lilacs and quince were flowering. The grass was just starting to green and grow.

Blackpoll photo by jerryoldenettel is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

Where we traveled it was unusually cool and rainy most of the time. The one day of full sun and spring-like warmth, the weathercasters warned, "Don't get used to it." They were right - the cold returned. But while we were away our part of NJ got a lot of rain and a lot of heat.

So when we returned last Sunday we found our lawn had turned into a long, bushy meadow, complete with matted-down areas where the deer had rested unmolested. The forsythia, quince and lilac flowers were done. The apple tree lost its blossoms and was in full leaf. Same with the dogwood. I found the irises, azaleas and rhododendron flowering and the cannas had sprouted. And the weeds were, as usual, everywhere.

The front-yard locust tree leaves came out and the backyard oak and maple trees are now casting lush green shade. Several of the bushes, including the viburnum I planted three years ago, jumped in size. The wrongly named "dead area" was filled with overgrown wild onion, wild rose, garlic mustard, ragweed and plants I can't name. In another corner of the yard, the space was filled with wild strawberries.

All this happened in a week.

As for the birds, the white-throated sparrows left when the feeders were taken in. Others came back once I put the feeders back out but they have other concerns now. I hear young begging for food when a parent returns to the hidden nest. One nest must be cardinals, based on the activity of the adult pair. While the young will only be fed protein-rich insects, the parents are coming to the feeder for the quick energy they can get from the sunflower seeds.

Robin's nest, found on the stairs
leading to the observation platform,
Montezuma (NY) NWR (Margo D. Beller)

The male house wren that could be heard daily before dawn before we left is silent. When I go outside to look at the nest box a wren will scold me from a hedge nearby and then, when I back off, fly into the box but it does not immediately come out. This means the wren is an adult who must sit on a nest full of eggs. Is this bird a female or male? Wrens of both sexes look the same. A single parent will have to work that much harder to get food for the brood (and itself) plus protect the nest.

As for the migrants, in the last couple of days I have been hearing the squeaky-brake call of the blackpoll warbler, a call I associate with the end of migration. This little bird, which has a superficial resemblance to the black-capped chickadee, has a very long migratory route and is one of the last to pass through my area on its way north. So migration is basically over, as far as my yard is concerned.

This past week it was time to catch up on bills, groceries and the yards. MH and I mowed the long, seeding grass and I spent several cool, wet early mornings pulling weeds (far from all of them) and untangling some of the plants growing into the deer netting before they could open flowers that would get stuck. I potted the vegetable and herb seedlings bought before we left and put them behind fencing in a sunny part of the yard. You'd hardly know we'd been away, presuming anyone had noticed.

For the moment we can relax and enjoy our bit of property before summer's heat and humidity comes back with a vengeance and the yard will need attending to again.

Following New Jersey's Passaic River

This post is based on one that originally ran on August 5, 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.

Recently, MH and I went to the Great Swamp. It is spring, and I wanted to see what might've been hanging around. I also wanted to get MH out and walking. I took him to a 0.6 mile loop toward the back of the property where the education center named for Helen Fenske is located. (Fenske led the call to keep the area a swamp rather than turn it into the New York metro area's fourth major airport.) This trail was flat and cindered so he could walk it easily.

Passaic River, Bernardsville, NJ, not far from the source. (Margo D. Beller)

I have been on it before and usually take the left fork. With MH we went right, and almost immediately were on the banks of the Passaic River, the natural border between Morris County, where we stood, and Somerset County on the other side.

While I scanned the banks for birds, MH voiced his amazement. "I never knew this was so close to the Fenske Center," he said. "I've lived in New Jersey almost all my life and never knew this was here." MH's nickname is Mr. Map because he uses (and collects) maps and is rarely ever lost, so finding a river someplace unexpected really threw him.

This happened once before, when I wrote a post for the NJ Audubon blog on the Passaic River. One of the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary trails goes along the river. One autumn day, driving to the place, I saw the river through the trees. When I got home I pulled out one of MH's detailed maps and realized that when I passed Liddell's Pond, I was passing the source. I showed MH the map and he was amazed. "I never knew that was the source," he said.

We both learned a lot from the post, as you'll see below:

Every river, even the mighty Mississippi, starts small. Water bubbles to the surface from underground and gravity brings it downhill. As it rains, the waters rise, the flow increases and brooks and streams are created. They feed larger water forms that have become rivers.

Before highways took us from Point A to B, New Jersey and the other original 13 colonies were wooded wilderness. It was hard traveling over the land so people and their goods got from one town to the other via river. If you remove the highways from a map of New Jersey and look at where the state's original towns were located, the importance of rivers becomes more obvious.

For a small state, there are many rivers, among them the Delaware on the state's western coast, the Hudson on the east and, within, the Raritan and the Hackensack.

What these rivers have in common, besides their importance in trade and transportation, is they are natural borders between states and counties.

The border between New Jersey's Morris and Somerset counties is the Passaic River. "Passaic," if you believe Wikipedia, is from the Lenape word "pahsayèk," which has been variously attributed to mean "valley" or "place where the land splits." There are many sources where you can learn more about the river's history, starting with the formation about 11,000 years ago of the Ice Age's Glacial Lake Passaic.

At 80 to 90 miles (depending on which source you use), the Passaic is one of the the longest rivers in New Jersey, starting in Mendham, Morris County, and ending up the much larger river that drops in a giant waterfall at Paterson and flows by Newark before emptying into New York Bay.

The river is very noticeable if you are walking Scherman's yellow-blazed River trail. At this point the Passaic is about the size of a large brook and filled with rocks. Water draws bugs, and the Passaic is no exception. Birders put up with this because bugs draw the birds that feed on them. The movement of the river draws flycatching phoebes and the Louisiana waterthrush, which have nested at Scherman for years.

Passaic River plants (Margo D. Beller)

The river ecosystem encourages such plants as trout lily, Canada mayflower, cinnamon ferns and skunk cabbage, one of the first plants to grow in spring. Rivers are a source of life.

I've heard the distinctive rattling of a belted kingfisher flying back and forth along the river looking for fish. The river provides birds and other creatures a place to bathe and feed. Families come to Scherman's part of the Passaic to sit on the shore and cool off during a hot summer day.

The part of the Passaic at Scherman is clean water. But the part at the Newark end is not and its tortured industrial history reminds us rivers can be killed quickly.

Many of suburban New Jersey's rivers are threatened by too many suburban houses and homeowners who over-treat their lawns with chemicals that not only kill beneficial insects but run off in heavy rains into storm sewers and from there to rivers.

That's nothing compared to the lower Passaic. If the upper Passaic is Dr. Jekyll, the lower Passaic is Mr. Hyde.

It has been a major chemical dumping ground for decades, filled with toxins that have hurt people living downriver. Paterson, for instance, was once known as the Silk City because of its mills. That was a long time ago. More recently it has been a byword for crime, urban decay and, thanks to its many now-closed factories, the creator of the "toilet river" that was the Passaic.

As a 2009 New York Times article put it: "The Passaic begins in the clear trout streams of rural Morris County, provides drinking water to 3.5 million New Jersey residents, reaches a peak at the Great Falls of Paterson and then devolves at the end of 80 increasingly foul and dispiriting miles into a dark, malodorous industrial sink."

Six years later I wouldn't eat any fish caught in Paterson.

(Margo D. Beller)

If you go to Scherman Hoffman to hike the trails you are what has become known as an ecotourist. It is a big business in some parts of the world. Towns in New Jersey have been catching up to the concept. The people running the cities and towns along the Passaic, whose people got sick from the chemicals in their air and water, have been literally trying to clean up their act, promoting ecotourism opportunities such as fishing, kayaking, and in the case of Paterson visiting the Great Falls, which only recently became a federal park.

Environmental groups have used the river as a teaching aid. The Hackensack Riverkeeper, for instance, within the last few years has run an ecotour that takes people up the urban end of the Passaic. As with their trips up the Hackensack - another river trying to recover from nearly being killed by industrial pollutants dumped into the Meadowlands marshes - the idea is to show the importance of the river and and how fragile the river's health is still.

Things are slowly improving for the lower Passaic, despite the long time it takes to get a polluting company to pay for river cleanup and government inefficiency.

At the upper Passaic, along the Scherman Hoffman River Trail, we don't have that problem -- at least not yet. It is easy to forget the clean, Dr. Jekyll, suburban one and the polluted, Mr. Hyde, urban one are the same river. But it is connected. The upper Passaic is healthy because its headwaters are not in an industrial area. But it wouldn't take much - say a farm sold to developers who build a massive condo development in a watershed, as many would like to do in the New Jersey Highlands - to do a lot of harm.

Rivers are fragile and their health shouldn't be taken for granted.

Waiting for Rosie

When May comes, there are many things for me to expect. Mother's Day. Daylight extending to 8 pm and later in New Jersey. Our wedding anniversary.

In the bird world, early May is when we can expect to see a rose-breasted grosbeak (or five) at the house feeder.

Rose-breasted grosbeak pair, May 2013 (RE Berg-Andersson)

"Almost time," MH told me today. "The feeder is full? I hope they come while we're home."

MH is particularly eager to see these large birds because they are colorful, he knows what they are without my telling him and he likes to take their picture. The male is striking, with black and white wings and back, rose coloring on the breast and a large, pinkish bill for crunching seeds. The female is equally striking, despite the dull brown designed to hide her (and the nest) in foliage. However, she has distinct white eyebrows and brown streaking on the breast.

This grosbeak is a relative of the black-headed grosbeak, a western bird, and the evening grosbeak usually found in the north. The evening grosbeak looks like a goldfinch on steroids and that is the same feeling I get when I look at the female rose-breasted grosbeak because she looks like a much, much bigger version of a female purple finch, including the white eyebrow.

The first year I kept the house feeder filled into May, we had two females followed by five males. It was quite a sight to behold. Since then, I've found these birds usually arrive in our part of the country in early May, although occasionally in late April. (I've only just started seeing reports in the New Jersey bird lists today as I write this, the last day of April.)

2 males showing how they got their name. (RE Berg-Andersson)

There have been times when I have heard the grosbeak before seeing it. It has a sweeter, faster, slightly higher in pitch song than a robin. It usually catches me off-guard, particularly if I am hearing other birds in the woods. You have to pay attention. It will sit and sing for a long time, then fly off and you'll hear the song from another direction. If you're lucky, there will be two males "battling" in song, filling the woods with sweetness. They'll hang around the yard as long as the feeders are out, but can more reliably be found in my favorite hiking areas.

There are many other migrants passing through that are almost as colorful although many don't sing as well. Thrushes are passing through including the wood thrush, of which Henry David Thoreau said, "This is the only bird whose note affects me like music." One early morning in New Hampshire I walked in woods and heard five birds' flute-like songs, seemingly one per tree. In their midst was the higher, more ethereal sound of the hermit thrush. A thrush-like bird, the veery, has what sounds to me like an electronic song that can sound eerie in the woods. 

Three on the feeder, 2013 (RE Berg-Andersson)

And then there are the warblers, which don't really warble at all but buzz in unique patterns that can help you identify them, presuming you can see them high in trees or low in the brush. These birds don't hang around my yard but stop maybe a day to eat on their way north to more suitable habitat.

For now, we wait on the rosies.