Warbler Neck, Birder's Ear and Other Ailments

(RE Berg-Andersson)

"We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” 

-- George Bernard Shaw

The birds sang around us as we walked the path through the woods at a federal park near where we live. Towhee, wood thrush, veery, white-breasted nuthatch, catbird -- all heard and tallied in my head as MH and I slowly stepped downhill.

He carries a stick wherever we happen to hike, even on a flat, paved trail, because of his knees, girth and fear of falling down. On this particular trip I left my stick at home, but I have had more than my share of falls, one of them on another trail at this same park, and so I walked slower than usual, avoiding the rocks, roots and areas where runoff from recent rain made the ground almost too smooth.

"There's a peewee," he called from behind me. "There it goes again."

I didn't hear it. 

It called about a dozen or so times, he told me. With all the birds that I could hear, it rankled me I could not hear this bird, whose call ("pee-oh-wee!) is its name. It is a thin and high-pitched call. 

This is not the first time he has heard a bird I did not. This has happened several times with the peewee alone. Unless the bird is close to where I am standing, I am not hearing it.

I don't like this high-frequency problem, another in a series of ailments that affects my birding and my aging life in general.

Like others of my generation, too much loud music heard at concerts or through headphones has damaged my hearing. According to the people who make hearing aids, 48 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss. If I can't hear higher pitches, there will be some birds with faint, high calls (Cape May warbler, Blackburnian warbler, the aforementioned peewee) I won't hear. Rather than call it "deafness" or "approaching old age," I call this condition "birder's ear."

But wait, there's more. Hearing problems can also affect balance, something you need if you are going to hike in the woods alone. Aging knees are a problem when hiking up and down hills, frequently over rough terrain, and there are many trails we now don't hike anymore as a result. I have met people who watch for birds from the comfort of their cars so they don't put pressure on their legs. They won't see as much but they are content with what they can find.

(RE Berg-Andersson)

I am not,. I always want to find more birds so I need my hearing. Long ago I realized that once trees leafed out I was never going to see all the birds calling around me. I would have to learn their songs. Since then I have refined that to learn tones so I can tell, for instance, the buzzy trill of the worm-eating warbler from the dry trill of the chipping sparrow and from the sweeter trill of the pine warbler. Although each bird has a different type of favored habitat, there are occasions when these overlap, such as the time I was in one park that had pines (pine warbler), fields (chipping sparrow) and brushy hillsides (worm-eating warbler) and I heard each bird singing.

So if I can't hear a call as easy to identify as a peewee's, I wondered, what else am I missing?

Busy birders such as me also get sore arms from poling ourselves along the trail, aching ankles if they are not braced and sore knees from walking for miles, especially around water or mud. And that workout includes standing still. Try standing in one place without making a sound for more than five minutes. (I find my stick very good to lean on.) It all starts to add up after a while.

Same with another condition that afflicts we of a certain level of age and experience: "warbler neck."

I consider myself to be in decent physical shape. I exercise and try to control my eating. For me, birding is a way of getting out of the house, away from stress and into nature. It also allows me to test my memory and keep my brain sharp. I never thought of it as exercise for those, like MH, who don't do a lot of physical activities. But it is, and no less an authority than Prevention Magazine recommends it for the sedentary. 

In the field (Margo D. Beller)

Of course, as in all exercise, no pain, no gain. And while I have seen a lot of birds in my time, they have recently become a pain in the neck. Literally. 

You look in the treetops for little birds flitting around and there is a ping that, after continued use, becomes painful enough to make turning your head hard to do. This is another reason I have been using my ears instead of my eyes. My bad posture doesn't help. Nor does wearing heavy, 10x50 binoculars. Neck pain prompted me to switch from the usual strap to a harness that spreads the weight over my back and shoulders. But a strap still presses on the shoulder near the base of the sore left side of my neck.

The National Audubon Society, knowing a trend when it sees one, has an article that not only lists the best exercises to help your warbler neck but provides a YouTube exercise video and a helpful list of "jams" to help you bust a neck move. 

MH likes to remind me birding is supposed to be fun. It is. As long as it remains so I'll put up with the ailments and, by extension, the aging. After all, consider the alternative.

Summer of My Discontent (Squirrel Division)

Apple season is nearly over and the only fruit still on the tree is way at the top, where I can't reach it even with my extension pole. However, the gray squirrels have no problem. They climb the main trunk to a branch, then carefully go along until they reach an apple. If the thin branch bends too far and they could fall and break a leg, they leave the fruit alone. At least for the moment.

I watch them do this from my porch and find myself developing a begrudging admiration for Sciurus carolinsis, even as it wreaks havoc throughout my backyard.

"Eastern Gray Squirrel" by DFChurch is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

According to the "Mammals of North America" field guide (Kenn Kaufman is one of its authors), the Eastern gray squirrel has a varied diet that includes fruit, nuts, bird eggs, tree buds, insects, even carrion. "As many people have learned, these squirrels are also very good at raiding bird feeders," the authors add with droll understatement.

Well, duh.

Thanks to the squirrels, I've finally taken in my last feeder for the summer. Either the recent heavy rains pushed down the protective baffle to a height where the squirrels could jump on it, or a squirrel that wanted some food ASAP managed to grab the edge and pull the baffle down. Whatever happened, I went out one morning with the feeder for the cardinal family and a short time later looked out and couldn't understand why it was at such a strange angle... until I saw the two squirrels on it. Out I went and in came the feeder. No more summer feeding. 

The cardinals came and looked for the seed but flew off. I am presuming the young cardinal following its parents can now feed itself because I no longer hear it begging. The male still flies to the feeder pole every so often as a perch to scan for insects below and I feel a twinge of guilt. 

Meanwhile, the squirrels climb the apple tree almost as fast as I can pick up partially eaten apples in my bucket, dump them in a far corner and then go back inside. If I am not fast enough to pick up this fruit, the deer come to finish it off. Judging from all the deer poop I shoveled up the other day so MH could mow the area, I haven't been very fast. 

Apples and nest box (Margo D. Beller)

So I started racing the squirrels for apples by whacking the branches with the extension pole. I know the apple tree wasn't pleased but it was me or the squirrels. So far I have made six pints of apple sauce and one apple cobbler. 

However, the decline in remaining apples comes too late for the house wrens, which deserted the nest box. The combination of too many hungry squirrels in the tree and my being out there with my stick, albeit as far from the nest box as possible, was too much for the wren pair, which would scold me even if I just stood under the tree. 

One morning I went out with my bucket and found the box turned around after a night of heavy rain. I turned it back and saw the opening was filled with nesting material, so much I could not imagine how even something as small as a house wren could get in there to tend to young. I left it alone. Over the next few days I would hear a wren sing as close as a yard away, but nothing came to the apple tree. Finally, I pulled some of the material out of the box. No peeping chicks. No smell of rotting eggs. A few days later I took down the box and cleared it. Many twigs, a few feathers, even a bit of plastic. No eggs. I re-hung the box and now hope for another wren pair in my yard that won't be as jinxed as the last pair.

So that's the havoc. Where does the squirrel admiration come in?

How squirrels adapt (Margo D. Beller)

These rats with bushy tails are survivors. When we have a hard winter with a lot of ice-covered snow and the squirrels can't reach their buried stores, they devise rather interesting ways to get to the feeders if the birds don't drop seeds fast enough. I've written about the really bad winter where squirrels used the accumulated snowpack as a springboard to vault the baffle and grab the "anti-squirrel" cage of the feeders. One squirrel, I discovered, tried to gnaw through the metal bars (the green plastic that keeps the bars from rusting was gone) and then tried to pull the bars apart to stick its head inside. (How it would've gotten past the plastic tube I don't know but I'm sure it would've, somehow.)

Squirrels are smart. They know they can't get behind my deer netting (unlike the smaller chipmunks, alas) because they might not be able to make a clean getaway if I suddenly show up. Do a search under "squirrel feeder videos" and you are likely to find both videos from the makers of these "squirrel-proof" feeders and the people who were greatly entertained watching the squirrels attempt to get food from them. But these feeders don't stop squirrels, they only slow them down (as my picture above shows). 

There is always one particularly smart squirrel that vexes me by its acrobatics even as I admire its abilities. According to MH, who once raised gerbils, the smart squirrel is likely a female that does what she must because she is "eating for six," i.e. pregnant. 

There was the squirrel I found grasping a screen on my enclosed porch and then, after much calculation, jumping across to one of the feeders. There was the squirrel that figured out it could climb the pear tree to jump to the porch roof and go after the acorns other squirrels were dropping from the oak trees above. There are also the stupid squirrels that are hawk or owl food or suddenly run out in front of your car and become roadkill. They will scamper along power lines or even gnaw on them, electrocuting themselves and creating a power outage.

There are regions where people still hunt squirrels but in urban areas such as Central Park, gray squirrels have become used to being fed by humans. In my backyard squirrels dig many holes to bury nuts for winter or dig up other squirrels' nuts to eat. They can do a lot of digging, including in my unnetted flower beds. They might even climb into your house attic.

If humans want to take their picture and feed them peanuts from their hands, the squirrels won't mind. If I am stupid enough to put out a feeder at a time when most birds aren't as interested in sunflower seeds, squirrels will take things into their own paws.

Apple season is just about over. Acorn season is around the corner. So is squirrel birthing season. Joy.

Home, Sweet Nest

There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. 
-- Henry David Thoreau

I recently finished re-reading Bob Levy's 2006 book about Central Park, its birds and the people who look for them, "Club George." George was the name given to a male red-winged blackbird that was not shy about taking food from human hands. 

Robin nest placed on stairs to an observation deck, 2019
(Margo D. Beller)

Rather than focusing on the birds migrating through this urban oasis in the spring, which is what I do when I visit Central Park, he is more interested in the birds that stay in the park to nest and raise young during the summer. Among the nests he visited on his daily rounds were those of a pair of cardinals, cedar waxwings and several green herons besides monitoring "George's Pond" for signs of young redwings in a number of nests in the tall reeds. His greatest frustration was in not being able to see the chicks. Until the young became big enough to stand up (in the case of the herons) or stick their heads up to be fed (in the case of the other birds), he could not see what was happening in the nest.

I know that frustration.

Somewhere in one of my hedges was the nest where the cardinal pair raised their one surviving chick this year. I know that somewhere in another hedge on the other side of the yard are possibly two catbird nests. 

There are people who like to find active nests and take their pictures. I don't go looking for the nests, although sometimes I find them when the parent bird catches my attention and leads me there. The smallest such nest was the hummingbird nest in a small branch hanging over a brook a few years ago. The largest was the red-tailed hawk nest I found in a tree over a backstreet in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, the year I worked in the area.

Red-tailed hawk on nest, 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

Closer to home, watering one of my bushes at the side of the house, a catbird flew up. Something made me look in back and there on a branch was its mate, steadfastly sitting on her eggs in a woven nest. For the rest of the summer I watered there only when I had to until the birds fledged. That was the last year a nest was built in that particular area.

Robins have the habit of building a lot of "dummy" nests to fool potential predators. I watched a robin build one at the top of the pear tree. The robin sat in it for so long I thought it was a real nest. But one day the bird left and the nest later blew down. There were no eggs in it. Another year a robin put another nest in my spruce tree. I have found robin nests in really strange places, such as on stairs leading to an observation deck and at eye level in trees off heavily traveled foot paths. Recently I went on a hike and a couple of shrieking robins alerted me to their nest in which were two young. When I next checked the area 12 days later, the nest was there but the birds were gone. According to Cornell's Ornithology Lab, the nesting period for robins is 13 days.

Much-photographed wren nest box (Margo D. Beller)

The nest I know best is the wooden box I put into the apple tree every year for the house wrens. However, even though I know where the nest will be, I know little of what goes on inside. Not knowing if there was a viable nest for the longest time was particularly vexing for me this year, although now, judging by the birds' behavior, there has to be a brood. 

I have thought about getting one of those tiny cameras that would fit in the box. Birdcams have become as ubiquitous as the surveillance cameras recording we humans on the streets of major cities or the selfies I see people taking everywhere. Everyone wants to see a picture or, better yet, a video of young birds squished together sleeping or fighting each other to get the regurgitated food from their arriving parent's mouth or, in the case of raptors, whole birds, mammals or fish for them to rip apart. Gross but fascinating.

Viral house wrens? Perhaps next year. For now, I continue to listen for peeping young inside the box. 

A Delicate Dance Around the Apple Tree

I was so hoping the cool, wet spring would keep the squirrels hydrated so they would not need to climb into my apple tree and start eating. But no. The first spate of sunny, warm days and they were in there, even though to me the fruit was not large or ripe enough. But to squirrels, apples of any type are a temptation at this time of year.

The first of this year's apples (Margo D. Beller)

And so over the last few days I have been outside either picking up usable dropped apples or picking what I can reach. Most of these apples are not ripe but when I cook them with enough sugar they will taste just fine as apple sauce.

Most apples can be picked in the fall. This tree has always bloomed in the late spring. When I first realized these apples were sweet and thus edible, they would ripen red. I took one to the manager of a farm market near me and he said it was a type of Macintosh. All I knew was of the five apple trees planted by the previous owner of my home, this one had usable apples. (The other four trees have since been removed.)

The problem is the house wren box, which prompts me to do a delicate dance when it comes to gathering the apples. I hang it in the apple tree. When I get too close to the box, one of the wrens starts to fuss, either from high in the tree or from a nearby bush. On occasion both adults scold because I am too close. I had hoped that by standing under the tree when the apples were first appearing the birds would get used to my presence. Perhaps it has worked, as long as I stay away from the box.

Apple tree with this year's crop and house wren box (Margo D. Beller)

In past years, the squirrels didn't start hitting the tree in droves (the record is six at once) until late June or even early July. Some years the tree provides a meager harvest while others there is too much. This year, based on the number of blossoms that bloomed for over a week this spring, looks like it is in-between.

Under the late June-early July scenario, the house wrens were usually done with their brood and they, and young, would have left for larger quarters (such as a nearby hedge) before separating and flying south. But this year with all the drama over whether there would even be a wren family, the nesting started later than usual.

So thanks in part to the increasing global warming affecting even my part of the U.S., my yard has a bad combination of late nesting and early apple picking.

There are two other figures in this dance: deer and birds. Squirrels are sloppy eaters, I've found. If they take an apple and run off to a safe location, I'm ok with that. But when they eat in the tree there is a likelihood part of that apple will end up on the ground. That is particularly true when I go out to shoo them away. Unless I pick up those apple parts and either throw them in a corner of the yard or put them in the garbage, the deer will stop by and eat this free food. I know this because they leave lots of calling cards.

As for the birds, some, like American crows, like to eat fruit but in my experience most of the time a bird will peck into the apple to draw insects to it or to get at any insects already inside. I don't spray the tree, so when I do use the apples I have to cut off a goodly amount of them to make sure that, at minimum, I'm not mixing a worm into my apple sauce.

Feeding the young in 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

So once again I will be stiffly going outside early in the morning and then perhaps again at dusk to retrieve any fallen apples. Many are the times I've picked up a pail's worth of apples and maybe one-third of them have not been partially eaten or pecked. When the wren young have left the nest I will take out my long stick and start whacking the tree for the apples in the mid level while the squirrels go after the ones in the highest branches I can't reach. They can have those.

The good news is, this madness should be over in about 10 days and the cooking will begin sooner than that. In the meantime, I'll be trying to disturb the house wren family-in-the-making as little as possible.

Watching for Hummingbirds

This post is based on one that originally ran on May 29, 2013, 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.

I hear like you see — like that hummingbird outside that window, for instance.
– Ray Charles

This morning (Sunday) a Ruby-throated Hummingbird hovered over the feeder briefly, then flew into the nearby apple tree. It did not return while I sat on my porch with my binoculars.

Another year's backyard hummer. (Margo D. Beller)

For my yard, this is typical. Every year the hummingbirds visit infrequently in late spring, then more regularly in late June into July when the female, which does all the work feeding the young, stops for a sip of sugar water so she has the energy to find insects to feed her chicks. 

When I hang the seed feeders, I know a host of different birds will come to eat all year long. But the sugar water feeder is meant for only one type of bird that visits over the summer, and the food can go bad quickly in the heat. I have a pole in a shady area but I can't see the feeder from the kitchen, unlike the seed feeder poles. 

My brother-in-law, noted below, has no trouble drawing these tiny colorful birds to his feeders. But even he has been known to complain about the "waste" of having to dump nearly full feeders when the sugar water has gone bad:

It is dusk in New Hampshire. It is raining and unusually cold for late May and I am sitting on my brother-in-law’s wide, covered porch.

As it darkens, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird comes to one of the two feeders hung from a support for the grape vines. It perches and takes a long drink of the sugar water that will help keep it alive over the expected cold night.

A second, slightly larger hummer arrives. Despite two feeders being out, this one chases the other away because this is what hummingbirds do, they battle each other for food and territory. These little birds are tough. The first one leaves and the second takes a long drink, then perches for a while until it gets almost too dark to see. Then it flies off to roost in a nearby sheltering willow.

(Margo D. Beller)

I am always taken aback when a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, looking more like a bug than bird, flits by me. They are fascinating to watch, the only bird that can fly backwards, bright green back, long bill and, if a mature male, a deep, red throat. John J. Audubon referred to the Ruby-throat as the “glittering fragment of the rainbow.”

Hummingbirds are so small - they weigh the same as a penny - and so colorful. In the U.S. they have interesting names including Broad-billed, Broad-tailed, Anna’s, Allen’s, Calliope and Magnificent. But in New Jersey, the hummingbird you’ll see 99% of the time is the Ruby-throated. Go walk in the woods wearing a red hat or bandana and you might draw one to you, checking out what kind of flower you are.

People love to watch hummingbirds. They put out red feeders with sugar water (1 part sugar to 4 parts water) to feed them. They plant flowers for them – preferably those that are red and/or trumpet-shaped (yellow jewelweed is a favorite, if you happen to have a stream or river along your property). They make documentaries about them. There’s even websites to track the Ruby-throat’s northbound migration.

One year I was in New Jersey’s Great Swamp, crossing a bridge over a brook, when I was buzzed by a hummer that flew to a tiny nest made of lichen and spider webs at the tip of a thin branch hanging over the water, a good defense against predators. This was a female: Once the male has done his part, he’s gone, frequently heading south as early as July, leaving the female to build the nest and raise the brood alone.

New Jersey Audubon’s Scherman Hoffman sanctuary has a feeder attached to the bookstore window so those inside get a close view of the feeding bird. It is nice to be inside, perhaps talking to sanctuary director Mike Anderson or one of the volunteers, and suddenly have a brilliantly colored male hummer appear out of nowhere. Very little deters a hungry hummingbird, as the ones I saw in New Hampshire reminded me.

When I see a hummer at a feeder, its whirring wings beating thousands of times a second, I appreciate the great lengths it has gone - and the dangers it has faced - to make it here from central and South America.

In his book “The Big Year,” Mark Obmascik gives a harrowing account of northbound migration over the Gulf of Mexico, from the point of view of a female Ruby-throat. Like all birds the hummer eats and eats and eats, then takes off and flies nonstop over the water, burning fat supplies as she goes until she can get to land to eat and rest. Many don’t make it. The one in the book does. Read it and I guarantee the next time you look at a hummingbird you will be awed.

If you want to attract hummingbirds you can create a garden with the right type of flowers. Trumpet Vine is a hummer favorite, and so are other native plants including Beard Tongue, Wild Bergamont and Bleeding Heart. If you have a wet garden, there’s Fire Pink and Cardinal Flower and its blue cousin Lobelia.

The nice thing about these flowers is that besides hummers you will also draw butterflies – another long-distance migrant that is tougher than it appears. These plants evolved along with native birds, insects and wildlife. Putting these in your garden is like buying heirloom tomatoes with their strange colors and textures and juicy taste instead of the bland orange tomatoes used for fast-food sandwiches. Natives are just more interesting, and so are the birds and insects they attract.

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

Here is Audubon on hummingbirds and native flowers:

No sooner has the returning sun again introduced the vernal season, and caused millions of plants to expand their leaves and blossoms to his genial beams, than the little Humming-bird is seen advancing on fairy wings, carefully visiting every opening flower-cup, and, like a curious florist, removing from each the injurious insects that otherwise would ere long cause their beauteous petals to droop and decay... Its long delicate bill enters the cup of the flower, and the protruded double-tubed tongue, delicately sensible, and imbued with a glutinous saliva, touches each insect in succession, and draws it from its lurking place, to be instantly swallowed. All this is done in a moment, and the bird, as it leaves the flower, sips so small a portion of its liquid honey, that the theft, we may suppose, is looked upon with a grateful feeling by the flower, which is thus kindly relieved from the attacks of her destroyers.

Makes you want to go native and plant a few Fire Pinks, doesn’t it?

I get a grateful feeling about hummingbirds, too.

Hydrogen - Atomic Number 1 With a Bullet

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 12, 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.

After a mainly damp and cool spring, getting hit with a hot and humid day is hard to take. Even harder to take is knowing that when the electric bill comes next month it will be much higher since the utility company is allowed by the state regulator to increase its charges because people will be using the air conditioner a lot more. (The same happens in winter with the gas company, which knows you'll have the heat on when the north wind is blowing.)

Mike Strizki with hydrogen-powered toys

With my curtains closed against the hot sun and the AC making it cool enough for me to think, I wondered yet again about ways to cut my electricity bill short of not using the AC at all. I do what I can but humidity can make an 80 degree day feel like 95.

With that in mind I bring you the story of a guy who has been trying to spread the word on hydrogen as a power source. He made his pitch at New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. His Hydrogen House Project is still running and you can see pictures and videos from the site.

I may have to give him a call after I get my next electricity bill. (I took all the photos):


What would you pay to get the utility companies - electricity, oil, gas - off your back and never pay them a dime again?

The average house uses approximately 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per month.We all know there are other options out there -- costly ones -- including windmills, solar panels and geothermal, which is drilling into the earth to draw its heat to power your home.

Mike Strizki has another way he claims will save you money, create no emissions and take you completely off the grid, preserving Earth for generations to come.

He uses hydrogen.

The sun is over 70% hydrogen. Hydrogen is the first element in the periodic table -- colorless, odorless, literally lighter than air and, when combined with oxygen, creates your water. It is this basic chemistry, with more than a little help from the sun and the fuel cell system he created to transform hydrogen into power, that he uses in the 11-acre house in Hopewell, N.J., he completed retrofitting in 2006. That house is the nucleus of the educational Hydrogen House Project.

"We have to educate the public that hydrogen is safe," he said at a recent program at N.J. Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. "We can't keep going down the same path. It just doesn't work that way."

Hydrogen-powered truck

To that end New Jersey Audubon is partnering with Hydrogen House to be the state coordinators of the National Wildlife Federation’s (NWF) Eco-Schools USA program providing free materials to schools to include "sustainability education" in their curriculum. That includes tours of Hydrogen House, learning the nuts and bolts of creating sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels.

Hydrogen is safer than crude oil (remember this crude oil explosion in W. Va.?). It creates none of the unpleasant side effects of fracking. For those who know history, Strizki insists the only reason the Hindenburg airship blew up over Lakewood, N.J., in 1937 was because of rocket fuel that coated the shell, not the hydrogen inflating it.

Looking at his website you can see Strizki is no mere tinkerer. He spent 16 years at the state Department of Transportation's Office of Research and Technology, leaving it when funding for renewable energy was cut because, unlike oil and gas, "you can't tax free," he said. Since then he has worked on renewable energy and clean water projects around the world. He’s also come up with fun stuff, like the hydrogen-powered toys he brought that can be directed from his hydrogen-charged cellphone.

How does hydrogen power work? According to his site: Hydrogen House operates by collecting solar energy from a 21-kilowatt array of solar panels mounted throughout Strizki's property. The energy from the 70 thin film and 80 polycrystalline panels passes through inverters where it is collected in a relatively small battery bank used to run a low-pressure electrolyzer.

The electrolyzer splits water molecules into their base elements - hydrogen and oxygen. Strizki's system stores the hydrogen in 11 reused low-pressure propane tanks, similar to those found at a typical gas station. The hydrogen can then be burned for cooking and heating similar to natural gas, and can be converted into electricity by way of a hydrogen fuel cell. The only emissions from the system are medical grade oxygen and chemically pure water.

There are 10 used propane tanks in back of Hydrogen House to store the gas to get him through times when there isn't a lot of sun, such as the short days of winter. Those 10 tanks provide enough hydrogen to power his house for a year. And you can make more - put in purified water and you can split it into hydrogen and oxygen or, using another of his products, the joule, recombine it with oxygen to form water that can be split again. It is the ultimate in recycling.

But as with anything new, there are two daunting drawbacks to using hydrogen as an energy source- the cost and the government bureaucracy.

Hydrogen-powered cellphone charger

It cost Strizki $500,000 - that's half a million - to retrofit his Hopewell home back in 2006. He said he put in $100,000 of his own money and got the rest from New Jersey Board of Public Utilities grants and donations, he said. He is now building a second home (since completed) in Hopewell that will cost about a fifth of that, in part because he has developed more streamlined and simpler storage technology that doesn't require a tank farm.

He said it took 3 ½ years to get all the permits to retrofit his house because of those 10 old propane tanks. The local building inspector took one look and refused to do anything, he said. The process was moved to another agency that treated the home as an industrial facility, also because of those tanks. Even then the process sat in limbo until, he said, he got the New York Times involved. He got his permits.

Strizki said that now, with his smaller, more portable fuel-cell system - which uses flexible, lightweight solar panels rather than the heavier ones seen on roofs or in solar panel farms -- the only permit a homeowner has to get is for the connection to the house, just as someone must do to install an outside, permanent generator -- the kind that became very popular with homeowners after Hurricane Sandy.

Such generators "just sit there and cost you money," he scoffed, while his system saves money. As for the simpler permitting, the regulators are "not happy about it but there is nothing they can do about it."

That was certainly on the minds of those in the audience, who peppered him with questions. There is something very appealing about saving money and becoming self-sufficient.

For instance, Hydrogen House never lost power after Sandy, he says on his website, at a time when "New Jersey’s electric utility companies scrambled to fix downed power lines and busted transformers." As you can imagine, his house became very popular with the neighbors who were without electricity for over a week and needed to power up their phones using the charger he developed (pictured). This charger, the streamlined power system and other products he has developed are detailed on the site, too.

The cost of the technology will come down over time - as it has with computers that are smaller but have more power than the ones that used to take up a whole room, for instance - as will the retrofitting cost and the cost of your energy usage. But the initial outlay is high.

Scherman Hoffman Director Mike Anderson said he'd love to have a renewable source of energy to power the education center and offices. Right now they are powered using propane. Most of the old oil tanks used in the former Hoffman estate were removed.

Sustainability is a wonderful idea but it's a costly reality.

To Strizki, it's all about self-sufficiency and not being "squeezed and controlled" by the government. It's also about removing your "carbon footprint" and saving the planet for our children and grandchildren.

How much is that worth to you?

The Further Adventures of a Suburban Backyard

The house wren sang incessantly starting at dawn. I did not mind the wake-up call. Considering I thought the nest box was abandoned, this is music to my ears.

Things happen so fast in my backyard that I must restrain myself from writing every day because I am sure to be proven wrong. Such is the case after last week's post when I needed to update on the fawns being led off the lawn by their mother. I am now sure the one that appeared under the apple tree after the doe had led off one of her twins was Fawn 1, the one that started to follow me thinking I was its mother. I didn't know where it had gotten to once I got on the porch. It must've remembered Mom's instructions to lie down under a tree surrounded by high grass and wait for her.

Wren nest box (Margo D. Beller)

Neither fawns nor doe have been seen since and MH was able to mow the grass over several days this week when the rains held off.

But there were other dramas in my backyard that literally changed by the day.

The late afternoon of Memorial Day - a sunny, clear and windless day - I came out to get the feeder and found the female cardinal on the ground, her head smashed from hitting the side of the screened porch. The flies were already doing their own feeding when I shoveled up the body and deposited it under a shrub on the other side of my flood wall, the usual place where I place any dead birds or animals I find. (They decompose very quickly.)

Cardinals mate for life, and it was sad to see the male cardinal coming to the feeder as usual and not seeing its mate. However, I was sure that would change and two days later I was not surprised to see an adult female started coming to the feeder with the male. What did surprise me, however, was the begging young that appeared on the floodwall: not a cowbird, as I'd thought, but a juvenile cardinal after all. Like the adult, this bird was brownish (to better blend in) and had a small crest and red tail but its bill was gray rather than red. That will change as the bird matures, as will its coloring if this is a male.

While it is easy to tell the red cardinal male from the browner female, the same can't be said about house wrens.

Female cardinal from another year (Margo D. Beller)

Last week, I was unsure if I was going to have to clear an abandoned nest from the box I hang every year in the apple tree. I had seen one individual that would softly "scold" and then fly into the box. I presumed that was a female. I wondered how she would survive as a single parent, especially if she was sitting on eggs. There had been a singing male at the box a week ago but he turned out to be a one-day wonder.

A few days later another male started singing and this one was more persistent. It sang all around the box, sat just outside the opening, even stuck its head in. It sang for most of the day and at one point I saw it and the female flying around the yard. The singing has continued and today (Sunday) I see twigs sticking through the opening of the box, a sign the nest has been enlarged. If there were dead eggs from her first mate, they've likely been removed.

All this activity has me wondering about many things.

How does a mother deer communicate with its young to tell it to stay in a particular area until she comes back?

How did the male cardinal advertise his availability to another adult female after losing his mate?

Why did the female house wren accept this particular male rather than the earlier one (presuming this wasn't the earlier one returning)?

Some things I can infer. Instinct plays a heavy role. The fawn that followed me saw me as a big creature like its mother. Once the real mother showed up, the fawn followed her off my property.

The female cardinal accepted the young cardinal even tho' it was not hers because instinct tells her to do so. Besides, this pair might have their own brood once the youngster can feed itself.

Blossoming apple tree with nest box (Margo D. Beller)

The female house wren knew it would need a partner, even one that only lasts one season, if she was to lay eggs, brood them into hatching and raise them so they could fledge and take care of themselves. Unlike other birds where the male's responsibility ends at conception, male house wrens help feed and protect the young, usually three or four to a brood. So she needed a new mate.

Now I await the sound of peeping wren young. I hope the birds are hatched, brooded and fledged before the annual summer race between me and the squirrels to harvest the apples now quickly growing around the nest box.