A Hole in the Sky

I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree.
-- Joyce Kilmer

What would Jersey boy Joyce Kilmer think of the suburbs now? I don't think he'd be too happy.

My new frontyard view: Suburban lawn just so, hedges clipped,
inconvenient tree removed, big hole in the sky.
(Margo D. Beller)

When he wrote his poet in 1914, his home state was not nearly as built up as it is now. There were no ribbons of multi-lane superhighways crisscrossing the land. There were no "office parks" on what was once farmland. There were no sprawling housing or retail developments with names like "The Preserve," "The Collection," "Town Centre" or "The Shoppes at ..." 

And I'm willing to bet there were many more trees. (Warning: Another jeremiad ahead.)

I have been living in the northern NJ suburbs for over 25 years after decades in parts of New York City. I wanted more space, quiet and privacy. Now I have my quarter acre, different trees and shrubs (some I planted, most already here) and birds coming to feeders. Much of the time it is quiet, so quiet I can hear cars or conversations from some distance away.

But there are things about the suburbs that still disturb me after all this time.

Large areas of woods have been removed for shopping malls along one major road near my home, creating more traffic (as well as more stop lights to handle it). It is still hard to look at one of the supermarkets I visit without remembering the woods torn down to build it.

When it comes to residential development, the unspoken mantra here is, I do what I want in my yard. As long as it doesn't affect you, it's none of your business. I don't know what my neighbors (with one exception) think of the bird feeders or my deer fencing or my compost pile but since it's in my yard and not affecting their property it's not their problem.

When the longtime neighbor across the street, the one-man homeowners association who has taken loud and long exception to the deer fencing in my front yard, decided to cut one of the very tall trees in his backyard, it was hard for me to watch.

My new backyard view, with remains of viburnum in center.
(Margo D. Beller)

The crew, using horrible-sounding saws and a grinder, took a day to destroy this tree I've seen from my front door for 25 years. They also cut some of the lower branches of the remaining three, which was a relief considering I thought he would be removing all four. But what was left behind looks unnatural, ugly. There is a big hole where the tree used to be. All this guy cared about, I'm guessing, is the damage this tree was causing to the fence he had put in when the trees were, no doubt, much smaller. (This is based on what MH saw in that backyard when he was returning from an errand.)

This neighbor is not alone. Many put trees and shrubs too close to a fence or a house foundation and have to take them out before there's too much structural damage.

In addition, with the improving economy - until the coronavirus closing of businesses threw millions of people out of work and whacked it down to Great Depression levels - many of the houses on my street have new owners. It seems one of the first things these people do to make the house their own is rip up what look to me like perfectly good plants. One new homeowner obliterated a big, lovely, perennial flower garden created by the previous owner when Hurricane Sandy in 2012 toppled a spruce in the front yard. It's been replaced by a lawn. Another took down two huge pines in that front yard, which would've thrown welcome shade on the house in summer, after judging them to be too close. They were replaced with tiny plants on either side of a new front path.

I like trees, even those that drop leaves or pods I am forced to rake every year. They breathe in the carbon dioxide we exhale and breathe out the oxygen we need. They provide shade. They provide a place for birds to rest, forage, build a nest. Without trees, flooding rains would wash away soil. Lawns would burn to a crisp. My mid-Atlantic state would look like someplace out of the wide-open West. 

But hack back they do, every year, whether the plants are healthy and flowering or not.

One fewer tree for birds like the white-breasted nuthatch to use for rest and
finding food. (Margo D. Beller)

Then there are the yard nuts, the people who cut their lawns every week whether it's needed or not or who, in the case of my backyard neighbor (a woman I've had problems with for years), decided to cut back or down every shrub, planted by her parents, on the edge of her lawn so she could have an easier time mowing. In 25 years out here I've never understood why people feel they must cut back trees or flowering shrubs like forsythia in spring instead of waiting until the flowers are gone or until fall when the plants would go dormant anyway. I guess human convenience trumps all.

One such shrub this woman cut way back was a huge viburnum I'd always thought was on my property until MH, hearing my screams (ignored by the neighbor) went out to check the property line and confirmed that, unfortunately, what was left behind was on her side of the line. No more place for birds, no more privacy.

The birds have since adapted and use other shrubs. But I have not adapted so well because there is a gaping hole.

However, I can do something about this particular situation - plant my own tall trees or shrubs to fill the hole on my side of the property line and block this neighbor out (and vice versa).

I don't think Robert Frost had the NJ suburbs in mind when he wrote that "good fences make good neighbors," but in this case it fits.

Free as a Bird

I am the first to admit that compared with what is going on in the rest of the world during this coronavirus plague time, I've gotten off easy. I have not lost my job, I continue to earn my pay, my health is good and MH recovered from what was fortunately a mild bout of the illness. Still, we're afraid. The virus is out there and it is very contagious.

And there is the mental effect. I hate to sound like a whiner but I have been generally depressed by the hoops we must now jump through for something as basic as going to the market, and have been afflicted by a restless feeling of isolation.

Tempe Wick Reserve, Mendham, NJ (Margo D. Beller)

Having state and county parks closed has deprived me of places nearby to visit on my lunch break or on the weekend. It has forced restless neighbors and strangers to take to my quiet street if they need to get out,  creating more traffic on sidewalks and noise as I try to work. I stopped walking on my town's roads weeks ago because it is depressing to have people - almost all of whom are not wearing face masks, unlike me - run into the street with their pets or children, or cross it entirely so we don't come too close.

Social distancing has made us all anti-social, or maybe just scared.

So I've been staying home, restlessly working or sitting on my enclosed porch, doing chores in the yard and watching the birds at the feeder. Until this past Saturday.

It is mid-April and I'm seeing reports the birds are starting to make their way north. Early migrants - pine and palm warblers, chipping sparrows, phoebes, redwinged blackbirds - are already here. There will be birds passing through that, for whatever reason, won't be interested in what my yard has to offer. So I must go find them.

Necessity is the mother of invention. While most of my usual birding spots are closed to me, I decided to go to some still open and relatively close to my town, including a new (to me) place I learned about from birder reports.

So off I flew off on a rainy, chilly, gray day when I figured most people would stay indoors and allow me to bird in peace. I was right.

First stop, a local park in a different part of Morris County (not every town closed local parks; mine did). This turned out to be a wide-open space with a flat, grassy path that was, unfortunately, sopping wet and muddy from that morning's rain. The many flickers, cardinals, savannah sparrows (another early migrant) and the great blue heron that flew over did not mind the wet and neither did I.

(Margo D. Beller)

Second stop, a pond on the border between Morris and Somerset counties, where I could park on a side street not far from the entrance to the federally run Great Swamp. There is a lot of fast-moving traffic on the road I must cross from where I parked to the pond but it is a very good area to see birds in all seasons, including ducks and other waterfowl. This time there were five different types of swallows zipping around - large purple martins, forked-tailed barn swallows, white-breasted tree swallows and at least one each of the brown northern roughwing swallow and the smaller, gray bank swallow. Across the road I found palm and yellow-rumped warblers in and around the shrubs. A birder taking pictures of the swallows was eager to talk so we traded information and told stories from a socially approved distance. I realized how much I missed talking to another birder.

Back at the car I drove to the end of the street, where there is a turnaround close to the Great Swamp's entrance road. In a tree near where I parked I found more palm warblers plus a couple of pine warblers and, wonder of wonders, a larger, gray sparrow with white trim on its tail and an eye ring - vesper sparrow! I'd never have seen it driving on the entrance road.

Finally, while many of the swamp trails have been closed, the main tour road is still open. I made several stops, careful when I walked or drove around people. One birder in his car told me of the kestrel in a tree on the edge of a field. I found it. In another area where I once found a barred owl I stopped and found my first-of-season eastern towhee and veery plus a field sparrow, among others. At the overlook, two distant female northern harriers passed over the trees, hunting.

I was having so much fun I hated to go home but cold, fatigue and hunger were taking their toll. I made a few short stops on the way home, mostly to listen from the car, and discovered something odd: Many people seemed to me to be driving the back roads aimlessly, for instance taking a road that ends at a trail head. As I sat by that trail head listening to the Canada geese, I watched a number of cars come in, turn around and leave without stopping. Maybe their GPS told them the road went through, which it hasn't for decades.

Great Swamp tour road (Margo D. Beller)

Or maybe this was a way for people to get away from home and avoid others without worrying about catching the virus, the ultimate in social distancing.

It makes me wonder what life will be like when we return to "normal." For now, at least, my restlessness is gone.

Watching the Neighbors: The End(?)

Squirrel on nest April 19,2020 (Margo D. Beller)

This Sunday morning, when I put out the bird feeder as I always do on nonrainy days, things were the same and yet very different.

The Cooper's hawks were gone.

Up until Wednesday, the hawks were acting as usual. The male flew to the nest with twigs at first light, the female sat on a nearby branch facing where the sun would be if it wasn't cloudy. Every so often they noisily mated. At some point the male must've flown off because of what happened next. Two fish crows flew to branches close to the nest. The female Cooper's, comparable in size to the crows if not a bit larger, flew at them. They left and she sat in the nest for a long time, so long I thought there might be eggs in there. But after 15 minutes or so she, too, left.

That's been it.

Squirrel at work
(Margo D. Beller)

I have done nothing to prompt this. The yard birds and I had been adapting to the presence of predators. I had out only one feeder. When the male cardinal came after singing from a nearby tree, he would not stay long. His skittish mate came by even less frequently. Squirrels stayed up in the trees until the hawks, as usual, flew off for the day. For the past two weeks or so, the hawks had returned to repeat the process at dusk before going off to roost.

It took three days to realize there was a lot more activity in my yard. Squirrels were digging in the lawn for buried acorns. An assortment of bigger birds that would make more of a meal for a Cooper's - redbellied woodpecker, jays, mourning doves - returned to the feeder. Each morning I had looked at the nest and seen no activity. Then, yesterday afternoon, I watched as a squirrel climbed the tree to the nest with a bunch of leaves in its mouth.

Cardinals in apple tree, pre-mating (Margo D. Beller)

It had claimed the nest. While Cooper's use sticks and line the nest with bark, squirrels tend to use leaves and other softer materials. No squirrel would dare climb into an active hawk nest.

This morning, unusually cold for mid-April (frost on the roofs and some of the plants), I looked up at the nest and it was a different shape - piled high with leaves. The squirrel sat on the branch beneath it. Then it climbed down for another bunch of leaves.

When the male cardinal came to the feeder he was back to his usual habit of grabbing a seed and eating it atop the pole. At one point he flew to his mate and I thought he would give her a seed. Instead, they mated far more quickly and silently than the hawks.

Frost on quince leaves; most of the flowers are gone (Margo D. Beller)

What prompted the Cooper's to abandon the nest the male had spent over two weeks building? Was it the heavy rain we'd had for several days this week? The unusual cold? The lack of sun? Had the female felt threatened by the fish crows discovering the nest? Did one or both die in an accident or attack from something larger, either winged or human?

Or was it simply these were two immature birds that, after being prompted to mate and build a nest by that internal process triggered by longer, warmer days, couldn't continue the work of raising a family?

I have no answers. It could have been any one or more of those things. What I do know is I have more birds in the yard and may now be able to put out more feeders again. Unlike the cloud of coronavirus that continues to hang over the world for the foreseeable future, the uncertainty caused by the hawk nest appears to be gone.

The hawks may be elsewhere, of course, and there will always be other predators either passing through or nesting nearby. The yard birds and I will have to remain vigilant.

Life Going On

Every spring I am surprised and relieved when I see signs of life in the garden, showing me the perennials survived the winter, even a relatively mild but wet winter like the one just past.

Red quince, yellow forsythia, green boxwood, blue sky - 2020
(Margo D. Beller)

This year, of course, things are very different in the world. With the coronavirus, many parks - including ones I visited just days ago - are closed to us. Supermarkets have restrictions on how many people can be admitted, forcing us to stand on line, six feet apart, faces covered.

In the yard, the Cooper's hawks are still flying around at first light, the male flying to and from the nest to work on it between noisily mating with the female on a nearby tree. So far, the female has no reason to sit in the nest. The cardinals, meanwhile, give me a reason to get up in the morning and put out the feeder. I hear the cardinals sing along with several types of woodpeckers, jay and even fish crows. Also, I am hearing the first migrants - in my travels I've found chipping sparrows, phoebes, ruby-crowned kinglet, bluebird, pine warbler, palm warbler and redwing blackbird.

Deer won't eat daffodils, making it easy to grow them anywhere.
(Margo D. Beller)

Like the birds, the plants are returning. The early bloomers were the crocus and snowdrop. Now long gone, they've been replaced by daffodils in various shades of yellow and white, the standard and grape hyacinths, the blue and white glory of the snow and the purple flowers of the ground ivy. The forsythia's yellow flowers are only now starting to give way to green leaves, as are the red flowers of the quince.

Maples have been in flower for weeks. They are now being joined by the oaks. The pear and apple trees are leafing, the apple showing the hint of the flowers that will later form this year's crop. Among the shrubs dogwood, boxwood, lilacs and viburnum are starting to leaf out, and the andromeda is showing its bell flowers. The irises are taller and the lilies, goldenrod, bleeding heart, hostas, coneflower, salvia and - so that's where I transplanted it - lobelia show me they survived. So did the garlic I found growing in the compost pile and potted.

Flowering andromeda (Margo D. Beller)

I don't have cherry trees but they, magnolias and the Bradford pears are flowering all over town, already dropping petals on windy days.

The ornamental grasses and butterfly bush I hacked back last month have put out fresh foliage. I've seen no signs of the milkweed seeds I planted or the joe-pye that looked so sickly last year or the lily of the valley but I am trusting they will come when it gets warmer than it is now.

Perhaps the most pleasing discoveries in my yard are the appearance of so many columbines in areas where I put seeds and where the plants themselves put seed. The lenten rose is finally sending up new leaves to push aside the tattered old ones. The peony, which has moved from box to pot to unnetted plot to, finally, one behind netting is also showing itself, and I hope it will flower. 

Deer damage (Margo D. Beller)

There are other, less pleasant signs. Pollen is starting to cover the street. The grass MH recently fed is now ready to be mowed - a little behind our neighbors, whose lawn services have been polluting the neighborhood with gas fumes and noise for weeks.

A deer discovered a weakness in my netting and browsed the closest euonymous bush. It will grow back. Almost all my flower plots are netted to protect them from deer, although netting does nothing to stop the digging chipmunks. I have learned to ignore the netting when looking at the flowers (unless I must pull it down to work in the garden) although it will, of course, show up in my pictures.

Weeds are back, too, including the ground ivy, the garlic mustard and one thin small weed with smaller while flower I can't identify. In one corner of my back plot where I once had a cactus there is something growing but I don't know what it is - for now I will leave it and see what develops. That's part of the fun of spring, you never know what will show up from elsewhere.

Mystery plant (Margo D. Beller)

One thing I do know will happen is I will be spending a lot of time at home for the foreseeable future. That means a lot more time in the backyard, tending plants, pulling up weeds, checking on the deer fencing and watching for spring birds passing through. They, thankfully, are still free to go where they wish.

Watching the Neighbors, Round 2: Coming to Terms

Once again I fell into the trap of thinking I, homo sapiens, knew more than a wild bird that evolved long before I did, in this case accipiter cooperii.

Male Cooper's hawk, April 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Not three days after I wrote my last post thinking I had intimidated the Cooper's hawk pair because I was taking their picture, they were back. For all I know they came back earlier but I was not outside to see it. This is why I should never presume. 

I don't know, I can only observe. 

Man may think he/she is at the top of the food chain but the reality is, all creatures must adapt to their circumstances. People used to shoot at Cooper's and other hawks. Now that is illegal. That has brought back the hawk populations, and with them the need for a good place to nest and rear young. 

That, for the Cooper's, increasingly means nesting in towns and suburbs rather than the forests, which are being ripped down for so-called development.

Here is how I described the return of my new neighbors in my bird log of March 31: "I don't know why I thought I could intimidate a hawk. Yesterday [March 30] circa 7 am, I was outside and heard a "kek." I looked up [and] there they were, working on twigs for the nest. I put out one feeder and stood by as the male cardinal, perhaps sensing why I was there, came to feed as usual, jumping to the top of the pole. His mate called to him from the dogwood. When he flew off I moved so she would not see me but I could be seen by the hawks. They weren't interested, and the female cardinal stayed put. Only after I went back on the porch did [the female and then the male again] both come to eat. After they left I got the feeder."

Since then any hope of "normal" has disappeared. As with the coronavirus, there is a "new normal" in my yard. The nest, like the virus, like the clouds that have rarely departed over the past week, hangs over my thoughts and has changed the feeder birds' behavior - and mine. After several days of no activity at the caged seed feeder or the suet feeder I emptied them until winter. Now, I only put out water and the house feeder, which can accommodate all the birds large and small. The cardinals have not deserted me, not just because I am feeding them (I would like to think) but because I think the pair has its own nest nearby.

Now, at dawn, I go outside and hear the usual birds - song sparrows, Carolina wren, more robins, the cardinals. I hang the one feeder and usually the male flies from his hiding place to a nearby shrub, waiting for me to move away. He eats, then jumps to a high perch to sing his territorial song. His song used to cheer me, now it fills me with dread because I am watching that damned stick nest. Other birds might come by but as soon as we hear that "kekkekkek" I know one or both predators are back and so do the birds and squirrels.

Another year, another juvenile Cooper's hawk in flight (RE Berg-Andersson)

Still, I leave the house feeder out all day because the hawks don't seem to be hanging around the nest all day - yet. I have watched them long enough by now to think - not know - they are most active at dawn and at dusk. Yesterday I sat on the porch and watched the hawks on a stout branch of the next tree over from the nest tree. The male worked on the nest, flying up every so often with twigs. 

But he did something else, too - he mounted the female. Ten seconds of noisy avian sex. He worked on the nest and than mounted her a second time. As far as I know I am the only person who witnessed it, but the male cardinal was smart enough to grab some food while the hawks were otherwise engaged. Eventually, the male Cooper's flew south and, a few minutes later, so did the female. Then the birds and squirrels started returning, tentatively.

On the one sunny day we had this week, I had my office shades open. I am frequently distracted by noise and movement on my street, which is greater than usual at this time of year because of New Jersey's stay-at-home order. But I wanted the shades open to let in the sun, and that is how I saw one of the hawks flying around the front yard. Finally, I raised my shade and saw the male sitting on a branch on the tree in front of me, working to break off a twig! I took his picture. Eventually he left.

So, as with the virus and being forced to wear a bandana over my nose and mouth, I have had to make an accommodation. The hawks are not going to give up the nest and I am not going to give up feeding at least some of the birds.

I look on the bright side. Since the hawks arrived I have seen only one blue jay at the feeder. I have seen only one house finch. The jays bombard the house feeder, making it swing so wildly I fear it will fall to the ground. The house finches arrive en masse and make a mess while blocking other birds from eating - unless it is a bigger bird like the cardinal. There are fewer squirrels running around the lawn. I have seen no chipmunks, at least in the backyard. 

I am allowing myself to look at these visitors with wonder. Last year I enjoyed watching the robins at their nest. This year it will be Cooper's hawks. 

The day I photographed the male was windy, and I was amazed how aerodynamic the birds are. They seem top-heavy with their squared-off heads and wings compared with their relatively slender, rounded tail. The pair are juveniles - both brown-backed and streaked on the breast rather than the mature hawk's gray back and dense red streaking on the breast. But these juveniles know what they are doing. From the branch, the hawk jumps off and spreads its wings, allowing the updraft to carry it higher. Unlike the smaller sharp-shinned hawk, with its flap-flap-soar wing motion, the Cooper's seems to glide.

The male cardinal continues to sing from a high perch whether a hawk
is around or not. (Margo D. Beller)

I've learned where it got its name: It was, says Wikipedia, "first described by French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1828. This bird was named after the naturalist William Cooper, one of the founders of the New York Lyceum of Natural History (later the New York Academy of Sciences) in New York."

Here is how John James Audubon describes the Cooper's in his Birds of America: "The flight of the Cooper's Hawk is rapid, protracted, and even. It is performed at a short height above the ground or through the forest. It passes along in a silent gliding manner, with a swiftness even superior to that of the Wild Pigeon...seldom deviating from a straight-forward course, unless to seize and secure its prey."

It is that flying "a short height above the ground" that keeps the squirrels high in the trees when the hawks are around and the mourning dove - a favorite snack - away from the area under the feeder where the seeds are dropped.

Audubon says the male is 20 inches long with a 36-inch wingspan while the female is 22 inches long with a 38-inch span. This is much bigger than what David Allen Sibley says in his guide, although he gives only one measurement despite knowing the female is bigger than the male: 16.5 inches long with a 31-inch wingspan. 

Cooper's passing through another year
(Margo D. Beler)

While the Cornell Ornithology Lab does not give the hawk's dimensions, it does provide this handy tip:

"While catching smaller birds is just doing what comes naturally for a Cooper’s Hawk, many of us would prefer not to share the responsibility for the deaths. If a Cooper’s Hawk takes up residence in your yard, you can take your feeders down for a few days and the hawk will move on."

But what if that residency involves an honest-to-Audubon nest? In that case, here is what I can look forward to: one brood a year, two to six eggs, 30-36 days of sitting on the eggs and then 27 to 34 days of young in the nest. The Audubon field guide says the young "may climb about in nest tree after about 4 weeks, can fly at about 4-5 weeks."

That puts the time when both parent hawks will be feverishly seeking food for the young at around mid-May, peak songbird migration time. If the young hawks successfully fledge, they should all be gone by mid-summer, which is when the hummingbird feeder I still plan to hang and the house wren box I still plan to hang should be pretty busy.

And maybe this coronavirus plague will have passed by then.

It's going to be a long season.