Goings-on in My Garden

It was pouring in my part of New Jersey on this Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend. My office allowed us Friday off for a long weekend, and I used the sunny, warm day to go to a few garden centers to look at things I am considering for my property.

Hepatica (white flower) and vinca (purple flower) in front netted garden plot
(Margo D. Beller)

Turns out hundreds of other people had the same idea.

In this time of coronavirus, scared people have been stuck at home for over two months. But now that it is finally feeling less like winter, there is a pent-up urge to get out. But to where? Many are ready to hit the beaches (at approved social distances) or the mountains but the rest of us are still staying close to home. So I should not have been surprised the three places I visited were filled with a lot of people buying vegetables, flowers, mulch and other garden supplies. I would say the ratio of buyers to store employees (everyone masked) was 3:1, all trying to make up for lost time. In the end, I bought nothing,

Even so, I have been doing work in the garden because it allows me to be outside, away from people and work, and do something that creates loveliness.

Azaleas (and growing daisy plants) protected from deer
(Margo D. Beller)

I have been lucky. I have perennials that come back year after year, although sometimes there is winter damage. For instance, the peony buds froze during the unexpected cold snap early in May. But the rest of the flowers and shrubs have done very well with the cooler temperatures and abundant rain. The red azaleas are the best I've seen in years, columbine that have sprouted from seeds thrown in various beds over the year are flowering and the daffodils were glorious while they lasted. I even had a flower bloom I haven't seen in years - hepatica, a woodland flower that got into one bed and I've left alone, waiting for it to flower. I've only seen it bloom one other time before now.

After my first attempt at growing peppers from seed for this year failed, I threw more into a small pot. When warm sunshine started hitting the window sill more frequently, nine seedlings appeared, crowded together. They are now spread (socially distanced?) between two bigger pots on the sunny window sill. They will be staying there until they get big enough to put into bigger pots that will be protected in a chicken-wire cage from chipmunks, which have already dug up rosemary I had in a pot and almost ruined the dahlias I planted.

Pepper seedlings, 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Unfortunately, when you look at pictures of my flowers you see the deer netting. I've learned to make it disappear in my mind's eye but I can't do that in reality because of the deer, many of which have been passing through the yard in recent days now that there are bushes and other plants to eat.

Chipmunks, however, can easily get behind the netting and in some ways are more deadly to the plants with their digging, looking for nuts they buried last autumn. I surround vulnerable smaller plantings and those like the dahlia not big enough yet to fill their pots with old metal gutter fencing to keep the diggers out. It works, for the most part.

Houseplants on the porch with seed containers (Margo D. Beller)

Only recently has it been warm enough for me to move most of the houseplants to my north-facing enclosed porch. The humidity will do them more good than being inside a house where the air conditioner will be on soon enough.

As for the birds, the other day I heard a male blackpoll warbler singing in one of the backyard trees. This bird, whose spring mating colors makes it look similar to a black-capped chickadee, has a distinctive song that sounds like a braking truck and has one of the longest migration routes of the birds passing through here. It is usually one of the last migrating warblers, so hearing it prompts mixed feelings - it's a warbler but it's also the end.

Empty wren box (Margo D. Beller)

I know there are plenty of other birds still heading north, but my yard has gone quiet as the birds staying here have begun their nests and don't want to draw attention to them. No house wren claimed the nest box this year, although once in a while I've heard a wren singing nearby. My two seed feeders seem to be drawing a lot more jays, house finches and grackles, so when they are empty that will be it for feeders until autumn, save for the hummingbird feeder that usually draws one or two in June into July.

By then it will truly be summer and the flowering plants of this spring will have faded except in my memories.

Catching the Waves

Memorial Day, what many like to think of as the unofficial start of summer, will soon be here. In this age of the coronavirus it is taking on even more meaning as state officials, eager to keep their stir-crazy and/or unemployed constituents from rising up in rebellion more than they already have, are slowly reopening beaches to give the people some release and perhaps a reason to pretend everything is normal again. If only.

In my state of NJ alone, the governor has said beaches will be reopened by Memorial Day, subject to social distancing restrictions. Based on the reports I've seen, these aren't being followed much and I wish the police luck in helping the "knuckleheads" keep from infecting themselves and others.

Mexico Beach, Florida, April 2010 (RE Berg-Andersson)

I am not one to just sit on the beach. I'd rather be looking for birds there. That's why this year, at this time of year, it is particularly painful to me to be kept to my home because of the contagion that could kill me. I do not walk the streets of my town because it depresses me to have people jump out of my way, sometimes into the street with traffic, to give me distance, even though I wear a mask. MH runs the errands, masked and with the car, while I work from home.

When I have gone out this month, it has been at dawn's early light to catch a different type of wave - bird migration.

The first wave, in late April, are the earliest migrants including phoebes, ruby-crowned kinglets, pine warblers, Louisiana waterthrush and redwinged blackbirds. Ospreys are reported. Waves of sea birds including northern gannets head north along the coast.

Then come the first two weeks of May when things get interesting. The bulk of the other types of warblers pass through plus tanagers, the rose-breasted grosbeak and some of the shorebirds. This would normally be the time when MH and I would travel to some of our favorite birding locations - Old Mine Road in New Jersey, Sapsucker Woods on the campus of the Cornell Ornithology Lab in upstate New York, my brother-in-law's woodlot in rural New Hampshire. Migration will continue for another couple of weeks but by June the birds should be sitting on eggs and won't be as easy to find.

Cattus Island ospreys, Toms River, NJ, April 2019 (RE Berg-Andersson)

Things are different this year, of course. There are no facilities open for eating in or going to the bathroom, something MH and I need to do when making our long trips. So even though I have taken a week off in June, we really have nowhere to go short of day trips to areas no more than 20 miles from us.

Luckily, there are quite a few of these.

This year has been wacky not just for the pandemic but because of the weather. Two days ago it hit 84 degrees F. On May 13 and 14, at the time I left the house for different parts of Patriots Path, the temperature was in the mid-30s, The first morning I chilled myself as I ignored my discomfort to concentrate on the many, many birds I was hearing. The next morning I had more layers on, including two on my hands because holding a wooden stick in the cold can be uncomfortable after a while.

The reward was worth the discomfort. The birds I found (mostly by ear) included, of the warblers, northern parula, chestnut-sided, yellow, common yellowthroat, myrtle, black-throated blue, black-throated green, ovenbird, northern waterthrush, Blackburnian, worm-eating and hooded. Besides the robins, cardinals and catbirds I can also find in my backyard were Swainson's thrush, wood thrush and hermit thrush, which are in the wave following the warblers. So are the sparrows - swamp, vesper, savannah, chipping, Lincoln's and their relative the towhee. (The white-throated sparrows and juncos that spent the winter in my yard have moved on.) The rose-breasted grosbeak sang sweetly. Goldfinches and indigo buntings flew over the road. The Carolina wrens were joined in song by house wrens. A green heron flew along the Whippany River and was soon followed by a great blue heron. The list goes on.

Birding Old Mine Road, May 2017 (RE Berg-Andersson)

For a birder it is important to be out as the sun is rising for two reasons: First, the birds that have arrived after a night of flying are actively foraging, so there is movement, particularly important when you are looking at trees that have begun to leaf out. The birds are also singing territorial songs as the sun rises, warning others to keep out of their area. If the bird breeds in NJ, it is looking for a mate and a nest site, not necessarily in that order. Once the sun rises high enough, I've found the bird song stops. I don't know why.

The second reason to be out early if you're a birder is to keep the human traffic at a minimum. On the paved path I walked on May 13, the number of people increased as the sun rose and temperature warmed somewhat. On the unpaved path I traveled on May 14, there were only two joggers and four men on mountain bikes who might've been the park police making their rounds.

Because I can't get out as much as I did last year (when I did not have a regular job), it has taken me longer to find the warblers I used to hear in my travels. The weather had not helped. Until the strong northwest winds finally died down on the night of May 12, there had been little bird movement to my part of the country - it is harder to fly with a headwind - but, according to the radar I consult, there was a lot of traffic into the midwestern U.S.

That situation changed the night of May 14 when the winds shifted to blowing out of the southwest, bringing rain, warmer temperatures and plenty of birds to the northeast.

There are even waves within waves. The males precede the females so they can rush to the breeding territories and find just the right nesting spot. So when I was out I had a close look at a female scarlet tanager, for instance, and a female black-throated blue warbler, which are duller in color than the males so they can blend in. It took knowing their characteristics - the thicker tanager bill, the small white patch on the warbler's wing - so I could identify them.

Black-throated green warbler, Sapsucker Woods, May 2019
(RE Berg-Andersson)

That's part of the challenge and the fun and why early May is my favorite time of year as a birder. That I can't go to the places I KNOW have the birds I have yet to find is frustrating and more than a little depressing.

However, despite the exhaustion of rising early and then putting in a full day of work, thanks to the two midweek trips I took and another MH and I took Saturday I think I have caught up with the birds I can see in my area, for the most part. It's not the higher breeding terrain of Old Mine Road or Cornell or New Hampshire where there are other birds I can't find around here, but it will have to do.

It is unfortunate the enforced isolation has made me more wary of people than ever, and now the noise adults and their children and dogs make bothers me even more. I understand their need to be outside in good weather, particularly when it is warm. I feel it, too. I just don't want our times outside to coincide.

They can have the beach. For now I'm sticking closer to home.

Watching the Neighbors: Mother's Day

This has been a topsy-turvy, Bizarro World type of week. On May 9 there was snow falling in upstate New York and much of northern New England. In my part of New Jersey the temperature fell to around the freezing level, making some of my sun-loving perennials less than happy.

Meanwhile, the strong wind made the high of 45 degrees feel like 30 degrees.

Map of conditions around 11 p.m. ET by Cornell University Ornithology Lab,
 screenshot by Margo D. Beller

That's why the migration forecast radar map put out by Cornell, seen above, shows a big, blank area over my part of the country while all the migrants are hitting the midwest, as the yellow and pink shows.

Did I mention it's May?

This week would be when, in years past, MH and I would've taken some time off to travel and look for northbound migrant birds. The coronavirus put an end to any planning. Like everyone else, I've had to make do and stick closer to home. That includes birding. But with work taking a lot of time my birding is mainly on the weekend.

MH and I have found some interesting birds - worm-eating warbler, a Blackburnian warbler, an American bittern posing for the camera I didn't have on me - but so far we have not seen some birds I've seen more regularly such as the northern parula and the indigo bunting. There has been a house wren in my yard but it is not using the nest box I hung in the apple tree. For a time some other small bird that could fit inside, perhaps a chipping sparrow, was using it but now it seems to be empty.

The weather had not helped either. When we had a rare warm and sunny day the crowds (most of them nonbirders and minus face masks) hit the state parks just as the birds did. (We stuck to a smaller, local park.) But most of the time it has been rainy, cold, windy. In those conditions you can't plant many types of vegetables and during a recent dawn walk through my town's community garden before work I saw most of the plots filled with weeds or cold weather crops such as lettuce.

That's where the law of unintended consequences comes in.

With less human traffic in the community garden (and, until recently, at the nearby Central Park of Morris County) creatures have become emboldened, and they sometimes wander out of that area and into my neighborhood.

"Fox pup" by gm_pentaxfan is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Deer are a given, and usually in May I watch anxiously for pregnant does that might want to drop a fawn or two (or three) in my yard, as has happened in years past.

This time it's a different type of mammal.

For the last two mornings, around 6:30 a.m., I have gone outside with the feeders. A small fox, likely a female (vixen), has popped up from behind the flood wall in the corner of my property and then trotted quickly away. We've had fox pass through before, which might be the reason we haven't seen a rabbit in the yard in many years.

This morning, however, was quite unusual.

I was in my porch chair, relaxing in the sun with my coffee, when I heard a house wren sing, loud. I slowly got up, turned and saw the bird on the patio. Then it flew to the top of my garage. The next time it sang it was somewhere in the front yard. Since I had my binoculars with me - I had hoped for migrants in the seeding oaks - I walked to the end of the back path and scanned the trees across the way from the top of the driveway.

There was the vixen, across the street, quickly trotting in a neighbor's yard not far from the community garden. She stopped to give me a long look and I quickly saw why.

A couple of playful pups in a nearby backyard. Then another. Then another. Four baby foxes.

Mom took off, spooking some nearby squirrels. The pups continued playing until a neighbor's dog barked. They stopped playing and huddled together. You must know they were in the yard of the neighbor who had put the hole in the sky and would not think twice about calling Animal Control. But never underestimate the power of a mother. To my relief, when I turned to go back to the house Mom must've called her pups to her because when I turned back for a last look they were gone.

At the time I took this picture, the sticks poking out from the bottom
showed an occupant. But lately the nest looks abandoned.
(Margo D. Beller)

And to think, I was worried about deer dropping fawns.

It is obvious to me now the vixen behind the flood wall was hunting to feed her babies, just as the nesting birds are doing once the eggs hatch, presuming the recent cold didn't kill them. It is also obvious to me the den is somewhere in the woods that are on the other side of the community garden from the side that abuts the neighbors across the street.

Why should I care about foxes? Besides the fact they are really cool animals there's the down side. According to the field guide to mammals co-authored by Kenn Kaufman, foxes eat rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, lizards and birds.

Birds. Oh boy.

Did I mention I saw Mom and babies on Mother's Day?

I thought I'd dodged a bullet when the Cooper's hawks abandoned their nearby nest. I guess not. If it ever stays consistently warm and more people are in the community garden growing their tomatoes, peppers and zucchinis, the foxes will stay hidden. They are smart enough to know to stay away from people.

At some point my plants will go out on the porch or in the yard and the feeders will come into the house for the summer. The birds will go farther afield for food since they'll have no reason to drop by at, say, 6:30 a.m. when there's a fox in the yard.

Perhaps I'll even be able to go farther afield, too.