Looking Inward

When I sit on my enclosed back porch, I am usually in my favorite old chair in the corner. I can look to my left and see the feeders but my back is to two of the surrounding houses and I try not to look too much at the third house. When I sit on my porch it is to get away from people and not think about the things I must do such as work. Generally, I am sitting there to listen to the birds in the morning, get some sun on my face as I have my first cup of coffee and let my mind wander.

Porch plants in summer (Margo D. Beller)

Today is a gray, foggy, rainy day, making it easy to look inward and ponder life and death. I am facing surgery this week and trying to keep a positive attitude.

Thanks to the coronavirus, I have a lot of time to look within, maybe too much. I have been spending most of my time at home. On days when I should be walking I sit on the porch and listen. I can find in my backyard many of the same birds I'd find elsewhere. Sometimes something unusual will fly overhead, such as a great blue heron or a raven. I can see or hear these through a porch window or if I stand just outside on the patio.

I have always kept to myself, now even more so. I wave at neighbors, they wave back but we don't socialize. People walking in the street make sure they are on the other side of the road if I am walking along. When I go around the block, I am usually more nervous on the one side of the oval that is on a sidewalked street because there anyone approaching prompts a quandary: Do I walk into the street as we pass or will that person? It is easier to walk on my U-shaped street where there are no sidewalks and I can see my house as I approach.

Looking toward the back of the house from my 
corner chair (Margo D. Beller)

From my corner chair I look at the back of my house. But when the weather is consistently warm I will have plants on the porch to keep me company. These plants don't need a lot of direct light and will appreciate the humidity after a dry winter in my front room. It is not that time yet. 

I also look at a row of empty pots in another corner of the porch. They remind me I have cannas to divide and dahlias to plant, plus a small pepper plant and a tomato to put into bigger pots and move outside. 

From my chair I can see the house feeder. Usually
in May rosebreasted grosbeaks pass through. 
These two are males. I hope to
see more this year. (Margo D. Beller)

Spring is a busy time for me. Besides the plants there are the northbound migrants I would like to see and hear, perhaps birds I have not found for quite some time. It is harder for my husband (MH) and me to hike rocky or hilly trails nowadays. Paths should be reasonably flat and, preferably, paved to save balky knees. This can be limiting but I enjoy MH's company and he is helpful in finding snakes and things on the ground while I am scanning the treetops.

I am looking ahead to that time when we can go out more and not worry about who is near us and whether we have on masks. I'm even looking at the compost pile, which hasn't been turned in too long, with some degree of expectation. But mostly I'm looking within, wondering if I have everything arranged in case the worst happens. As I said, I'm trying to stay positive, but it is not easy. 

Putting Things in Order

When February's snows finally receded in March, I could no longer ignore the devastation of last winter. Branches of shrubs were bent low. Fence posts were askew. Some of the deer netting had been pulled down under the snow's weight or pushed up by hungry deer looking for any food they could find.

March 2021 (Margo D. Beller)

When the snow was gone and the weather became unusually warm for March it was time to put things in order.

All of the plants are perennials and can take care of themselves. Once the snow was gone, the snowdrops and crocuses popped up, albeit a month late. When the temperature jumped into the upper 60s and low 70s, these faded but the daffodils and irises, which had been poking their noses up from the soil, jumped out and, in the case of the daffs, are blooming. Several types of weeds have also come up with no help from me, and a few dandelions are blooming between the cracks in the paving stones on the front walk.

The apple and pear trees plus the shrubs are now either leafing or blooming. To some the bright pink of the quince may look garish next to the yellow of the forsythia in the backyard but I don't mind it at all.

There is more birdsong: cardinals, robins, song sparrows. I am now hearing chipping sparrows and chipmunks, the former welcomed for its dry trill, the latter not so much because of the digging they do even behind the deer netting.

Hellebore. Since I took this
picture it is now flowering.
(Margo D. Beller)

But there are things that need human attention. The butterfly bush and liriope needed to be cut back in early March and are now growing again. Same with the dried ornamental grasses I hacked down and now showing green growth. At some point I have dahlias to pot and cannas to divide. 

Finally, there was the fencing. After the deer found a weakness in the netting and were able to nearly destroy the euonymous bushes in front yet again, I cut everything back, reinforced and tied the netting and fastened it down with garden "staples." Had I known what to expect when I put in these yellow and green evergreen shrubs, I'd have put in something less appetizing to deer.

The area most in need of repair, however, was in back where I cover the netting with burlap to protect the yew shrubs behind. Out of sight, out of trouble is my motto. With these shrubs are other plants that don't need a lot of sun including two pots of hostas I took in for a friend and a hellebore that has bloomed despite the soil being more acidic than it would like. The joe-pyes grow here, as do a pot of perennial geranium, coral bells that attract hummingbirds and a few fringed bleeding hearts.

Repurposing the garden hose
(Margo D. Beller)

It was a job that took many hours because I had to cut back the yews and remove debris from the potted plants. Then the burlap had to be removed, the garden staples pulled up and the deer netting untied or cut off. New netting was put on (doubled above and below) the posts that I thought weren't too bent or shredded from use. I took new, thick garden ties to secure it above and many more garden staples to do the same below. It is both aggravating and calming work that allows me to be outside and listening to the birds.

Finally, I took the old garden hose and put it in to block an opening. Many years ago, a deer got behind the netting and then tried to leave. I woke up to find half the netting was in the yard. Luckily, that was the day I had planned to put in new posts anyway. More recently, a doe put her newborn fawn in back. I had to pull up the posts to let it out. Around that time we got a new hose and so the old one became a deer barrier. (The other end is close to a leader pipe so I can tie the netting to it.)

It is a good feeling to put things in order. When it becomes really hot and things start to overgrow the neatness will disappear. Soon my husband (MH) and I will have to bring out the canna and dahlia pots and get them behind the netting somehow. Weeds will fill the spaces between the plants and create a green carpet I don't need along the walkways. For now I enjoy this feeling of accomplishment when I look at my handiwork.

Backyard daffodils, 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Nowadays I am putting other things in order, in my life. I will be having cancer surgery in the coming week, a repeat of surgery I had five years ago. I am five years older now, survived a visit to the emergency room because of blood clots and am living in a time when the coronavirus pandemic shows no signs of ending, even with more people (including me) getting vaccinated. I can be hopeful I come through but there is always that possibility something will go wrong. So I am making lists for MH and talking, virtually and via social media, to good friends and family ahead of time. I am writing here. 

Daffodils are blooming, birds are singing. There is so much more to be done. I am looking ahead, but not too far.

Corvid Conversations

The other morning I went out to hang the bird feeders and heard a soft, repetitive call that turned out to be a male goldfinch, molting into his bright yellow and black breeding plumage, high atop a tree in my yard singing to a female high in a tree at the front curb. She, too, was changing into breeding plumage - from winter brown to yellow and green to better blend into the foliage while on her nest. I was eavesdropping on pair bonding.

This morning, I eavesdropped on something very different. This was not pair bonding but a loud conversation, such as what I hear when people are running or bicycling together, to the point of being aggravating. I was on my back porch and was hearing fish crows - eight of them, as it turned out - atop another yard tree. This was not the angry or alarmed cawing of crows when a hawk is in the vicinity. This was just crow talk - a short, nasal caw that sounds like "uh-uh." After a while they flew off to another tree and them eventually left the area. 

Fish crow, Cape May, NJ, 2011 (RE Berg-Anderson)

Crows, of the corvid family, are social creatures. Where you see one, you'll usually see (and hear) more, sometimes in very large flocks. In that way they are similar to their cousins the blue jays, which also travel in noisy family groups.

In my part of the world there are two kinds of crows. There is the American crow and the smaller fish crow. The American is what we think of when we see a "crow" - large, raucous, chasing predators or other, unwanted creatures away, ripping apart garbage bags for what's inside.

As the name implies, the fish crow can be found near water. That is where I saw my first one many years ago. These all-black birds are otherwise hard to differentiate from the American crow unless you hear them or see the two types together - the American is always larger. (Their cousin the raven is larger still.)

That I am seeing and hearing fish crows at all in my neighborhood is a relatively recent, semi-disturbing phenomenon.

All crows are omnivores, meaning they'll eat anything from berries to garbage to dead chipmunks. They are active in the morning when they are hungriest. That is when you will hear them the loudest as they scope out easy to access food sources.

It may not look like it, but jays are related to the corvid
family. (Margo D. Beller)

When I was a kid growing up in coastal Brooklyn, I knew that if I saw gulls whirling in the skies above my house there must be a storm approaching, forcing the birds inland. Now that I live much farther inland, I see gulls all the time. These gulls have learned it is much easier to dive into the open dumpster behind a fast-food place than to fly over the open ocean looking for fish.

The fish crows have learned this, too.

In my area there are several distinct groups of fish crows clustered in the vicinity of food places with lots of garbage going into the dumpsters. The group closest to my house, which centers itself on the local Quik-Chek, sometimes flies along a brook that flows behind the neighbors' houses across the street. These are the ones I hear in the morning, particularly on garbage pickup day. There is another, larger group that hangs out in an area on the edge of town where they can fight the gulls to pick from the dumpsters behind a supermarket on one corner, a fast-food place on another corner and a shopping mall including several food places on a third. (A restaurant is going up on the fourth corner.)

So the crows, like the gulls, are following the garbage because members of the corvid family are very smart and they know where the pickings are easiest and most fruitful. Suburbia provides lots of favorable habitat conditions, including abundant food.

Take the fish crow pictured above. My husband (MH) and I were in Cape May, NJ, one September and I heard a fish crow calling outside our motel room. I looked out the window and there it was, perched on the railing. I opened the door. It did not fly off. In fact, it looked at me with what I would say was a very human look of expectation. MH took its picture. It still didn't fly off. We realized it was sitting on the railing of our balcony room waiting for us to provide its breakfast, the way many other occupants of this room (and perhaps others) had been doing possibly for generations. 

Even though this crow was literally within sight of the Atlantic Ocean, it was waiting for us to serve it. We went back inside and eventually it flew to another railing where maybe the occupant would be more generous. 

Fish crow on the beach with laughing gulls, which also
like to pick garbage out of dumpsters. September 2013
(RE Berg-Andersson)

(There are many reasons I don't feed birds, aside from what I put into feeders in the backyard. You could say I'm selective in what birds I care to feed or that I don't feel the need to show my human mastery over dumb critters, as I see many do. But mainly it is because I know birds like crows will find their own food just fine.) 

Corvids like the fish crow are extremely intelligent. They have large brains capable of memorizing human faces, using tools and solving problems. Young crows will play, swinging from branches or floating in the wind, according to the Cornell Ornithology Lab. They are a species far from threatened by hunting or disease. In fact, their numbers are increasing to the point of them becoming a real pest. Luckily for these crows, they are protected by the Migratory Bird Act even though like the Canada geese - another bird that found suburbia to its taste - they don't exactly migrate in the same way as other types of birds such as warblers.

So what exactly were the fish crows talking about so loudly this morning? They could've been discussing the next place where they could get a meal. They could've been telling another crow I couldn't see to get out of the area. (There was one American crow calling in the distance.) Maybe they were discussing the weather or whether they should go down the shore for a change of pace. Or maybe they were just idly chattering. 

After they left, I started to hear loud human chattering, and that is when I left, too.