A View From the Bridge

I went for a walk yesterday, enjoying the sunshine and the cold air before today's expected snow. I have had a very bad cold for the past two weeks and this was one of the few times I wanted to walk and make sure my legs still worked. Still, I didn't want to go too far, so I went up my street and around to a brook the officials call the "north branch of the Whippany River," tho' that river is some distance away.

It is calming to look at this brook from this bridge. In early spring there is usually a pair of phoebes flying to and fro with nest materials. Later in the spring they do the same with insects to feed their young. The nest is always built under a structure, in this case the bridge.

Pileated woodpecker (RE Berg-Anderson)

I have seen other birds from this bridge, from the large great blue heron to a tiny winter wren, from a noisy great crested flycatcher to quiet wood ducks. But at this time of year most of these birds are not here.

However, a knocking above me caused me to look up. There was a pileated woodpicker.

No matter how often I see one of these crow-sized birds with their large, red crests I am impressed. This one was whacking into a dead tree, its usual habit as it searches for its favorite meal, carpenter ants. After a minute of this it flew across the road to another dead tree, the white patches on its black wings pleasingly visible. 

It proceeded to whack at this tree a good, long time. I am sure the people driving by me as I stood on the road shoulder were wondering what I was looking at for so long, presuming they even noticed me. Most of the time I feel invisible when I walk outside, rarely running into neighbors, rarely getting so much as a hello when I walk in my town's streets. It is the times, I guess. I prefer the solitude.

So I watched the woodpecker and every so often the sun would show the red "moustache." So this was a male (except for that sign, the male and female are identical). As I watched I wondered if it was excavating a nest. According to my Stokes Field Guide, pileateds put their nest in dead trees, way up high. The opening is about 3 inches across, which seems very small for what looks like a large bird. But the eggs rest as much as two feet into the tree. That means the woodpecker would have to be hammering for an awfully long time.

Male pileated (RE Berg-Andersson)

During the summer, when I had the invasion of carpenter ants, I thought how nice it would've been to have a pileated woodpecker hanging around the bathroom. Of course, that would've been ridiculous. For one thing it's a wild bird, not a pet. For another, it would've spent its time hammering large holes in the walls where the two colonies were nesting. 

As i watched, every so often the bird would pull its head back and it seemed to be having an ant snack. Finally, I turned to go. Then I looked back again. The bird was gone. This has happened to me before when I've watched a hawk in a tree. It seems to freeze and we watch each other as I stand below. Then, the second I turn away it silently flies off.

At some point I'll go back and see if the pileated was excavating a nest or having a three-course dinner. I won't be surprised if my watching spooked it off. But there are plenty of other pileateds and dead wood is hard to find in the suburbs.

I'm No Expert

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

 -- U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 

Among my friends I am the bird expert. Some even refer to me as the "Bird Lady" (including my husband). When they see a bird they don't recognize they call or send me an email about it. My response is usually the same. If they don't tell me what color or size the bird is I ask about it. Then I get more specific. Where were you when you saw it? What was the bird doing? Was it on the ground or in a tree or flying? Did it make a sound? What did it sound like? Was it bigger than a robin or smaller?

Downy woodpecker, smaller than a hairy, with
dainty bill. (Margo D. Beller)

From the answers I get I run through my head whether I've seen or heard anything similar. If I recognize it from my many, many years of bird watching, I respond with the answer. If not, I start looking in my various field guides, including those by David Allen Sibley (birds of the entire U.S., with his excellent drawings), Richard Crossley (birds of the eastern U.S., with his pictures where he has juxtaposed dozens of shots on a background of habitat) or, if I'm really stumped, Roger Tory Peterson's guide to eastern birds (the 1947 edition; there are many newer editions, but the 1947 is considered by birders to be the best of them). There are others I can consult but these three are the ones I use first.

Then I provide the answer to my friends and continue my reputation as the resident bird expert.

But, truth be told, there is a great deal I still don't know or understand. I know just enough about bird anatomy to get by. MH and I go out in the field and every so often I see a bird I don't recognize, or hear an unfamiliar call. I quickly note the field markings in my notebook, or create a kind of schematic diagram of the call. Then, once home, I pull out the field guides and/or start listening to the CDs of bird songs. And yet, there are times I still can't identify the bird.

I still don't know what this bird is, tho' it may be an immature starling.
I saw it at a grassland park in NJ. (Margo D. Beller)

I do know why birds migrate (to find food and/or a mate and form a nest to create young), although I don't know why certain birds, when finished breeding in the arctic tundra, fly farther south for the winter than others (including the red knot and the blackpoll warbler). Or why the white-throated sparrow only flies as far south as my yard for the winter.

I have much improved my identification skills over the years, but it took me a decade to see a bird on my house feeder and know whether it is a male house finch (red head, weak chin, a common feeder bird) or a male purple finch (raspberry-colored head, slightly larger, purple "eyebrow," an uncommon feeder bird). It helps if a female is nearby because the brownish female purple finch has a bold white eyebrow. The female house finch doesn't.

Female purple finch with her distinctive
eyebrow. (Margo D. Beller)

It also took a very long time - longer than one would think for an "expert" - to know the difference between a downy woodpecker and a hairy woodpecker. The hairy is obviously larger but if one is making its way up a tree that isn't immediately apparent.

You could look at the white outer tail feathers and see if there are spots (downy) or not (hairy), which to me are not that easy to see, even with binoculars. Their calls are similar, tho the hairy's call seems to me slightly higher in pitch and a bit more throaty. (That took a while to learn, too.) A downy would fly to the suet feeder and its bill would seem longer and I'd wonder if it was a hairy. But then a hairy would come to the suet and I'd know it by its size and a bill as long as its head. Eventually that bill, and the bird's size against the feeder, helped me learn the difference.

Still, there are some things that are beyond me.

For instance, how do the birds determine who goes first at the feeder? I understand why something small like a titmouse would take off if a much larger (and ferocious) jay swooped in, but why would one titmice fly to the top of the feeder and wait for another to take a seed before hopping down and taking its own? 

Male junco, one of Deborah Whittaker's
favorite subjects. (Margo D. Beller)

That leads to another question: How do birds tell each other apart? How does the titmouse at the feeder know when another titmouse approaching the feeder is not from its family group and thus chases it away? More important, how does one titmouse know another titmouse is of the opposite sex? There is nothing to tell a male titmouse from a female titmouse, from my perspective (the same is true of other birds including their cousin the blackcapped chickadees and the house wrens that visit the nest box every year). They are the same color, the same shape, the same size. And yet they must know or else we wouldn't have titmice every year.

I recently read a book, "The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent" (by Deborah J. Whittaker) that provided some answers. From her experiments (particularly with the common winter visitor to my yard, the junco) she learned birds give off chemical signals that influence choices on mates, where to build a nest, when to fight and when to fly off. Her research found those chemicals are produced by bacteria that manufacture scents in the oil that birds stroke on their feathers when preening, or cleaning dirt out of their feathers. 

Titmouse. I have no idea if this is a male
or a female. (Margo D. Beller)

Whittaker spent years doing experiments to find this out. This was not something she could learn by sitting on her back porch watching the feeder birds, wondering about all sorts of things as I do.

Still, I am considered the "expert," even after I tell my friends they can find their answers themselves by searching on the internet or in a field guide (we frequently give pocket-sized guides as gifts). It is easier to just ask me.

I don't know if I should consider that a sign of respect or laziness. At least we still keep in touch. 

Ant-mageddon

If an object A exerts a force on object B, then object B must exert a force of equal magnitude and opposite direction back on object A.

-- Newton's Third Law of Physics

If something happens, there is an unintended consequence.

-- Margo's corollary

Until we finally got some relief in the form of showers and some cooler air, it had been so very, very dry in August. What rain we got prompted the dogwood to put out some fresh leaves, but for the most part the tree is dry, brown and forlorn. What birds came into the yard - including, briefly, a hummingbird -- came to the water dish to drink before flying off to forage.

Then, with a turn of the calendar page, cooler air came with winds out of the north. Overnight, birds that were scrounging for whatever they could eat took off to the south and wetter, greener pastures. Fall migration has begun.

Meanwhile, our house got carpenter ants.

Carpenter ant (Pixabay)

According to the Orkin pest control people, there are 24 types of carpenter ants ranging in size between 6 millimeters and 20 mm. They are not like termites that eat wood and weaken structures. These ants are so named because after mating (and the male dies): 

"The queen typically seeks a small crack in a wooden structure. She then closes herself inside that chamber, and lays the first batch of eggs. She remains inside the chamber until her first batch of eggs becomes adult workers. During this time, the queen uses her stored fat reserves and wing muscles for nourishment.

"The queen provides food for the young by means of her salivary glands until they become workers capable of foraging. The queen looks after her first brood, and, once grown, that first brood of adult workers takes care of subsequent broods."

That includes tunneling out more wood to expand the colony. 

So when it got dry and the ground got hard somehow -- squeezing through a window screen? hitching a ride on my jacket? -- two queens got into the house, converged on the small bathroom off our bedroom and started creating colonies. 

I was slow to notice this. I would see one ant, grab it in a tissue and throw it out the bathroom window. If it was in the sink, I washed it down the drain. But then I saw a couple, got one and saw the other run behind the sink. Another time I turned on the water and two ants came out of the overflow hole.

(Muero/Wikimedia Commons)

I told my husband (MH). He went out and bought ant traps baited with poison. It didn't seem to slow them down. I told him I thought the ants were in the bathroom because they wanted liquid. He went back to the store and bought liquid-baited traps - sugar water with poison. The ants lap it up, take it back to the colony and regurgitate it to feed the queen and the young. When the queen and young die, the colony falls apart (the workers eventually die of the poison, too).

I base the rest of this tale on what MH told me because I refused to go into that bathroom until the colony was dead, and that took almost two weeks.

He put out the liquid bait and when he next checked he saw dozens of ants lapping it up ("like crack," he said) and following the scent trails of other workers back to their queen. I had thought there was only one colony, behind the sink. No. He said there were bigger carpenter ants climbing up the bathroom wall and going into a hole created when I put in a new towel rod in a slightly higher position. I hadn't plugged the old hole. Now there was a colony of who knew how many ants swarming behind the bathroom wall.

Dozens of ants.

MH, with his scientific bent, would check on the situation twice a day and report on what he thought was a fascinating situation. I made him keep the door closed and blocked the area at the bottom with a towel. Thankfully, he didn't film Ant-mageddon.

After about 10 days he said he thought things were done. Still, I was slow to return to using that bathroom. However, when I did finally go back and turned on the light I found a mess caused by sloppy, sugar-crazed ants that made things sticky everywhere. The next weekend I plugged up the hole and scrubbed both the wall and the floor (the traps were removed but put back after the floor dried). 

As invasions go, it could've been worse. It could've been hornets (we've had them nesting behind the bathroom window sill) or wasps (which have been found in the attic) or cockroaches (never, thankfully). We even once had a winter invasion of the smaller pavement ants. 

As long as houses are built in former forests or on former meadows and river valleys, there are going to be insect invasions. And as long as something -- global warming perhaps? -- creates heat and, in my area, drought, there will be creatures great and small doing what they must to survive, including coming into houses.

I am still finding carpenter ants, but they are in ones, not dozens. At least for now.

Dark in August

 If a story is in you, it has to come out.

-- William Faulkner, author of "Light in August"

August is not my favorite month. 

I've written of this before. I still feel the need to complain, especially this year when we are going through a prolonged drought (after a year of too much rain) and the garden I've worked so hard to make beautiful is suffering. (It does not help when the leaders of this country can't come to anything resembling agreement on climate change, much less any other issue.) 

Lots of reminders of death come to me in August, even in good garden years. My favorite grandmother and one of my good friends died in August. My mother, gone these many decades, was born in August. The days are becoming visibly shorter - by this time next week, the sun will set in my area before 8 p.m. Already the sun is rising later in the morning each day.

Flowers from my fading garden,
likely my last bouquet this year.
(Margo D. Beller)

August is when my family would take a vacation during a time when it seemed everyone was taking vacation, so my father could close his medical practice for two weeks. But we knew when we returned we'd have to start getting ready to go back to school after Labor Day, at the beginning of September. From there it would seem like no time at all before the end of the year and the need for a new calendar.

Drying dogwood leaves (Margo D. Beller)

At my age, August has become a time of suffering, particularly this year.

Last year at this time, my cancer treatment made me so sick I could barely function. There was also so much rain that even if I had been able to spray the weeds growing between the paving stones on my front walkway I could not. And so they grew, so thickly you could not see those stones.

Weeds between paving stones. At least
you can see the stones. (Margo D. Beller)

This year has been the complete opposite.

We have already suffered through several heatwaves. The last one was from late July into early August, then we got a few days off. Now another one has started. Worse, we have had no significant rain for some time. I gambled, based on last year, and did not have the sprinklers turned on. Now my grass, like most of my neighbors', is brown and dormant. The trees that would've also benefited from a deep lawn watering are showing the effect of the drought, and that makes me feel very bad. 

Drying butterfly bush leaves. (Margo D. Beller)

The apple and pear trees have been shedding leaves for weeks. Half the dogwood leaves are dried and brown, tho' still attached to the branches. There will be no red berries this year - putting out fruit takes too much energy. The viburnum did form berries but they are still green and the ripening seems to have stopped. Shrubs are wilting. The ferns have dried to a crisp. 

The heat has kept me inside most days, except for the early morning when I can sit on my porch and listen to the yard birds. As I've said before, they can do very well without my help (tho' I do provide a water dish) and, judging by the young I've seen and heard, have been very successful this year, despite the conditions.

Drying canna leaves. The plants should've
flowered by now. (Margo D. Beller)

Even the weeds have stopped growing, at least in those areas where I pulled them when we had a couple of cool mornings. However, in the areas behind the deer netting they are very much alive and in some places close to obscuring the perennials I have tried to water every so often. The butterfly bush has flowers but the leaves are showing brown. The cannas in their pots have brown edges on the foliage and have not flowered. (Plants in pots need more water than plants in the ground.)

The daisies bloomed nicely but now they
are ready to be cut back. (Margo D. Beller)

I know, this is not the first dry season we've had but it feels different. Some parts of my state have been inundated with rain. Mine has not. And most of the country is dealing with some level of drought as waterways dry up and fires rage, including in some of our most famous national parks. 

The world is warming by a few degrees each year. The summers are hotter and drier. While I complain in New Jersey, other areas in the western part of this country are being consumed by forest fires sparked by years of drought. (Meanwhile, others are literally drowning in rain.) 

The peppers are now doing well in the heat. 
So are the basils nearby. (Margo D. Beller)

So I get it. And even in my yard some things are doing well in the heat, as long as I water them. The bugs that beset my pepper plants are gone so the plants have recovered and are finally going to provide me with some vegetables. There have been no white flies this year so the basil plants are growing extremely well, the best since I started growing basil in pots. The many sedums I have growing - daughter plants that have been rooted from the original plant, all behind netting I reinforced to keep out the deer - are starting to put out flowers, right on schedule. (These plants are succulents, so they retain moisture.)

But those are the exceptions. Otherwise, I am surrounded by death and dying and I have resigned myself to waiting for the next cool morning to cut back the perennials and then hope conditions are better next year for them to grow and thrive. 

There are berries forming on the viburnum but
they are far from ripe. (Margo D. Beller)

That is the main reason why I dislike August. I can't stop it. 

August is inevitable. Its heat and humidity sap my strength. The weeds and dried-out plants make me feel I can't keep up with the needs of my garden. The song says, who'll stop the rain. I can't start it. The darker early mornings will return and make it harder to get up and do what needs to be done every day. Soon it will be winter and I can only hope we have some rain by then, and even some snow (but not too much, please).

Ultimately, August reminds me of my mortality. 

Backyard Nursery

The day after my last post, the house wrens fledged. I was working in my office and through the open window I heard one of the wren parents doing its scolding call from the tall arborvitae by the front door. I went downstairs, out the back door and around the house. I could see the bird moving around as it called. When I headed to the back door I could hear the young calling from the box or the shrubs across the way. 

Now-empty nest (Margo D. Beller)

I'm no expert but I am thinking the parent was telling the young if they wanted to get fed they'd better fly out and follow him or her. And they did. Later that day I went out the front door and heard the wrens in the border hedge between my neighbor and me. One day after that, silence. They had left.

As usual, I was saddened by the silence. However, the adult house wrens had done what they were supposed to do: find a mate, find a nest site, build the nest, mate, lay eggs, sit on eggs and then feed the young when they hatch. When the young get big enough, encourage them to start flying and hunting on their own. Then, when the time is right, leave for the winter grounds until next spring.

My yard is not completely silent, however, There have been noisy bird families flying around for weeks now.

Robins, Suffolk County, NY (Margo D. Beller)

The young robins are as big as their parents, their red breasts speckled for camouflage. They are hunting insects in the lawns, every so often running over to Mom or Dad for a quick worm. Families of grackles and starlings dig into the lawn, too. Raucous titmice young are calling as they follow their parents in the treetops. Families of blue jays are scouring the apple tree for insects, a little harder for them with the apples gone. A family of cardinals, the young looking like their mother for now but with black bills, hunt in the trees, as does a family of flickers.

In the hot July air, male goldfinches are doing their swooping flight to impress the females. Goldfinches nest later than other birds because they depend on seeds to feed their young, and it takes a while for plants to go to seed.

Fawn on the lawn, from several years ago.
(Margo D. Beller)

And there are other young. I did not have a repeat of what happened in 2013 but the other day a doe ran through my yard followed by her two speckled fawns prancing like colts. They are lovely to watch, as long as they are leaving my property so they can't nibble on my plants. (A doe with young is a lot more skittish and ready to run if I confront them than when a doe is alone.)

And to bring the story full circle, a few days ago I was on the porch when a house wren appeared at the water dish, dipped its bill and then flew to the dogwood tree. As I watched it checked out the nest box inside and out. Then it flew to a shrub.

You'll recall it was a house wren that came to the water dish back in June that spurred me to put up the nest box, and then I waited for what seemed like years for a pair to come and use it, the pair whose young just fledged.

Was this recent bird one of those wrens coming back to the old homestead? One of the young? Or was it a completely different wren looking for a suitable place to start a second brood? I don't know. It has not returned but the box will remain out for the rest of the summer, just in case.  

Apples and Wrens, Yet Again

In my yard, the apple tree and the house wren nest box are forever linked, and not just because until two years ago the box was in that tree. From late June into July, both are busy with young. In the tree's case, that means a lot of ripe, edible apples drawing squirrels, insects and birds. For the birds, it means the parent wrens taking turns flying to the box to feed their chicks.

House wren feeding young, 2022 (Margo D. Beller)

For the past two weeks, the young - two? three? Can't be much more in that small box - have grown. I know this because now when a wren comes to the box, the sounds of begging are loud enough for me to hear without opening a porch window. The parent can't get inside. It flies to the opening and whichever chick has muscled its way to the front gets the insect meal. 

As for the old tree, last year there was so much rain we had an abundance of apples, so many I had to sort what I picked (or picked up when the squirrels dropped them so the deer didn't get any) and put the ones I knew I wouldn't use in a corner of the yard for the critters. Even then I made several quarts of apple sauce. This year, either because there has been less rain or the squirrels took advantage of my being away for five days on vacation, there have been fewer apples in a good condition to use, enough for one pail rather than my larger apple basket. I intend to use what I have and leave none for the critters. If I'm lucky, by the time I cut off the bad parts and cook the good ones, I'll get one quart out of all of them.

Two of the last apples of 2022. A squirrel later got one of them.
(Margo D. Beller)

Some years, things get out of whack between the nesting and the fruiting. There have been years when the squirrels started going into the tree earlier, in mid-June, for the juicy apples because we were in an unusually hot stretch. In those years I would be concerned the squirrels would disturb the wren sitting on eggs and the tree would survive the drought. There have been other years when the young wrens have fledged before apples were ready to be picked. Some years the tree would not have many flowers in the spring, and that would be a year when I would not be making much apple sauce, if at all. 

It was during a plentiful year that I had to use an extension pole to knock down apples if I wanted to use any, thus disturbing the wrens as much as the squirrels. That was when I decided to move the nest box to the dogwood on the other side of the yard, which also allowed me to watch the wren activity more easily.

(Margo D. Beller)

Any day now I expect to bring my morning coffee to the porch and see no feeding and hear no begging. Every so often I've been hearing one of the parents calling from a shrub, trying to draw out its young. At the moment they are, like a lot of young nowadays, happy to stay at home. Why go out when Mom or Dad brings me what I need?

However, unlike their human counterparts, the wrens' brains are hardwired to continue the species. At some point instinct will kick in and they will leave box, learn how to fly and feed themselves, and then leave in late fall for their winter grounds. If they survive the trip, they'll fly north next spring to pair up, find a suitable nesting spot, mate and make more young. 

As usual, I hope at least two of them will be in my yard.

A Hot Time in the Garden

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”

-- William Shakespeare

I went looking for a summer quote to start this blog post, and this one of the Bard's was the closest to what I feel about summer. It is all too short ... but not short enough.

Spider mites (Margo D. Beller)

Most people love summer for the heat, being out of school, time down the shore. Not me. The overabundance of heat, humidity and insects tends to keep me indoors if I can help it. 

I don't need to look for birds now. The birds can get along without me quite well, and there are plenty I can hear in the early morning cool from my porch - robins, catbirds, cardinals, mockingbird, the occasional house finch, flicker or goldfinch. (The house wrens are silent, however, making frequent trips to the box to feed their young.)

Overgrown apple tree
(Margo D. Beller)

But with summer comes too many garden chores, and if I don't work in the garden on a regular basis - heat or no - I have big problems.

The flowers are lovely, yes, but the weeds are also growing - everywhere, including behind the deer netting. Last year, when I was sick, I could do nothing in the garden. As a result, there were so many weeds everywhere, including growing between the paving stones on the front walkway so you couldn't see the bricks. This year I've been out frequently with a spray bottle of vinegar and salt to keep that from happening again.

Overgrown cedar (Margo D. Beller)

There are, as usual, too many insects. They feed the birds but they also attack garden plants and sometimes me. The red spider mites showed up earlier than usual to attack the yellow daisies. For these pests I use a spray bottle of water and, wearing rubber gloves, carefully run my fingers up the stem and crush as many of these pests as I can (and then rinse the red residue off the gloves).

In some areas of the yard, my pulling weeds angers the resident no-see-ums, which bite me so fiercely the affected areas feel like they are on fire. This is despite my wearing coverings from head to toe and going out early to work when it is cooler and shady.

And don't get me started on mosquitoes.

Overgrown pear tree (Margo D. Beller)

The ground ivy grows everywhere, no matter how much I pull up. Its more noxious cousin, poison ivy, has been coming up in nearly inaccessible places, such as under the hedge. I can yank up handfuls of ground ivy but for poison ivy I need to cover each hand with a plastic bag to pull the stuff out without giving myself a rash, and even then I make sure to wash my hands and lower arms with cold water and soap as soon as possible.

The blue spruce is tall and stately, but it is in an area of the yard where it does not affect the house. The dogwood that was planted nearby at the same time as the spruce has reached its full height, but it is a runt compared with the tall oak trees overhead. But other trees should've been pruned years ago. The arborvitae (white cedar) planted near the front door is now so tall I could reach it from my second-floor office window. The pear tree grew so tall its fruit-laden upper branches were resting on the porch roof. The apple tree is in dire need of a haircut, too.

Ground ivy on the wrong side of the fence
(Margo D. Beller)

Yesterday, an unusually cool and windy day, I took my 14-foot extension lopper and cut down as many of the pear branches as I could reach. But the other pear branches plus those of the other too-tall trees will need professional help this year. As will the house, which needs washing and gutter clearing. And there's that deer fencing I must re-do when it gets cooler so I can get at the weeds, put down mulch and dig a new border to minimize the mess next year (I hope).

Summer can't end soon enough.

 

Watching and Waiting

Thanks to technology, it is possible to put the smallest of cameras into a nest box to record what is going on inside. Do a search of "nest box cameras" and you'll find all the latest models. Do another search of "watching nest webcams" and you'll find links to cameras put into or near nests by Audubon, the American Eagle Foundation and others. Thanks to webcams you can see into the nests of barn owls, bluebirds and American kestrels. It's an easy way to learn about birds and get engrossed in their life cycles. It's as easy as watching TV.

One of this year's wrens, on the branch
below the box. (Margo D. Beller)

I, however, don't have such a camera. To know what is going on in the house wren nest I have hanging I must depend on my many years of watching and being very, very patient.

After I relearned my lesson about intruding it took several days before the house wren pair resumed their activity in and around the nest box I had put up in the dogwood tree. It was very silent in the yard. Just when I'd think the wrens were gone the male would sing, briefly. This happened for several days. Then, on the fourth day, the house wren male started singing early and often, and I saw the female going into the box and not coming out again for long periods of time.

There must be eggs, I thought then. Now, I think there must be young.

According to the experts at Cornell, egg incubation takes nine to 16 days. Once the eggs hatch, the nesting period is another two weeks or so. Today when the female came back to the tree she had an insect in her bill. So there are young, I thought, likely three or four (house wrens can lay up to 10 eggs per clutch, but not in this little box). Right now the chicks must be very small because I hear no calling when either parent is in the vicinity of the nest. That will change when the young get bigger, noisily clamoring to be fed.

There have been other signs of life in the yard.

Blooming viburnum, already fading.
(Margo D. Beller)

Every so often I have to remind myself to go outside and look at the flowering plants before it is too late. Often, it is too late. The showy red peony flowers are already spent, as are those of the azaleas and the rhododendron. I've already deadheaded the columbine and the iris but the daisies, coneflower, goldenrod and sedums are growing quickly. The Stargazer lilies have opened. The coral bells continue to bloom. The viburnum is covered with white flowers that are already starting to fade. 

There are flowers on the privet bushes that will become little black berries, and the wild cherry tree is covered with green fruit that will ripen for the robins that will soon acrobatically pick them off. There are small wild strawberries all over the yard and a couple of wild raspberry bushes that sprang up in areas where they are not in the way, so I have left them. What I don't pick the birds will get.

The pear tree, way too tall, has fruit growing on branches resting on the roof, perfect for a hungry squirrel ambitious enough to climb up.

One of this year's catbirds. (Margo D. Beller)

And there will be apples, plenty of apples. I'll soon be busy collecting them before the squirrels (and the deer) can do much damage. Those apples are the reason I moved the wren box from this tree.

Yes, it would be easier to see what goes on inside the nest box. I could sit at my computer and watch, like some sort of Peeping Tom. There would be no wondering, no reason to even go outside.

No, thank you.

A Lesson Relearned

On June 1, the morning after my last post, I came out on my porch with my second mug of coffee, put on the fan to move the warm air and sat down to relax and let my mind wander before I had to go to work. After a few minutes I heard something through the whirring of the fan. I opened the porch door and put my head out. I heard a house wren.

Nest box, pre-wrens, 2022. Note the string to
the right. (Margo D. Beller)

I came in to sit and watch the nest box I'd hung in the dogwood tree weeks before, a day after I'd seen another house wren at the water dish. There had been silence after that wren flew off but now there was the bubbly song of another and it did not stop, except when the bird examined the wooden box. Then it flew off but soon returned, still singing. 

The next step was to see if there would be a second wren. The female is the one who must approve the site and then start gathering materials for her nest. A day later, I saw her.

Over this past week the male started singing at dawn and the female actively worked at the nest.

Then, today, came a reminder that even when I try to help birds their lives are still precarious.

Sitting on my porch this morning, I was horrified to see a squirrel climbing up the dogwood and then climbing ON the nest box. A squirrel weighs a lot more than a wren and I didn't want the box to fall, in part because I didn't know if there were eggs inside. The female wren flew out of the box and the male flew from the nearby hedge, both to attack the much larger danger.

By then ("NO!") I had rushed from my chair to the other side of the porch to bang on the window. The squirrel took off.

But so did the wrens.

Until last year, I hung this nest box in the apple tree. It was placed halfway out on a strong, horizontal branch to prevent the squirrels from bothering it. I decided to move the box to the dogwood on the other side of the yard because the profusion of apples drew a lot of squirrels (and me) and I didn't want the birds disturbed. However, the dogwood is more open, and the way the branches grow it was hard to find one strong and straight but not too high to make it dangerous for me to attach from the ladder.

House wren in 2020, when the box was in
the apple tree. (Margo D. Beller)

And, of course, I wanted to see the birds. In the dogwood I only had to sit in my chair and look out. In the apple tree I would have to turn around or look from a different, less comfortable chair.

When I took down the box last year I tied a string to the branch to remind me where to place the box this year. When the wrens came, the male kept pecking at it. I realized it might have thought the string was a snake so I went out to cut it. I agitated the birds but I was quickly gone and I hadn't touched the box, unlike the squirrel.

I can't be outside all the time, much as I'd like to be, so I don't know if any squirrels attacked the box last year. The wrens had their brood and, as usual, suddenly disappeared with the young once they had fledged.

This year, after 15 long minutes of silence, one of the wrens came back and went into the box. Then it flew down to a lower branch for a moment before moving off to the area behind the flood wall. A few minutes later it - she - came back with nesting material, flew into the box and then back behind the flood wall. I was relieved at first, but then started to get agitated. Except for one brief call by the male just after I scared off the squirrel there has been silence. I decided I didn't want to keep punishing myself so I came inside. I'll come back out tomorrow to see if they are staying.

A badly placed robin's nest,
(Margo D. Beller)

When I put out feeders in winter, it is to help the birds stay alive in harsh conditions. Many people now feed birds all year round and that is why there are more birds (and more birders). At this time of year I bring in the feeders because there are plenty of insects for the birds and their young. They do not need sunflower seed, they need bug protein.

Still, even with plentiful food there is continual danger in the life of a bird. Just before the squirrel came to the box a flock of noisy fish crows flew overhead, silencing the male house wren. There is no way a fish crow could attack young in a wooden box nest but in the wild predators could get at a badly placed or unprotected nest, and so the wrens go quiet by instinct.

At this time of year there are already baby birds in nests. Just after the squirrel incident another fish crow came too close to the hedge where I know there is a robin nest. Both parents put up a frightful racket as they chased off the intruder. They even got some help from a mockingbird, not the most social of birds but likely also protecting its own nest nearby. 

The Cooper's nest that failed.
(Margo D. Beller)

It is a common site to see big birds being chased off by one or more smaller, protective birds: starlings chasing off grackles, grackles chasing off crows, crows chasing off hawks. But sometimes nests fail, either because they are in the wrong place or are abandoned by immature birds before eggs are laid. The latter was the case with the young Cooper's hawks that built their nest in 2020, only to be spooked off by a flock of fish crows that came too close. The hawks left and squirrels later claimed the empty nest.

And there are the sad situations where the parent (usually the female alone cares for the nest) is killed by a predator (including cars), a cowbird egg hatches in the nest and destroys the other eggs or the parent is forced to abandon the nest and the young starve to death.

I get protective about this nest box and the house wrens that use it every year, but once again I should've let nature take its course. I'm sure the two wrens would've forced off the squirrel - there was no food to interest it - but by my getting involved I possibly made things worse.

One of my friends likes to refer to "my birds" when they come to her feeders. I remind her these are not house pets, they are wild birds. I know she is feeding them so she can see and enjoy them in their various shapes and colors. So do many other people. I tell myself that I don't do that but I now realize, yet again, that I am no better than anyone else.

Will the wrens pick up where they left off? I don't know, but it would serve me right if they didn't. Lesson relearned.

Resurgence

Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans.

  -- John Lennon

The blue iris that suddenly appeared. (Margo D. Beller)

Hello! It has been a while. Time has a way of running away when you're not paying attention. In my case a combination of Covid prevention, cancer treatments and work stress had kept me occupied and not in the best state of mind. But today, Memorial Day, I have gotten my weekend chores out of the way and I'm not working - perfect for gathering my thoughts and catching up.

Azaleas 2022
(Margo D. Beller)

Since I last wrote we had a less snowy but very cold winter followed by a bit of spring when the trees started to bud and the grass started to go green. Then, in late April into early May, it was damp and chilly, which was good for the outdoor plants but not for me, who was itching to put out my pepper pots before the little flies killed them. The same with my canna pots, covered in the garage. The cannas went out first - a month late - while it was still in the 40s overnight. Finally, around the time we went to visit family for Mother's Day, I put out the peppers, two types of basil I had bought at the local Agway and the pot of coleus I kept over the winter. All are enclosed in a wire cage, of course, because we still have plenty of deer. 

What we didn't have were migrating birds. By the time I took the feeders in for the summer, the migration radar I look at showed the strong winds out of the north and northeast that brought the cold and rain had detoured the birds coming up on the southerly  winds into the midwest. Then, many of them hung a right and flew over the mid-Atlantic region where I live and, eventually, into New England and beyond. 

Columbine, behind the deer netting. 
(Margo D. Beller)

Once we returned from New Hampshire (where we didn't have much in the way of warblers except for the pine, one of the earliest migrants) the heat came at us - midsummer heat in May with strong thunderstorms. The weeds started to grow in the front walkway and in the garden beds. If I wanted to walk it had to be early. One such weekday morning I went to Greystone as the sun was hitting a tree near the back path where I walk. It was filled with calling birds. I had a few such mornings, when I could force myself out of bed at first light so I would have time before work. 

The day after I should have put up the wren box, a house wren appeared at the water dish when we happened to be sitting on the porch, and then it flew off. The box went up (my husband spotting me as I went up the ladder at the dogwood tree) but no bird has come. Same with the hummingbirds - nothing, despite my feeder and the pink flowers of the geranium and coral bells in back, the red azeleas in front and the purple columbine everywhere. (Usually I start seeing hummers in June but I start putting sugar water out in May because, as they say, you never know.)   

By the time we took our annual trip to Old Mine Road to listen for the territorial calls of breeding birds (in the ridges near the Delaware Water Gap) I knew migration was just about over. This was the point when I started doing garden chores, including using my edger around the ornamental grass garden and lugging soil and mulch to the area behind the porch where the heavy rains had eroded the dirt and left it muddy when I'd go out with the feeders. Now, no more mud (but no more feeders either, until maybe Labor Day).

Lenten rose 2022 (Margo D. Beller)

There have been birds around my yard, singing as I have worked or sat on my porch - red-eyed vireo, titmouse, chickadee, cedar waxwings, various woodpeckers and what I call the Big Four of robin, catbird, cardinal and song sparrow. (The juncos and white-throated sparrows are long gone.) There has also been a mockingbird that does a very good imitation of a Carolina wren, so good that when a real wren was singing I had to listen hard to make sure of it. We even had some warblers passing through including an orange-crowned that spent the day calling from a neighbor's bush, a Nashville (my 100th yard bird) whose large eye ring makes identification simple and a few blackpolls, whose call I associate with the end of migration (this bird has one of the longest migration routes).

Peonies, again behind deer netting.
(Margo D. Beller)

The snowdrops, crocus and glory of the snow started the growing season. Then the daffodils, which did very well this year, as did the azaleas, the irises and the hyacinth. The columbines in front and back decided to flower, the peony finally opened its big, red flowers and the rhododendron is tall and healthy with pink flowers that bloomed as the azaleas were fading. As usual, I was relieved when the sedums, the coneflower, the rose of Sharon and the liriope started growing again and now the peppers (including one I bought to hedge my bets) are showing signs of life.

There were also some surprises. For the first time in many years, a blue iris appeared in one of my garden plots, in the same spot as last time. I still don't know where it came from but I welcome it. I also discovered a jack in the pulpit under my hedge among the usual weeds - this is one plant I am not touching as I yank out the others. One sunny day I found a garter snake in one plot, and I am hoping it sticks around to keep down the chipmunks. The Lenten rose, which at one point I thought had been killed by the cold, bloomed profusely and only now those flowers have faded and been covered by large, green leaves. 

Another surprise: Last year there were three milkweed plants that suddenly appeared near the lilacs. This year there are eight. I am hoping that this year they bloom and help the endangered monarch butterfly population.

The area behind the porch where 
I put down heavy buckets
of soil and mulch.
(Margo D. Beller)

There have also been weeds, of course. One early morning I took out the lopper to get at the ones I could not reach because of the deer netting. The bigger ones I could reach over and pull out. I could easily identify ragweed and garlic mustard but another one looked like it could be a wild sunflower. However, when it is in the wrong bed it is still a weed. I found more of them in other areas and pulled them out, except for one in a place where it doesn't threaten anything so I can leave it and see what it becomes. 

The weeds made me despair, as usual, but this year I've decided to put down sheets of black garden fabric (weed block) to kill those near the compost pile (which finally got turned and the rich soil removed), in an area erroneously known as the "dead area" but is anything but. We now have someone to cut and edge our lawn regularly, and that not only makes the grass look better while keeping down the ubiquitous ground ivy but it makes me determined to do something with those areas not mowed.

Also sprouting: fences. Neighbors on either side of me decided to put in solid, white, vinyl privacy fences. To do that, one neighbor cut down the bush that worked very well as a privacy fence and also fed the local deer. (I can only wish I had a fence to block the goings-on of the neighbor along the long side of my yard, who hacked down the forsythia and other plants that had obscured our yards a few years ago.)

The fence replacing the bush: vinyl on 3 sides, wood in back.
The wood has since been painted white.
(Margo D. Beller)

This need for privacy comes out of the violent times we live in, and perhaps the lingering coronavirus. The younger people now living on my street want to keep their families contained and thus "safe" from the outside world. They do not seek me out; nor do I seek them out. I keep to myself. I try to be friendly but I frankly do not understand a lot of what is considered "modern" nowadays, and perhaps that showed. When my cancer treatment was at its worse during the summer I stayed indoors and the weeds ran rampant, including along our front walkway. This year, I am well enough to regularly spray my walkways with a cocktail of vinegar and salt - easy to make and not lethal to birds while it kills the weeds. 

There is much more that needs to be done - gutter cleaning, power washing, cutting back some overgrown trees - but not today. For today, at least, I can enjoy the early coolness (before the expected July-like heat) and the quiet (before the inevitable suburban cookout gatherings) that come with a work holiday.