Canary In A Coal Mine

There are things we see every day and take for granted. Birds, for instance. 

When I was growing up not far from the southern Brooklyn shore, I did not pay much attention to the birds. There were "sparrows," "pigeons" and "seagulls." In my immediate area the "park" was a large, concrete area with swings, basketball hoops, benches and a wall for playing handball. There was no greenery beyond some trees. My house had a postage stamp-sized backyard just big enough for some rose bushes, hydrangeas and small bit of grass.

A part of the Brooklyn shore I didn't appreciate when
I was growing up in the area. (RE Berg-Andersson)

Luckily for me, I could walk the quarter-mile or so under a highway underpass to the bay. If I wanted to walk farther, I'd go to Plumb Beach and look at the Atlantic Ocean. At the time this beach was dirty and not really a place to go alone, especially at night. (Now it is part of the Gateway National Park system.) At the time I lived here I did not appreciate the variety of habitats and birds available to me, if only my second-generation American parents had had more of an interest in things beyond making a living to raise their family.

I now know the presence of birds can tell you a lot about an area. So can their absence.

At the time I grew up there my neighborhood was mainly white. Several miles down Nostrand Ave. an apartment complex was decidedly not mainly white. I don't know if it had a park, concrete or otherwise.

What prompts these thoughts is an article the New York Times reported in November about a study by Nature Human Behavior, published online in September. The Times put on a headline that seems rather silly considering the content of the report, but it would be the type of thing to appeal to its upscale (or wannabe upscale) audience: "Why Warblers Flock To Tonier Neighborhoods."

I don't know why there was a two-month lag between study and article, and I did not care to set up an account to read the full Times article. But I did read a similar article in Mongabay.com, where the headline took the report much more seriously:

Discriminatory U.S. housing policies still affect bird sightings 90 years later

In a way, this should be obvious. In the areas where nonwhite people had to live because of the institutionalized banking process known as redlining, parks were not a high priority. 

From the report:

Historic segregation and inequality are critical to understanding modern environmental conditions. Race-based zoning policies, such as redlining in the United States during the 1930s, are associated with racial inequity and adverse multigenerational socioeconomic levels in income and education, and disparate environmental characteristics including tree canopy cover across urban neighbourhoods. 

Here we quantify the association between redlining and bird biodiversity sampling density and completeness—two critical metrics of biodiversity knowledge—across 195 cities in the United States. We show that historically redlined neighbourhoods remain the most undersampled urban areas for bird biodiversity today, potentially impacting conservation priorities and propagating urban environmental inequities. 

The disparity in sampling across redlined neighbourhood grades increased by 35.6% over the past 20 years. We identify specific urban areas in need of increased bird biodiversity sampling and discuss possible strategies for reducing uncertainty and increasing equity of sampling of biodiversity in urban areas. Our findings highlight how human behaviour and past social, economic and political conditions not just segregate our built environment but may also leave a lasting mark on the digital information we have about urban biodiversity.

Here's another reason this should be obvious. When the Cornell Ornithology Lab and the Audubon Society urge "citizen scientists" to report what they are seeing in their hikes and at their feeders, either through the eBird database or for the annual Christmas Bird Count (which has a fee) or the Presidents Day weekend Great Backyard Bird Count (which doesn't), the majority of participants are people who live near parks or have backyards where they can hang feeders. In a gritty urban neighborhood, feeding birds may not be the highest priority when there are so many other things you must do to survive when money is tight. 

The people who DO report are generally people like me: white, older, with enough money to buy a house with some land in an area near a variety of habitats suitable for hiking, fishing and, if we have an interest in it, looking for birds. To draw these birds to us, we hang feeders filled with various types of seed or suet. It has only been in recent years that a serious effort has been made to encourage nonwhite people to get involved with birding specifically and nature in general.

From the Mongabay article:

“We’re starting to untangle the environmental effects, because segregation did not just shape where highways and wastewater facilities were built,” said [study] lead author Diego Ellis-Soto, an ecologist at Yale University, “but also where national parks and urban recreation areas were built.” Those green spaces, he noted, attract wildlife.

Is it any wonder historic birding references are written by mainly wealthy white men and lack data from redlined neighborhoods? In a way it is similar to why women have suffered because research into such things as cardiovascular disease has centered on men, thus ignoring how women react in similar circumstances.

Redlining was officially outlawed in 1968, although some would say the practice continues in a less obvious way.

As I said, in many urban neighborhoods I know a "park" is a concrete playground with basketball courts, maybe a few benches and a swing or slide for the smaller children. There are exceptions, of course. In the planned neighborhood of Sunnyside Gardens, the small houses were built in the English style, with a common, shared backyard that provides some needed space and a chance for neighbors to get together. (This area has become a preserved neighborhood to save it from being razed for more high-rise buildings.)

Most of New York is considered a concrete jungle, even though it contains Central [Manhattan], Prospect [Brooklyn] and Van Cortlandt [Bronx] parks, among others.  

But the majority of my home borough hasn't had farms or other large swaths of open space for centuries, not since Brooklyn was "developed" to handle the Manhattanites and others seeking to escape for more space. The people living near Prospect Park in Park Slope, along the near parts of Eastern Parkway and in Windsor Terrace spend a lot of money to live near this park, considered by landlords an offered "amenity." Maybe that will change in more of the nonwhite neighborhoods as they become "gentrified" by an influx of younger, richer, whiter people who demand more parks (and whose higher rents force out others, perpetuating the cycle).

You could say the absence of birds - whether through climate change or redlining - is like the canary in a coal mine, telling us things we might not want to know but ignore at our peril.

 

Odds And Ends

Most of the leaves have come down, except for those of the white oaks in back and the walnut in front between my property and the neighbor's. The acorns finished coming down, at least on my porch roof and patio, weeks ago but there are still plenty of pods left in the locust tree. 

All the important plant work is done, the pots stowed away. With the exception of a couple of small jobs, I can rest for the winter. 

So now I'm looking through the pictures I took that didn't get used in a blog post. 

For instance, here is Speedwell Lake, located not far from where I live. It is stocked with trout, drawing fishermen and fishing birds, including great blue herons, double-crested cormorants and the occasional osprey. I liked the mirror effect in this picture taken in August.

(Margo D. Beller)

This next picture, meanwhile, was taken in October. I was walking along Patriots Path, a Morris County park near me I've written about many times. I was in an area where once heavy rains would create a lake. When many of the trees were removed because of emerald ash borer infestation, there was more light and so more grasses and weeds started filling in the space. On this day I noticed stands of cattails had suddenly (to me) appeared. Unlike phragmites, which are invasive and considered a biological threat, cattails are important for preserving wetlands. Finding these shows the environment is never static. 

(Margo D. Beller)

Sometimes I find things I can't identify, such as this flowering vine. 

(Margo D. Beller)

In October we had several mornings when I woke up to thick fog. This was the view out my front door one such morning.

(Margo D. Beller)

I enjoy the colorful autumn leaves, especially if I don't have to rake them. The camera does not do the scene justice, unfortunately.

Oct. 28, 2023, Patriots Path
(Margo D. Beller)

I like pathway pictures. This is another section of Patriots Path that, unlike the area where I took the picture of the leaves, is paved. It is popular with walkers, bikers and runners. It can also be very good for finding birds if you get there early, before it gets too crowded, but late enough for the sun to hit the tree tops and attract birds looking for food.

(Margo D. Beller)

Once in a while, you find a surprise. One area of Patriots Path I like to hike is along the Whippany River, which will eventually flow into Speedwell Lake. I have found many birds along this path including warblers in season, different types of ducks, great blue herons and Canada geese. But there have been oddities too, including over 20 turkey vultures roosting in a tree (with several black vultures below them on the ground) waiting for the sun to warm them. This time, in late October, my husband and I were walking along here when something noisily took off from a branch high above us. As it flew off I could see it was a mature bald eagle. But then it flew to a tree on the other side of the recycling center across the river. It stayed long enough for both of us to take some pictures. This picture is edited.

(Margo D. Beller)

Finally, here's a long view of the tow path along the Delaware & Raritan Canal, a state park. Canals were how you shipped goods, at least before the railroads came along and made canals obsolete. The two main New Jersey canals were the D&R, much of which remains as a linear park, and the Morris Canal, much of which was filled in for residential and commercial "development" throughout its route. (One of the exceptions is the Morris Canal Park in Jersey City, where the canal emptied into the Hudson River. I frequently visited this park when I worked in the area and, yes, found lots of interesting birds.)

D&R Canal Park, Kingston, NJ, November 2023
(Margo D. Beller)

When Too Much of a Good Thing Can Be Bad

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

-- Yogi Berra

As more trees are cut down and more buildings are put up in urban and suburban areas, I've noticed it is rare to have a static piece of open space. It has to feature more things for people to do rather than boring stuff like walking, listening to the birds or sitting quietly on a bench.

These pieces of open land have to include soccer fields, playgrounds, areas for "special needs" people, cross-country running tracks and the occasional field hockey rink. This is known as "mixed use."

Boardwalk under construction at Great Swamp
(Margo D. Beller)

I can understand the need for such facilities. As there is less open land and more people living in new developments, those creating a park know residents need a place to run the dogs or get the kids outside to play in a supervised environment. It adds to the "quality of life," and is an attractive incentive to move to that development.

What I don't like is the effect of such thinking at federal "refuge" areas. 

There is a school of thought that if land is opened to more people, they will want to protect it. Or people who approve the construction of a park want to justify the cost because you can't collect property taxes on land where no one lives or works. In a state like New Jersey, where property taxes are the highest in the U.S. because they are used to pay for so many services, the latter is no small thing.

So, for instance, you have the Central Park of Morris County, created out of the old Greystone Hospital that was closed because of horrendous conditions. Empty stone buildings were taken down, including the historic Kirkbride Building, and the fields opened for soccer, cross-country running, even disc golf. The state had sold the land to the county for $1 at a time when people were yelling for affordable housing to be put on this huge piece of property. The park people won out, thankfully for me and my small town abutting the land, and the park is usually filled with people. If I go there birding, it is early in the morning and never on a weekend during school months.

Here's another example of how the law of unintended consequences could come into play.

In the central part of northern New Jersey lies a 12-square-mile piece of open land that is known as the Great Swamp. Most of it is overseen by the U.S. government through the National Park Service, with sections that became county parks run by adjacent Morris and Somerset counties. Private groups, such as the Great Swamp Watershed Association, also have a hand in making sure people are enjoying themselves responsibly, although park rangers do the enforcing.

Great Swamp entrance, not far from a network of boardwalked
trails (Margo D. Beller)

Half of the property is maintained as "wilderness" where the land is left alone for the most part - mud, overgrowth and all. There are no cinders on the trail, no boardwalks, very few signs. There are birds - wonderful birds - in season as well as deer, fox, possum and sometimes bear, among others.

The other half of the swamp is "managed." Fields are periodically burned to get rid of invasive plants or to open an area to a field bird like the woodcock.The main road through this part was once a real residential street. Little by little the federal government bought up the land. As people moved out the houses were knocked down. That empty road has become a tour road, allowing cars to drive through the sanctuary. Half the road's stretch is paved, the rest unpaved. In another part of the managed area trails are boardwalked to allow people to get to blinds or, in one case I'll get to, an "observation" area.  One particular trail in this part of the Swamp tends to get a lot more people who "find nature" while wearing sneakers or other footwear not suited for mud. On weekends and holidays they bring their kids, who usually rush ahead of them shouting.

Overlook, replacing a blind
(Margo D. Beller)

I avoid this particular trail.

The Swamp, located in the midst of suburbia, serves the same function as New York City's Central Park - a large area in the middle of a concrete jungle where migrating birds can rest before pushing on or arrive to spend the winter. Back in the 1960s, no doubt in the name of "progress," there was a serious move to make the Swamp the New York metro area's fourth airport. Protesters, led by Helen Fenske, fought over many years to get that plan blocked. 

When the Friends of Great Swamp decided to leave its old center at one end of the tour road to refurbish a larger property at the other end, the new visitor center was named for Fenske.

It is what is now taking place across the road from the center that sparked this musing on unintended consequences.

The old center was small. It had a bookstore, a bathroom and a kitchen where visitors could get a cookie, coffee or a glass of water. It had a very homey air about it. Outside were bird feeders, which attracted many birds as well as some of their predators, including a redtailed hawk and a kestrel. 

However, as a place where it could draw large numbers of people for lectures and showcase everything the Swamp has to offer, it was considered insufficient. After the Fenske center opened the old house was taken down. 

The larger center does not offer coffee and cookies. It has a larger bookstore, more bathrooms and more meeting areas, but is not particularly homey. There are still feeders, positioned so those inside can look through a plate-glass window without disturbing the feeding birds.

Winter, Great Swamp (Margo D. Beller)

When the Fenske Center opened several small trails were put in. However, another, much longer trail was soon blazed on the other side of the road. It was dubbed the "White Oak Trail" because, as my husband and I discovered when we walked it one winter, it leads to some huge oak trees several hundred years old. That winter the trail was icy, and I'm sure it became muddy in spring.

Now, it is being boardwalked.

The managed part of the Swamp, as I said, has long had boardwalked trails. And, unfortunately, there was precedent for taking a trail and making it more accessible with boardwalks. One trail I walked all the time was boardwalked until you came to the woods. Then you continued on to a blind. This trail is now fully boardwalked. No more trying to get around ankle-deep water after heavy rain. No more tripping over tree roots. 

No more old blind either - it was removed for a large "observation platform" named for a local environmentalist. It has plenty of seating. More people troop over there, climb the steps, look over the tall reeds at the distant waterfowl. When I am up there, which isn't as often anymore, most of those who come up do not stay long because they are not birding, they are only walking to the end of a boardwalked trail.

On the White Oak trail, before it was paved.
(RE Berg-Andersson)

As for the White Oak trail, even tho it is not completely boardwalked people are already on it. Perhaps one day MH, with his balky knees, and I will do it, too, if only to see what birds are still hanging around the area and check in on the old oaks (like the one in the photo above).

But I think something is lost when you open up an area like this in the name of making it "accessible" and getting people "back to nature." More people mean more erosion, more noise, less opportunity to stand in a truly quiet area.

I guess I am being selfish in wanting governments to leave parks alone. During Covid, this part of the Swamp was one of the few areas not closed down by a misguided federal government and thus available to people who needed to get out during a time of great fear. We came, too, and found the tour road crowded with cars, people walking (many with dogs on a leash) and riding bicycles. People fought over parking places. Cars crawled along the road, just like during rush hour.

It is nowhere near that bad now. But it could become that way again, and that is what I dread. 

Wild Goose Watching

Winter's not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way.

-- William Shakespeare, "King Lear"

A cool October Sunday morning and I am sweeping. The trees are starting to color and the leaves are falling in earnest when shaken by the breeze coming from the north. It is blessedly quiet, only a couple of dogs barking in the near-distance dog park, the occasional jay or crow calling and the sound of my broom brushing together the acorns on the patio. The clouds are being chased across the sun. 

It is slow right now, no runners or dog walkers or kids yelling. No one heading to church or VFW pancake breakfasts or pick-your-own apples or cross-country running matches. I fully expect to soon hear this activity as well as neighbors using their blowers on the fallen leaves (fighting the wind blowing more down) once it is the legal start time for noise on a Sunday. (I hear them now as I write.)

There are fewer acorns to collect this time than last time but they are still falling in smaller numbers on the roof of the enclosed porch and in the lawn, where I have to step carefully if I am doing any yard work. I raked locust pods from the front lawn before our mowing guy came through, and expect to do it again before he next comes. The yew hedge, I notice, has dropped its uneaten red berries on the edge of the driveway, and I push those away with my broom, too.

"Moongooses" by Wildlife Terry is marked with CC0 1.0.

I enjoy the quiet, but then I hear the distant honking. I stop and look at the sky where it is not blocked by trees, and I wait. 

This time there are only about 40 Canada geese very high up. Most of them are in a long V while some are in an uneven line to the V's left. They are flying southeast because at this time of year they are migrating to their winter grounds. I always stop to watch the flying geese when I hear the honking. 

It is not as though these are rare migrants. In my part of the world they are far too common. Decades ago a few did not migrate. They found parks, office campuses and backyards full of food, the weather not too bad and few to no predators. They stayed, they bred, they created a large number of little fuzzballs (one brood each year can include from two to eight goslings) that start off looking so cute but then grow to look just like their parents. Then the cycle begins again.

Canada geese, whether they are wild or domesticated, are protected by treaty. They can't be hunted except during specific state hunting seasons. The hunters must be licensed. Those hunts help keep down the population. But people in cities are horrified when officials order a goose "culling" to cut down the number befouling the parks. They rally, they protest. These are people who do not hunt and do not see an ecological imbalance, they see "nature" being destroyed for (to them) no good reason.

At their worst, grass and ponds are green with goose excrement. When the young are small the goose parents, which mate for life, are extremely protective and will attack a person who gets too close. Most of the time when I hear honking it is from geese that are in the nearby community garden, or the pond a quarter mile away. When they fly they are not heading north in the spring or south for the winter, they are rising from one pond and heading to another so they can continue eating. When people walk their dogs at the community garden the geese take off with a noisy clatter, scattering in many directions but then meeting up later. (In that they are like another now-common pest where I live, the deer.)

How I see Canada geese all too often. (Margo D. Beller)

But this morning's calling geese are wild geese, doing what wild geese are supposed to do - get out before winter comes and the lakes and ponds freeze.

Why are they flying in a V? According to an article by the U.S. Library of Congress:

First, it conserves their energy. Each bird flies slightly above the bird in front of them, resulting in a reduction of wind resistance. The birds take turns being in the front, falling back when they get tired. In this way, the geese can fly for a long time before they must stop for rest. The authors of a 2001 Nature article stated that pelicans that fly alone beat their wings more frequently and have higher heart rates than those that fly in formation. It follows that birds that fly in formation glide more often and reduce energy expenditure (Weimerskirch, 2001).

The second benefit to the V formation is that it is easy to keep track of every bird in the group. Flying in formation may assist with the communication and coordination within the group. Fighter pilots often use this formation for the same reason. 

Easy birding atop Hawk Mountain, Pa. (Margo D. Beller)

If I am outside at the right time of morning on the right day in the right month, I can see multiple large Vs of geese, sometimes with hundreds of birds. This is an easy type of bird watching, just as being on a hawk platform and watching the migrating eagles, buteos, accipiters and falcons heading south over mountain ridges each autumn is easy birding. The birds fly in daylight and are big and easy to see, not like the small warblers jumping around quietly from branch to branch in still-leafy trees. Finding warblers in autumn is a challenge, but there are times I don't want a challenge. I just want to stand still on a quiet Sunday morning and look up at a V of wild birds flying away to the south.

Earthbound, I envy them. 

Cleaning Up After The Trees

 In October, a maple tree before your window lights up your room like a great lamp.

-- John Burroughs

October, the year's tenth month (with a name reflecting when it was the eighth month under the Roman calendar), is a time of transition. October is when you really notice it is darker later in the morning and earlier in the evening. October is when the weather switches from over 80 degrees one day to cold enough to break out the winter quilt the next. 

The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree - a small sample of
what I have been sweeping up from the patio.
(Margo D. Beller)

October is when the pumpkins, squashes and dried corn threshes start showing up on suburban doorsteps with the September mums. You realize you are closer to the end of the year than the beginning, and you wonder if there will be more snow this year than last.

For me, October is when I start thinking about bringing plants back into the house and putting up storm windows. I notice fewer catbirds in the yard but hear white-throated sparrows. Raptors are on the move and I see skeins of Canada geese overhead, heading south. Soon I will be putting out more seed feeders and suet.

The "flowers" on the ornamental grasses are the
best they've been in years. (Margo D. Beller)

Yes, there are also the colorful autumn leaves that send people into their cars to drive north to Vermont or the Adirondacks or other such hotspots. In my yard the red leaves of the maple and the dogwood, the brown of the white oak, the yellow of the elms and the scarlet of the red oak will be very pretty, at least for a short while. And then the usual October winds will blow them off the trees to become that much more mess to be cleaned up. 

Yes, October is when things start falling out of trees.

This week, the summery days gave way to foggy, cool nights and my sleep has been continually interrupted by the sharp rap of oak acorns falling on the enclosed porch's roof. The squirrels are foraging in the trees by day, and by night the trees must figure it's time to spread some seeds all over the ground beneath them to perpetuate the species. 

The dropping does not cease. Sometimes, if the acorn hits a metal gutter, it can sound like a gunshot. Most of the time, however, it sounds like someone is banging into something in the night.

Two types of nuts falling from my trees. (Margo D. Beller)

Despite the noise I am glad I have this roof over my porch. I have friends with open decks who are forced to huddle under the picnic table umbrella as acorn bombs drop from the sky. When my in-laws lived in New Jersey the big oak next to the driveway regularly pitted the old family sedan, making it look like it had been in a hail storm.

My problem is when the acorns make it hard to walk to the feeder pole or the water dish. That is why I have gone out on the patio three times - so far - to herd marble-like oak acorns with my broom into my large garden pail, lug it to a corner of my yard and dump it for any squirrel, chipmunk, deer, woodpecker, jay or crow that might want a snack.

But there are many, many more acorns all over the lawn, and even when I am drinking coffee on the porch, congratulating myself on a job well done, I hear the acorns continuing to drop. It will be like this for weeks.

What hangs up will eventually come down. (Margo D. Beller)

It is not the tree's fault, of course. It is just trying to survive. If the trees were in the woods this would be a barely noticed process. But these trees are not in the woods, they border the property of my suburban yard. And so I notice big time.

There are some years when there are many more acorns than there are squirrels, like this year. There are some years there are many more squirrels than there are acorns, like last year. This boom and bust is not as random as it may seem.

Acorns are seeds and they are dropped by the oaks to make more trees. But the seeds are also food. The more food there is, the more an animal eats and then the more it breeds. More animals mean more food is needed. When seeds are plentiful, everyone is happy - the animals and the trees. But if there are too many animals and not enough seeds, there will be a decrease in new trees. That seems to prompt trees to shut down making seeds, which then cuts back on the animal population because there is less food.

The technical name for this boom and bust cycling is masting. According to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, mast is the fruit of forest trees, in this case acorns. During "mast" years, the trees "go into overdrive, producing enormous amounts of nuts." Then comes the bust, a year or more when there are very few nuts produced.

How the pretty autumn leaves will eventually end up...
(Margo D. Beller)

Why does this happen? Again, from the Foundation:

Scientists don’t know the exact trigger for mast years, but it most likely has to do with climate events in past stressful years. Trees may produce an abundance of offspring as a hedge in case the stressful times continue. Stressors may include droughts, heat waves, or cold spells.

I'm no scientist but I know there is a lot of wacky stuff going on in the atmosphere around the world - a rare tropical storm in California, abundant wildfires in Canada, deadly floods in Libya. We are on pace to have the hottest year on record after having the hottest past few months on record.

... and the pods. (Margo D. Beller)

Closer to home, this has been a very wet year. The same abundance of rain that has helped keep my dogwood tree alive, produced the "flowers" on my ornamental grasses for the first time in years and kept the spider mites and white flies off my flowers likely produced favorable conditions for the oak trees to produce acorns after a year when not many were produced. The old trees have grown and now more of their branches are above the porch roof, something I didn't notice until the acorns started raining down heavier than usual this year. 

The oaks are not alone, of course. Many other trees are now dropping their seeds, including the bane of my existence, the black locust. October is when I notice how many of the long, black pods are hanging, waiting for some signal or gust of wind to drop like a blanket over my lawn. Like the acorns, eventually they will all come down and be swept away, to be forgotten until the next October. 

Where Are The Birds?

The other day, the one day last week that was not cold, dark and rainy, I went for a long walk as much for exercise as for seeing what birds were around. I went to my usual patch, a linear park not far from me called Patriots Path. 

Patriots Path (Margo D. Beller)

After more than an hour of walking and listening to jays, robins, cardinals, catbirds, Carolina wrens and many other of the more common birds of the area, I was on my way back to the car when I was stopped by a woman walking her dog. "Are you looking for birds?" she asked, looking at my binoculars.

This has happened before, and I wondered if she was going to tell me about seeing some strange bird she couldn't identify. But no. What she said was, "Have you noticed there are fewer birds? Is something environmental happening to them?"

I wasn't sure by "environmental" whether she meant chemicals killing birds, which is certainly a major hazzard. So are cats, both those domestic ones allowed to roam outdoors by their owners and the feral ones I sometimes see passing through my yard.  

To her I blamed the weather, specifically Tropical Storm Ophelia and other storms that have blown through the eastern United States. When Ophelia was going up the coast, the winds were mainly out of the east. If a bird was trying to head south, I said, it would likely go west to avoid the headwinds. "The midwest is probably seeing a bumper crop of birds," I said.

She seemed reassured and thanked me.

A potential bird hazzard, if allowed outside.
(Margo D. Beller)

After I got home I thought about our conversation. Besides chemicals and cats there is the possibility of birds being blown into trees by high winds. Or hit by cars as they fly low across the road (robins and sparrows are prone to this, I've found). 

Then I found this article, which gave me another perspective - a hurricane - Lee - so strong the birds were blown across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, where "common" birds I find daily in my travels are "rarities" over there. Lee, a category 5 storm, blew hard along the East Coast, and I expected to see reports of birds showing up in places where they are normally not found.

That happened with flamingos after Hurricane Idalia, when the pink birds associated with Florida and the tropics started being reported in Wisconsin, Texas and Ohio. One area's "common" is another's "rarity," even within the United States. But I never expected birds to be blown so far to the east by Hurricane Lee.

So are there fewer birds? Depends on where you go. Back in my area I have found lots of the more common birds and, once in a while, a migrant bird passing through on its way to its southern wintering grounds. But that is because I have taken myself outside to look for them. I don't usually go birding in the rain. I don't even put out feeders in the rain. And we've had a ton of rain lately.

The rain-swollen Whippany River along Patriots Path.
(Margo D. Beller)

Maybe the woman I spoke to sees fewer birds now than before because she is out more often with her dog in all types of weather and has more of a basis of comparison. Maybe what she sees confirms what Audubon has warned about the decline in U.S. birds.   

Where are all the birds? I have to believe they are still out there. You and I just have to go find them.

Autumnal Thoughts

As I write, a tropical storm named Ophelia hit the North Carolina coast and will slowly make its way north. While still many miles away, rain and strong winds are currently lashing my northeast-facing windows. The fact it took a very long time for this storm to get strong enough to finally be named while being big enough to be constantly pointed out by local and national weather forecasters is, to me, another manifestation of the, shall we say, unusual weather afflicting us in recent years. 

This pot of coleus will eventually come inside. (Margo D. Beller)

This storm will not be like October 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which hit even my inland New Jersey area with storm-force winds that ripped off one of my window shutters and put us into cold darkness for two days. Sandy was, according to the federal weather agency NOAA,  the "second-largest Atlantic storm on record, and affected the East Coast from Florida to Maine, as well as states as far inland as West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana. The storm made landfall in southern New Jersey on Oct. 29, 2012, battering the densely populated New York and New Jersey region with heavy rains, strong winds, and record storm surges."

Ophelia shouldn't be nearly that bad, and the raw, wet conditions we're facing now are nicer, by comparison, than earlier this year when the wildfire smoke blown south from Canada turned the skies over New York City orange. And then there were the fires in Hawaii that killed hundreds of people, mainly older people. The Environmental Protection Agency, in the emotionless prose of a federal bureaucracy, has even provided a report on the key threats of climate change on older people, including heat illnesses, respiratory illnesses, insect-related diseases (including ticks), water-related illnesses and, my personal favorite, mental health issues.

A couple of the zinnias I grew from seed and
cut for my kitchen. I will grow more next year.
(Margo D. Beller)

So an older person not only has to contend with physical and emotional issues but environmental ones far beyond his or her control. In my case, there is the shortening of the days and knowing at some point there will be leaves to rake, gutters to have cleaned and a garden to cut down and put to bed. My husband (MH) and I now hire people to clear the gutters and get rid of the leaves (tho' I've been known to go after the blanket of pods that falls on the front lawn), but I, however, am the one doing the work on the garden, and that work gets harder each year.

I finally had someone come over with a chainsaw to cut off the dead parts of the dogwood. Two-thirds of the tree was removed. The remaining part is still filled with leaves slowly going red. It is struggling to stay alive. As am I.

What remains of the dogwood. (Margo D. Beller)

In past blog posts I have mentioned walking among the autumn weeds and enjoying the autumnal colors. I've even mentioned the feeling of peace when cutting down the garden. Nowadays I don't feel that enjoyment, likely because as I get older it gets harder and I feel the resulting muscle pains for longer. (MH, having ceded his grass-cutting duties to paid help to spare his balky knees, is much happier.) 

This year's wet summer - not as bad for us as for New England - has been a boon for my flowers, keeping the red spider mites and the white flies away (unlike last year). It has also benefited the weeds, which proliferated until the unusual September heatwave we had subsided and I could go out and pull them. 

I guess what bothers me even more than climate changes I can't control and the aches and pains of my older body is the inevitability of it all. The summer ends. The birds fly south. The leaves fall. The days grow shorter. The plants must be cut back or brought inside from back porch or front yard before the winter cold can kill them. Daylight savings time ends (this year on November 5). The year ends. 

Life ends. But not anytime soon for the world or for me, I hope.

Spruce Has A Question

I am now beginning to read reports of warblers passing through the area again. Southbound migration begins! To find these birds I will have to go elsewhere. I do not live in a forest. The only trees are those left by the developers of my suburban neighborhood on the border between my property and my backyard neighbor, and those trees that were planted by the previous owners of my home or by me. I see birds but not many migrants.

Sick dogwood (Margo D. Beller)

I was looking at one of those trees the other day, the dogwood that is not doing so well. It is not completely dead, and I still have hope that by cutting off the dead branches the rest will survive and perhaps bloom next year and produce food for the birds.

As I looked, the Colorado blue spruce I planted nearby called me over.

"Margo, the human across the street cut back my brother spruce. Why? He looks awful!"

Exposed tree, partially
covered by neighboring trees.
(Margo D. Beller)

I looked over and saw what he saw. Spruce branches had been cut, gathered and dumped at the curb. The tall Norway spruce looked like a dowager raising her long skirt to reveal her skinny legs. 

Around the tree were small shrubs. Perhaps they had always been there and the new homeowner - more of a hands-on gardener than the previous guy ever was - wanted the small shrubs to be seen. Or the lower branches got in the way of his mowing, or the cars using the driveway. I don't know. I don't talk about such things with my neighbors because it isn't my business, just as the deer netting protecting my flowers isn't theirs. Call it suburban etiquette. 

Some of the plants protected by deer netting
(Margo D. Beller)

I looked back at my tree, nicknamed Spruce Bringsgreen. He is now 16 years old and, I would guess, about 50 feet tall. His upper branches provide shelter for roosting birds in winter and occasionally one builds a nest in him during the spring. But his lower branches, I admit, do get in the way. When my husband used to do the lawn the branches would get caught in his mower. (That isn't an issue with the mower our lawn guy drives around the yard now, apparently.) So I would trim one or two branches, which did not give easily to my lopper. Spruce is one tough tree.

Spruce's lower branches (Margo D. Beller)

The lower branches also shelter a variety of weeds including my nemesis, ground ivy, mainly to the edge where the weeds can get some sun and where Spruce's dropped leaves aren't creating a thick mat. Spruce's "leaves" are prickly, as they are on all spruces (which is why deer don't eat them), and that means I can expect to be scratched despite my best efforts to cover myself. 

Still, cutting back one-third of the tree seems to me a bit much. 

"Spruce," I said, "I do not know why the humans in this area do things like that. They seem to cut down what appear to be healthy trees for no reason I can figure out. But sometimes there is a reason. You'll remember I had to cut down that dead ash earlier this year. People plant things and they also uproot things, sometimes big things like that spruce. But rest assured I will never do to you what he did to your brother. I promise."

It might be my imagination but Spruce seemed to stand taller after that.

Spruce Bringsgreen standing tall (Margo D. Beller)