Life and Dying in the Backyard

Every spring I am surprised by my plants coming back after the winter. This year is no exception despite temperatures that reached the 80s in February and the 30s in April, with very little snow but lots of rain. Although some plants did not get as tall or as showy as usual, they did flower. The same is true of the trees and the shrubs. Both the apple and the pear trees have flowered, despite being severely cut back early this year. Where there are flowers there will be fruit, albeit fruit too high for me to easily pick.

Dogwood flowers in 2016 (Margo D. Beller)

This post will focus on one particular tree.

I have lived in my house for over 25 years. In my suburban neighborhood "woods" means trees on the property border. Any trees planted in the front or back yards have been put in by the homeowner. Over the years I've had to cut down yard trees for various reasons. I have, however, planted two trees - the blue spruce we nicknamed Spruce Bringsgreen and a flowering dogwood.

I planted the dogwood because in the fall it is supposed to produce red berries for the birds. Since that tree was planted in 2007 I've learned berries are not guaranteed. Like the other flowering plants, it depends on the weather. Some years there would be lovely pink flowers on the dogwood. But that did not necessarily mean berries would follow. Some years yes, some years no. The fresh green leaves would go red in the fall. 

Dogwood berries, 2019. Note the discoloration
in the autumn leaves. (Margo D. Beller)

Since planting that tree I took it as a given that once established it would always be there. But like any other living thing, trees die. Sometimes they are killed by man, who cuts them down or pollutes the air. Sometimes they are killed by insects, as was the ash tree I had to cut down because of the emerald ash borer. Sometimes, however, they are killed by bacteria or fungus.

I don't remember when during the winter I first began to notice one branch was missing some of its bark but I did eventually notice, especially when more bare patches began to appear. I became alarmed when the apple and pear trees, the viburnum, the forsythia and the lilacs started leafing out and the dogwood remained bare. I thought the tree was dead.

My first indication something was wrong.
(Margo D. Beller)

I was going to write about it here. I even had a name for my post - Dead as a Dogwood.

But reports of the dogwood's demise were premature - after a recent heavy rain it started to leaf out.

Not everywhere, however. The part of the tree where the bark has come off remains bare, as are a few of the lower branches. 

I did some research into dogwood diseases, and to my horror discovered there are quite a few. The one that appears the closest to what is happening with this tree has the awful name of "crown canker."

Hoping for the best, I wrapped the lower part of the tree to prevent the bark that was just starting to flake from getting worse. I used my lopper on some of the lower branches and will have to use a saw or chainsaw on other parts. Because the tree went straight to leafing there will be no flowers. The leaves are small and I doubt there will be fruit. I don't even know if the tree will be alive next year.

(Margo D. Beller)

As I looked at some of the pictures I've taken of this tree over the years I realize the signs were there: discoloring in the leaves, the irregular production of fruit. It was not until the bark started falling off that I realized this tree is sick. Should I have used the sprinkler last year instead of letting the grass go brown and deprive the tree roots of water during the summer drought? Should I have added more mulch to what I had already put down at the base of the tree? 

Dogwood leaves, 2023 (Margo D. Beller)

I don't know. This year I'll use the sprinkler more and I'll use my saw on the dead branches. The tree may be disfigured but I hope it will recover. Or it may die. Living things die, even trees.

In the meantime, as I have for the past two years, I have put up the house wren nest box on one of the living dogwood branches. I heard a wren singing the other morning as I put out the feeders. The bird investigated the box, then flew to another yard. Will it be back? That, too, is unknown.

The Ladies Who Sing

It is finally spring. Trees are leafing out. The daffodils are at their peak. The lawn has greened, the lawn services are out and the pollen is flying.

And there is birdsong, lots of birdsong. As light comes into the sky the dawn chorus begins - robins, cardinals, titmice, song sparrows.

This is my favorite time of the year. At any moment a migrating bird may stop in my yard to visit the feeders or hunt for insects in the trees and shrubs. The light comes into the sky around the time I wake up and by the time I get outside the birds are singing.

The other morning I was outside with my coffee, listening to the dawn chorus. There was a cardinal singing particularly close by and for once I wanted to watch him sing. I walked along the path to get a better look and stopped when the song seemed to come above me in the apple tree. But where was the distinctive red male cardinal?

Female cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

There was no male. The singer was the brown female, whose dull coloring allowed her to blend into the bare tree branches near the very top rather well. 

I had been fooled, but I'm sure I am not the only one who has made that mistake.

Here is the common thinking about birds: The males, brightly colored to attract a mate, do the singing to either draw a female or defend its chosen territory, its song warning other males of its type to stay away. The duller females mate, choose a nest site, then build the nest for the eggs she will incubate.

But that thinking is wrong, I've learned. Female cardinals sing just as often and as loud as their male counterparts. It turns out female birds of quite a few species do, too.

How have we managed to miss all these female singers? There are a number of reasons, some of them literally man made.

I did some research and it turns out the study of female birdsong has been increasing, and there have been quite a few articles on this very topic.

One problem with knowing if a female is singing: It is hard to tell the male from the female of many types of birds. For instance, I can't tell if the titmouse singing "peter, peter, peter" in my tree is a male or not because the males and females look alike. They are the same size and color. Some singing birds have only the most subtle difference in shading, such as the black head of the male robin and the dark gray head of the female. 

Male or female titmouse?
(Margo D. Beller)

Another problem: There have not, historically, been a lot of studies of birds beyond those of temperate zones in the U.S. Most of the birds that have been studied come north in the spring and go south for the winter. But there are many more birds, just starting to be studied, that stay in those South American rain forests and jungles and do not migrate because they have all the food they need. These female birds sing all the time, to protect territories or draw a mate. (Of course, there is an even greater universe of birds living and migrating in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.)

According to what I found on the Cornell Ornithology Lab site, a 2016 study pointed out that in a sample of more than 1,000 songbird species from around the world, 64% had females that sing. Many tropical species and some temperate-zone species, such as female cardinals, "sing regularly; while others sing during specific parts of the breeding season," according to Cornell.

Take the song sparrow. A 1943 - yes, that far back - study by Margaret Morse Nice, found female song sparrows sing early in the breeding season, mainly to warn other females away. But she also found female singers among temperate-zone birds including northern mockingbirds, Baltimore and Bullock’s orioles, white-crowned sparrows, European starlings, cedar waxwings and house finches.

To me that is impressive - her study covered nine years of observations - because in many of these birds the males and females look identical.

Both of these birds will sing very
sweetly for you, if you have ears to listen.
(Margo D. Beller)

That study is impressive to me for another reason - it's a woman doing the research. Bird research, as in most of the scientific fields, has been a male domain. Most of the researchers have been men and, back in the day, not many of them were interested in traveling outside the United States and were even less interested in dull females, much less whether they could sing. As in so many areas of our western patriarchal society, gender bias determined what we all believed.

That, however, has been changing, slowly. 

Here is a sampling:

The Auk, now known as Ornithology, is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Ornithological Society. The society was formed in 1884! This is the place for people who go far beyond Sunday birding, the (mainly) men who make the rules as to taxonomy and other fine details of birds and their lives. Even here you'll find a study on female birdsong, complete with abstract, figures and tables, and references.

Femalebirdsong.org goes further: This site provides actual female birdsong calls and gives you a way to be a Citizen Scientist and gather even more data. There are also links to articles on the topic of female birdsong.

The Female Songbird Project is another a Citizen Science initiative.

Audubon: The granddaddy of bird preservation organizations puts the spotlight on a study "tackling the gender and geographical skew in avian song research."

But wait, there's more: Do a google search of "female birdsong." You'll find all sorts of other articles from mainstream publications including Scientific American and the Washington Post.

If you take away anything from this blog post, it should be to keep your mind open as well as your ears and eyes. Or, to quote Abigail Adams, who in many ways was far ahead of her time, remember the ladies.