Still Life, With Woodpeckers

It is autumn once again. The ornamental grasses and other shrubbery are turning gold and brown and the trees in my yard have lost their leaves except for the red and white oaks. Other trees in the area have leaves but they are fluttering with each breeze to the ground like rain. Even though age has forced my husband and me to hire a lawn service to get the bulk of the leaves and locust tree pods to the curb, today I went out with my rake because I miss the calm I get from simple yard work outside.

Male redbelly at his preferred feeder. (Margo D. Beller)

But though my rake is far more quiet than a leaf blower, the calm was soon broken by the incessant and increasingly high-pitched barking of a neighbor's dog. After I finished, that noise was replaced by several homeowners using the inevitable leaf blower. Here in the suburbs, leaf blower season will last until it finally snows and people will stop caring about having a perfect green lawn.

It is dark at 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time now, and southbound bird migration is just about done in my area. If the Merlin app on my phone is any guide, there are still a lot of different birds that will be stay through the winter in the general vicinity of my backyard early in the morning. (I usually hear about half of them.) But the catbird, warblers and other summer birds are now far south of here.

Once in a long while I do find something interesting in the yard - a Carolina wren, a gold-crowned kinglet, more recently a yellow-bellied sapsucker softly tapping on a branch of my old apple tree in the dim light of dawn. I like sapsuckers, and rarely see them, but this tree has had enough stress in its life and its trunk is already covered in tiny sapsucker holes of past years. So I walked toward the tree and the bird flew off.

Nearby tree. The leaves will soon be gone.
(Margo D. Beller)

Now, on my enclosed porch and running a fan to cut the leaf blower noise, I watch my feeders. It is not the coldest of days so there has been little activity. Suddenly, a red-bellied woodpecker - the red going up the back of its neck to its head showing this is a male bird - comes to the house feeder for a sunflower seed. It takes it, flies to a nearby tree and then pounds the seed against a limb to break open the shell and get to the meat.

The redbelly, a medium-sized bird, has drawn the attention of the much smaller downy woodpecker. There is no red spot on the back of the neck, so this is a female. She is on the dogwood tree, closer to the other feeder pole. When the redbelly flies off, she flies to the pole and slides down until she can jump up to the suet that hangs upside down in its feeder.

She picks at the suet, then quickly flies back to the dogwood as the redbelly returns to the house feeder for another seed. This is the law of nature. If you are a little bird and a larger bird, especially one of your type, flies at you, you quickly get out of the way. So each time the redbelly came to the house feeder - first one side, then the other - the downy would leave the suet for the safety of the dogwood.

Downy woodpecker at suet, back when I hung it near the house feeder.
(Margo D. Beller)

I don't know why this redbelly is not inclined to hang below the suet feeder as downys and the larger hairy woodpeckers do. This bird kept at the house feeder before deciding to try the caged seed feeder that hangs near the suet. The cage feeder is for the little birds but bigger birds like the redbelly will cling to the cage, put its head in and try to grab a seed from the central tube. It is not a comfortable position for the bird and eventually it goes to the house feeder.

The downy, meanwhile, climbed to the top of the dogwood. I thought she would fly off but instead she flew to the pear tree. I turned in my chair and saw her tapping at the trunk. She waited to see if the big bird would come back, then flew to the house feeder for her own seed. She took it back to where she had been on the pear tree to hammer off the shell and get at the seed. The redbelly, perhaps sated, flew off from another tree. The downy ate and later left.

I have seen downys come to the house feeder when titmice and chickadees make their runs back and forth to grab a seed. But should a large jay, redbelly or cardinal fly in, the smaller birds fly to the bushes and wait for the big birds to leave. 

This tableau has and will be repeated countless times, especially when the weather becomes colder. At this time of year I am not nearly as active as I would like. I feel aches and pains more often. I dread the coming of cold, snow and the dry heat from the furnace that affects my sinuses. 

When life becomes still, watching the feeders will be the best thing I do.

Following John Burroughs

 The pleasure and value of every walk or journey we take may be doubled to us by carefully noting down the impressions it makes upon us. -- John Burroughs, from "Spring Jottings"

I own a lot of books that deal with birds and nature. I have a paperback copy of what might be the first writing devoted to carefully studying the flora and fauna of a particular area, "The Natural History of Selbourne" by English churchman Gilbert White. I have several volumes written by John Muir, whose detailed writings about Yosemite in California's Sierra Nevada mountains helped protect it first as a state, then as a national park. Muir then turned his sights on Alaska, exploring glaciers - including the one later named for him.

The view from Boyhood Rock - Slide Mountain with Burroughs'
grave in the foreground. (Margo D. Beller)

Henry David Thoreau's most famous book is his detailed study of his home area of Concord, Mass., and the nearby woods, "Walden." More recently, Aldo Leopold wrote about his Wisconsin farm in "Sand County Almanac." His book, like Muir's, promoted the importance of nature and our relationship with it in an increasingly industrial world.

And then there is John Burroughs.

I don't remember how I first heard of John of the birds, so called to distinguish him from John (Muir) of the mountains. My husband (MH) was surprised to learn I had not read him, although I had read OF him in John Taliafarro's biography of environmentalist Robert Bird Grinnell who, with Burroughs and Muir, were part of industrialist E.W. Harriman's Alaska expedition of 1899.

So I got two books of Burroughs' essays from the library and found a sort of kindred spirit, though I'll never be the naturalist - or the writer - he was.

Burroughs, born in a brown wooden house in Roxbury, N.Y., did his nature writing on the side while making a living as a teacher. Later, after he married, he took a job with the U.S. Treasury Dept., living in Washington, D.C. on the north side of the Capitol, in a house on a one-acre lot where he let his cow out to pasture on what later became the National Mall. It was at this time he met and befriended the poet Walt Whitman, who became the subject of his first book.

Woodchuck Lodge (Margo D. Beller)

But he did not enjoy being stuck in a government office, as he notes in his essay "A Cow in the Capital":

I planted myself as deep in the soil as I could, to restore the normal tone and freshness of my system, impaired by the above mentioned government mahogany.

Having been stuck in enough offices when I'd rather be out birding, I can commiserate.

So he and his family went home to New York, where he built a house in Esopus, near the Hudson River. Then he built a cabin nearby he called Slabsides and there he began writing in earnest. His essays were published in influential magazines and he soon became a best-selling author, his prose striking a chord with those city people who wanted to retain a connection with nature or remembered when their families lived on farms.

As a youth I was a philosopher, as a young man an Emersonian; as a middle-aged man I was a literary naturalist - but always have I been an essayist. (from "An Egotistical Chapter")

In the summer the family would go back to Roxbury, to another brown wooden house built by his brother and named Woodchuck Lodge. He would write in the hay barn. When he wanted inspiration he would climb to what he called his Boyhood Rock and look out at Slide Mountain, the tallest of the Catskills, and listen to the birds and commune with nature.

As he became successful he made a lot of rich and powerful friends - President Theodore Roosevelt, inventor Thomas Edison, automaker Henry Ford. All had a great love of nature. They would visit Woodchuck Lodge or the group would go on long hikes. It helped to have such friends. After Burroughs died in 1921, Ford bought the lodge to preserve it and the surrounding grounds. It was eventually incorporated as John Burroughs' Woodchuck Lodge Inc. One-tenth of a mile from the lodge is an open area that is a New York State Historic Area. It includes a path up to Boyhood Rock and Burroughs' grave.

Plaque on Boyhood Rock: I stand amid the eternal ways and
what is mine shall know my face. (Margo D. Beller) 

MH and I visited on Oct. 16 as part of our annual trek to see autumn leaf color.

The lodge is only open the first Saturday of the month until October, but it has been under renovation for years and we had not planned to enter. I wanted to see it and the hay barn where he wrote. It was a windy day, making it cold enough for me to need my winter parka. Then we drove down the road, parked and made the climb to the Rock. 

Between MH's knees and my previous falls, we both climbed very carefully. My wrist reminded me that it was still not 100%. I listened for birds but only heard a blue jay. MH and I sat on the bench provided and looked at Slide Mountain, 25 miles away, with Burroughs' grave in the foreground. Like the rock on the grave of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of Burroughs' influences, Boyhood Rock was Burroughs' headstone.

The silence was overwhelming. Except for a distant raven and a woodpecker softly tapping on a tree near us, it was quiet. No cars. No leaf blowers. No yapping kids or dogs. Just a mountain ahead of us and peace all around us. I almost cried. No wonder the man came here for inspiration. 

One of the few bits of deep color we saw in our travels.
(Margo D. Beller)

What we love to do, that we do well. To know is not all; it is only half. To love is the other half. (from "The Art of Seeing Things")

I thought of all the times I've been in parks, listening or trying to see birds, as I was passed by runners wearing noise-cancelling headphones, groups of chatting walkers or bikers zooming through. Rare is the time someone stops and asks if I've found anything "good," rarer still they tell me of the birds they've seen. Most people seem to use the park as background, to "get into nature" while paying as little attention to it as possible as they move through quickly. 

Before MH and I made our very careful descent to our car, I opened the wooden hutch where visitors could sign in and make comments. When the doors opened a small, winged insect flew out and into my open parka pocket. Maybe it sought more warmth than what the hutch provided. I tried to find the insect but it stayed hid. I wrote in the register, "Making the pilgrimage to a great man and writer." As I turned to leave, the small insect flew out of my pocket and landed on Burroughs' grave. 

I think Burroughs would've appreciated that moment.

My life has been a fortunate one; I was born under a lucky star. (from "My Boyhood")

 

Another Autumn, Another Fall

 Spring is the inspiration, fall the expiration. -- John Burroughs

The cast on my wrist came off October 1. The next day, after occupational therapy (OT), my husband (MH) drove me to the local Agway. I had hoped to buy a black-eyed susan plant. I had tried growing one some years ago but it didn't take.

I did not find it, but I did find two plants I've always wanted to grow plus one, a lavender, I planted in my ornamental grass garden years ago but it didn't survive the invasive roots of the ash tree, which has since been cut down. This time I decided to grow the lavender in a pot I put by the front door. It is a plant deer don't browse for the same reason people buy lavender products - the scent.

Potted lavender, 2025 (Margo D. Beller)

The other two plants I bought are autumn growers - Japanese anemone and a New England aster, which I've seen growing tall in fields, its purple flowers usually hosting bees.

So a few days later I spread my tarp on my enclosed porch and worked. It was a joy to be working with plants, My wrist, thanks to OT, was much stronger but I was still careful when it came to moving a bag of soil, filling a pail with some of my stored compost and then putting in the plants. Then I managed to get the aster into the ground behind the deer netting, put the lavender in its pot by the door and put the anemone into its pot behind the netting.

I shook out the tarp over the backyard and then took to folding it.

That's when I stepped backwards at the edge of the patio, lost my balance and fell on my butt.

My head survived and my back was jarred but they had fallen on soil, not the patio blocks - a blessing considering falls are a leading cause of death for seniors, which I reluctantly acknowledge being. I retrieved my glasses. This time my wrists weren't involved, my hands being in front of me holding the tarp.

Again? I told myself. I had been so careful with the soil, the pots, the planting. All I was doing was folding a tarp. But falls can happen at any time, in the house or outside. I've had both. They are not fun.

Carefully, I finished folding the tarp and went in to tell MH of my latest fall. 

Potted anemone. The wiring around this and the lavender is to 
keep out digging chipmunks. (Margo D. Beller)

The immediate consequence was a pain at the top of my left leg that was so bad I could not stand, much less walk. Pain makes me a snarling beast, and that scared MH. But after a few days of heat and rest that pain diminished and then went away. So did the lower back strain although there is still one area - either the sacrum or the hip - that I have not helped by hiking around during a period when high numbers of birds have been migrating south.

These pains used to be gone in a day. But that was when I was much younger. 

The plants are thriving, especially the lavender. My wrist improves, allowing me to finally drive solo and spare MH being my chauffeur. I've also had to move the anemone pot under the overhang so it wasn't drowned by our recent nor'easter, tho' our area wasn't hit nearly as hard as the Jersey Shore. My wrist reminds me when I've gone too far.

When OT ends next month I am sure my wrist will never be 100%. I will have to live with that, along with the other aches and pains that have dogged me in recent years. It won't stop me from birding areas where the migrating birds are. It won't stop me from going out to listen for birds on the back patio with Merlin. Nor will it stop me from writing this blog, which I'm doing wearing a compression sleeve and a wrist brace.

It beats the alternative.

Broken-winged Birder

Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die life is a broken-winged bird.

--Langston Huges

Years ago I wrote a post about birding with disabilities after talking to a woman at Great Swamp who birded from her car because of her walking problems.

I think of her because now I can't drive.

Three weeks ago I fell in a field full of flowers when a bumble bee, perhaps thinking my red hat a flower, charged me. I reared back, lost my balance and went down on my butt and my left wrist. Luckily, my husband (MH) was within shouting distance. He got me to a bench, got help and was able to drive to me so I could get home to ice and painkillers.

(Margo D. Beller)

What I thought was a sprain turned out to be a fracture. I will spare you the sequence of subsequent events. Now I have a cast on and while I can do a lot - such as type this post with two hands - I can't drive.

You learn pretty quickly how fast you lose your independence and have to depend on other people for basic things. But while I have been slowly improving and doing more, there is one thing I still can't do:

I can't go birding in the early morning during prime southbound migration weather.

MH, you see, is not an early riser if he can help it. He rises to take me to appointments if they are early but if there are no appointments he wants to rest his weary muscles that have been used more than they have been in years since my injury.

So my field of operations is limited. I can walk to the outer fringes of Greystone, or sit on the back patio, both with the Merlin app on to help me. When I hear a chip Merlin tells me is an American redstart, and then I see the black and orange male flitting around in a tree, I think of how many more birds I could see beyond the backyard jays, cardinals and woodpeckers if I could drive farther afield and stay out longer.

But, I have learned, MH has worried about me taking these long trips alone. My recent fall was within shouting distance of him. I've had other falls when he wasn't around. I could get up then. I might not be so lucky next time.

So I do what I can and wait for a day he'll feel up to driving me someplace and we'll walk and, with any luck, still find treasures, even after the cast comes off.

Down the Shore on a Stakeout

When a bird is in an area where you don't expect it, it is considered an "accidental." If it hangs around an area long enough for birders to come from far and wide to see it, it is an "event."

But if it hangs around and only comes out into the open for very short periods during the day, and there are lots of people who still want to see it, that becomes a "stakeout."

Here is the difference between an event and a stakeout. Years ago I learned several northern lapwings, a bird usually found in Europe and Asia, showed up at a farm in New Egypt, New Jersey. These birds caused quite a stir. In their usual territory they like mudflats, open country and, notably, farm land. Based on what I read on the eBird lists, quite a lot of people came to the south Jersey farm to see these birds and had to be reminded to stay in the road and not to block the farm equipment.

Cormorant watching over the oyster reefs in Barnegat Bay
 (the lighthouse can be seen on the far right.)
(Margo D. Beller)

Also in New Egypt is a used bookstore my husband (MH) likes to visit, so it was not very hard to get him to agree to drive down there a few weeks after these birds had been reported. Amazingly, the three birds were still around and there were no people other than another couple and us. We saw, we noted, we left.

That was an event.

Meanwhile, in 2019 I was underemployed. I had a lot of time to go chasing after rarities, especially if they were close to home. So it was that a black-headed grosbeak, a western relative of the more common (to me) rose-breasted grosbeak, was coming to a feeder in the backyard of a house not far from Jockey Hollow in Morristown. The homeowners were nice enough to allow people to come to their driveway and watch for the bird at their feeder.

Sign explaining the Forked River Beach project (RE Berg-Andersson)

In hindsight, I should've brought a chair because this bird was nowhere to be seen, at first. A man who drove with his wife to NJ from Ohio, as I recall, was nice enough to let me sit in his chair. They'd been there for hours by the time I arrived. We were soon joined by others in chairs or standing behind tripods holding their long-lensed cameras, ready to "shoot" this rarity.

I was lucky. Besides the man letting me sit it was only 30 minutes in that I saw the bird, pointed it out and the cameras started clicking. The bird allowed me to see its handsome black head and orange breast (it was a male) and then I gave the man his chair, thanked him and left.

That was a stakeout.

This is a longwinded introduction to the second stakeout I've ever attended, this one with MH the other week down the New Jersey shore.

Green heron (RE Berg-Andersson)

I don't know if it was the weather pattern or global warming but recently there have been many roseate spoonbills found far from their usual breeding territory in the Florida Everglades and along the Gulf of Mexico. The bird, as the name implies, is pink and has a spoon-like bill to scoop up its meal. MH and I have seen one twice - a mature captive bird at Pittsburgh's National Aviary and a juvenile that in 2018 was found by the side of a rain-created pond at a quarry in northwestern New Jersey. More recently these birds have been found in Maine, Connecticut and Minnesota.

Three juveniles were found in Forked River Beach, NJ, earlier this month and that prompted a stakeout. Incredibly, MH was into the idea of traveling to a shore area in summer (on a weekday) to see these birds.

Semipalmated plover (RE Berg-Andersson)

It is a long drive from our town to Forked River Beach, especially taking the back roads MH prefers to drive rather than superhighways (me, too) and making pit stops. Once we got to the area we parked near a playground by Barnegat Bay. We could see the lighthouse across the water. In front of us were poles atop which were double-crested cormorants standing guard over oyster reefs.

If the insatiable desire for eating oysters at fashionable New York restaurants, as detailed by Mark Kurlansky in his book "The Big Oyster", didn't kill off the area's oysters, water pollution did. According to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, oysters are a "keystone" species "meaning they are an integral part of a healthy marine ecosystem. Oyster reefs provide vital habitat for many of the commercial and recreational species that fishermen, boaters, and naturalists enjoy in New Jersey’s waters. Oyster reefs are home to a host of species including striped bass, blue crab, and summer flounder, among many others. Additionally, a single adult oyster can filter and clear significant volumes of water each day, helping to improve water quality by cycling excess nutrients."

At the same time the oysters were being depleted, coastlines were being eroded by the constant wave action intensified whenever a major storm or hurricane occurred. And we've had some major hurricanes affecting the shoreline in recent years. Beaches are big business in New Jersey. The Forked River Beach beds were an effort to help the shoreline in this area.

Great egret, as seen from behind the stakeout. The
roseate spoonbills would later be seen in this
area. (RE Berg-Andersson)

There was a paved path to walk past beach houses large and small with lovely gardens. There were benches, monarch butterflies at the flowers and even some birds but no spoonbills and, tellingly, no people looking for them. We were in the wrong place.

Luckily, someone had put a map on Facebook and by comparing that map to our map we found our way to another part of Forked River Beach. This time we found the stakeout. This time we had our chairs and sat a while. MH took pictures as I scanned the mudflats with my binoculars.

There were green herons. There were semipalmated sandpipers and semipalmated plovers. There were Forster's terns and a great egret. There were laughing gulls and herring gulls and very nice people who pointed out birds as they found them.

Sometimes it is a good thing to have a spotting scope, but I don't have one.
As best as I can tell the birds in this picture include semipalmated sandpiper (the 
small one), Forster's tern (the smaller blackheaded one), laughing gull (the larger
blackheaded one) and immature herring gull (the dark one in the back). I
can't identify the others. I've always been weak on shorebird IDs.
(RE Berg-Andersson)

What there weren't were roseate spoonbills.

That these birds were here at all was an amazing thing. This wetland along the bay was across the street from a massive development of expensive houses, many of which faced or were within walking distance of the water. (Hurricane Sandy's devastation of the Jersey shore in 2012 has not stopped housing development. If anything, it has gotten worse.) The main streets were named for Florida areas. Cross streets were named for birds. (As it happened, the closest cross street to the stakeout was Spoonbill Court.) Thankfully, this wetland had been left alone. 

We did not stay more than a half-hour. Seeing these birds would've been nice but they weren't my main reason for us to come here. It was very pleasant to get out of the house, sit by water on a sunny summer day, get a breeze in my face and look for birds. We left to explore areas nearby and eventually started the long trip back. As I later learned, the spoonbills briefly showed themselves about 30 minutes afterwards. The air must've been loud with camera clicks.

As of Aug. 15, they are still around, according to a Facebook post from the area.

Global warming has pushed many birds north. There was a time someone from New Jersey would be lucky to find a Carolina wren, a redbellied woodpecker or a northern cardinal. Now they are common. White ibis, another Everglades bird, has been coming to Ocean City, NJ, for years to breed and now white ibis are being seen in other northeastern areas. Mississippi kites have bred in New Hampshire for years.

There was a time you'd never see a Carolina wren in the north, especially
in winter. But that has changed. (Margo D. Beller)

I expect the ibises and the spoonbills to head south when winter comes. But what if winters remain so warm there is no cold and no snow to prompt them to leave? I would say there would be no migration but there would be a lot of competition for limited resources between birds that should've migrated south and those that remain all year or are only found in winter.

For the moment, the New Jersey spoonbills are an accidental that created an event that became a stakeout. But they could be a harbinger of things to come. 

Then and Now

Nature abhors a vacuum. Clear land and do nothing with it and soon things will grow. If they are plants you don't want, they are considered "invasives" and "weeds." If they are plants you do want, they are considered "natives."

The same is true if you have an area prone to flooding. It fills with water after heavy rains. If there are no trees around to shade the area, the area dries out and things start to grow.

Ice pond, 2017 (Margo D. Beller)

A perfect example of this is along the linear park near me known as Patriots Path.

In 2018, the county parks people were cutting down trees infested by emerald ash borers. As I discovered, a lot of ash trees were growing along Patriots Path and those trees were soon cut and strewn around like trash. (Eventually they were removed.)

When the spring rains were heavy, the nearby Whippany River would overflow its banks and spread through the woods, across the path and into this area that acted like a bowl. Even after the waters receded and the path was walkable again there would be water for weeks afterwards.

Pond once the trees started coming down, 2018.
(Margo D. Beller)

One spring I walked the path after it had dried and came upon nearly two dozen mallards (plus pairs of wood ducks and Canada geese) that were in the water that remained on either side. At my approach the water fowl slowly moved off toward the Whippany River.

This area I'm mentioning had been shaded by trees, many of which, as I learned, were ash trees. When the trees came down the area was more exposed to the sun. And then a very interesting thing happened.

The water was replaced by plants.

There were weeds, yes, including wild grape vines, Virginia creeper, the inevitable poison ivy and others I can't identify. But there were also things growing that I can identify - joe-pye weed, cardinal flowers and cattails. Joe-pye and cardinal bloom in the fall. They are very popular with pollenators including bees and hummingbirds, the latter of which have already begun migrating south for the winter. Unlike the invasive phragmites, cattails also provide pollen and are important to some species of birds. 

The former pond, 2025 (Margo D. Beller)

According to The Nature Conservancy: Yellow-headed and red-winged blackbirds, and marsh wrens perch and build their nests on them. Waterfowl, such as Mallards and Canada Geese, nest among them. Frogs and salamanders lay their eggs in the water on and between them. Fish hide or nest among them. Many birds use the seed fluff to line their nests. Muskrats use rhizomes for food and the foliage to build their houses. This then provides resting and nesting sites for water birds. Deer, raccoons, cottontails and turkeys use them as cover. Insects eat and live on them. 

In addition, I learned, all of the cattail is edible. 

Cattails (Margo D. Beller)

These are different from phragmites, which, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, form highly dense stands that quickly outcompete native plants, degrade large areas of highly productive wetlands, drastically reduce habitat diversity and function, impair human use of beaches and recreational areas, and negatively impacts dependent wildlife and a multi-billion-dollar regional fishery.

Thanks to the plants, any rainwater has been sucked up far faster than before. I have seen no ice ponds in years. 

Cardinal flower (Margo D. Beller)

For all I know, the county park commission had people put these native plants in the ground. Or the plants could've come from someone's nearby garden. Or the seeds, floating around in the air we breathe, fell in the right place at the right time.

However they got to this place they have made this walking path a much more colorful place.

A Second Chance

Some people fall in love. Some fall from grace.

I just fall.

My glasses - frame and lens - survived the fall by flying off...
(Margo D. Beller)

I was on a cindered trail in the woods near my town's community garden yesterday morning when I left the trail to walk closer to the bordering marsh. I stepped over a small, downed tree. At least I thought I did. I conjecture my trailing foot caught the trunk and I suddenly found myself falling forward.

Glasses flew. So did my hat, stick and the phone. My binoculars were on me thanks to its harness. My notebook was in an overshirt pocket and held in place by a harness strap. It stayed in the pocket tho' the pen bent some of the pages.

First order of business - sit up. Wiggle toes and fingers. Raise arms. No broken bones though the little finger of my right hand had abrasions and hurt. No head pain, no blurred vision.

Next - find the glasses. No breakage. None on the phone or the binoculars.

So I'm OK. Now collect everything and stand up.

...but not before gashing the bridge of my nose.
(Margo D. Beller)

Once standing I walked a few steps, found my legs could work and I continued around the short path and back to the car. The bruising started to show up at home once I started icing my right hand, then my left knee, then my left wrist. I found a mosquito had taken advantage and bit my right hand, so anti-itch cream was applied. The glasses had gashed the bridge of my nose before flying off. The wound was washed and covered with a bandage.

This morning the pains are virtually gone thanks to eight hours of rest and an Advil. I can put my glasses, thankfully not bent, on my nose again.

The psychic pain will take a little longer to heal.

I was lucky the fall was on ground, which gives a bit more than cement. I was lucky no bones broke, that I could get home. I've had other falls, and I feel blessed to have yet another second chance at life. The older you get, the less that is a given. 

Things could've been a whole lot worse and I was happy to rise early this morning and sit on my patio, listening to the dawn chorus with Merlin.

(RE Berg-Andersson)

Yes, Merlin is getting a second chance, too.

Besides not knowing where my legs were when I stepped over the tree, I might've been distracted by my phone. Last week I was at the Great Swamp very early and was frustrated at hearing things I could not identify. I decided to try Merlin again, for the first time since May. I found there had been some changes to the app and it seems to run much better, tho' I have not downloaded the database that would be necessary if I was birding in an area with no cellphone connection. 

On the trail Merlin was finding an Eastern peewee, a bird whose very high, thin call I can't hear unless I am literally under the bird. I was trying to find where the bird was to hear it. Eventually, I did. But that was after the fall. I don't remember if I was looking at the phone when I fell but it was definitely in my hand, not a pocket, which might've saved it from damage.

Merlin and I will be birding the backyard, carefully, for the foreseeable future.

Midsummer Flowering Weeds

On a recent less-humid morning I took a long walk around what I call Greystone and the maps now call the Central Park of Morris County. I was walking on the cross-country running track created in the back fields of what was once a psychiatric hospital. I was looking and listening for birds, as usual, and managed to find a few.

But after a while I started looking at the plants. In the area where saplings had been planted a few years ago there are now small trees - tulip poplar, sweetgum, sumac, among others - as well as fields of weeds I once thought were ragweed but I now know have the lovely name of common mugwort, which sounds like something out of Harry Potter. I like the mugwort because last year a drainage ditch filled with the stuff offered protection to at least four types of migrating sparrows, goldfinches and at least two types of warblers.

Back in September of 2019 I wrote about walking among the autumn weeds. It is now July of 2025 and the same weeds are already out thanks to a combination of warmer than usual temperatures and more than usual amounts of rain. Maybe they were always out in July, or maybe it's another sign of global warming.

So while I hate the weeds in my backyard with a passion, I enjoy the park weeds' flowers, fruits and seeds because they help pollenators and birds, migrating and those that hang around all year.

Here are some of my photos.

This is a wild grape vine. The fruits are now white but they will turn blue. They are enjoyed by sparrows, robins and other fruit-eating birds. The vine will engulf anything nearby. 

There is goldenrod that blooms in the middle of summer, and goldenrod that blooms near the end of summer. I grow the midsummer type. I presume this is the same type. 

This is called teasel. It is about four feet tall and has spiky, blue flowers that are favored by bees. Every time I see these I consider taking off a seed head or two for my garden. Maybe I will do it this year.

This poison ivy was growing along the walls of what used to be the hospital dance hall. Unless cut down the ivy will completely cover the building. Obviously the Parks Dept. doesn't want to touch it.

Trees can be weeds, too. This is tree of heaven, growing along the same building as the poison ivy. Unless you get it when small it will put its long taproot into the ground and be very difficult to remove, as I learned when I tried to dig out one from my in-laws' front yard years ago. 

A field of mugwort provides hiding spaces for birds, deer and rabbits, as I saw during my walk.

I once had one of these inkweed plants growing in my yard but I quickly dug it up before the taproot went too deep. In this picture the berries are not ripe yet. When they are they'll be deep purple. Catbirds love these berries, as do robins and cardinals, among others. 

In front are the white wild carrot (Queen Anne's lace) and the blue chicory, whose roots can be made into a type of coffee. They are surrounded by mugwort and other weeds. Some of the growing saplings are behind them.

Milkweed is very important to the survival of monarch butterflies. The caterpillars feed on the plant and bees pollenate the pink flowers. As I have learned in my yard, they spread by an underground root system. In a field they look lovely. In my backyard they have popped up in the wrong place and do not flower. Except for one that popped up in the ornamental grass garden, the rest are mowed down. But then more pop up.

Ah, bee balm! This is another plant that will get everywhere because of its spreading roots. I grew it once but years of digging and weeding in that particular area eventually killed all of it. Now I look at large fields of bee balm and wish I still grew some in a bigger, preferably fenced, backyard.

This weed with its yellow and orange flowers is known as the common toadflax, but I prefer its colloquial name of butter-and-eggs. It looks like a wild snapdragon.

More than a few times I have carefully picked the wild raspberries along the path while I've hiked. As you can see here, other people as well as birds also help themselves. The stem is full of large, very sharp thorns. I have found seedlings all over my backyard. If they are behind the floodwall I leave them but if they are in the garden plots or the lawn, they have to go.

Unfortunately, the jewelweed was not flowering at the time. Hummingbirds really like this late summer weed's orange or yellow trumpet flowers, especially when the birds need fuel to help them migrate south.

As I discovered last year, the county Parks Department mows down the fields of mugwort and the other weeds, including the ones I photographed, in October. But like all seeding, fruiting and spreading weeds, they'll be back next year. Of that I've no doubt.

At Midsummer

If you consider summer to start on June 1 rather than May's Memorial Day weekend, we are currently in midsummer. Today, a rare not-so-humid day, I took a walk around my yard to see how things are doing.

The early spring flowers are a distant memory. The azaleas, irises and rhododendron have bloomed and busted, the lily flowers gone while the stems remain.

I put seeds from three different types of plants into a pot, and only the zinnias are growing. I had collected the seeds from a friend's plant last fall, and will do it again this fall with these flowers once they are done.

Hummingbird-attracting canna flower (Margo D. Beller)

The purple coneflowers have finally started to open. The midseason goldenrod is in flower. Rose of sharon shrubs are blooming purple in neighbor yards but the pale pink flowering type I have are just starting to bud, as are the succulent sedums protected by the deer fencing. Some of the potted cannas have put up long spikes of red flowers that, witnessed at least once by my husband, attracted a female ruby-throated hummingbird. (I hope she gets to the backyard where the feeder hangs waiting for her.)

The house wren young are now so noisy when a parent comes to feed them that I can hear their begging through the closed windows of the porch, even with the fan on. They are so big the parents feed them from outside the box, except when they squeeze in to remove poop. I expect that, like the brood earlier this summer, there are three birds in the box and they will soon be enticed to leave and follow their parents, learning to feed themselves. If they survive they'll head south and the box will come down for the year.

The humidity has affected me more than usual this year, starting with the heavy spring rains. I used to wonder how those living in New Orleans could survive the humidity. Now I know - you close the windows, put on the air conditioner, close the curtains against the sun and stay inside as the air dries along with my skin, just as it does in the winter when the furnace is continually running. And don't look at the electric bill until absolutely necessary.

But at least the gnats are gone from my porch. Unlike last year when I didn't start noticing them until August and found they had infested the open bag of bird seed, they have nothing to breed on. The seed is in a locked container. Old plastic pots are gone. Soil is off the porch. What ceramic pots I've kept are covered with plastic. If a gnat was desperate enough it would visit the yellow sticky strip, where there are already a number of corpses. My hope is the wrens and other baby birds are eating the overflow.

This month the cicadas started calling during the day, the fireflies have been out in the evenings and soon there will be night choruses of katydids and crickets.

In the cooler early morning I have been hearing a number of different types of birds, besides the resident house wrens. I hear families of titmice and chickadees. Mockingbirds harried a pair of fish crows that seemed interested in nesting in my trees. (They left.) A catbird sang for the longest time atop my yew hedge in the mornings, but now its young are gone and the bird has moved on. It is not yet August but already some birds are heading south for the winter feeding grounds, such as the shorebirds that stop off at some of New Jersey's shore empoundments (along with the nasty, biting, greenhead flies). 

From 2020, a house wren feeding young from outside the box.
(Margo D. Beller)

Warblers are starting to move south. They won't be as colorful as in spring and won't be singing their territorial songs. They will be harder to find.

Leaves are already falling from some of the trees, but not the apple tree. Cutting off that rotted limb seems to have done it some good. The dogwood I saved two years ago is showing green fruits that will eventually redden and, I hope, draw robins and cedar waxwings before the squirrels can get at them.

Back-to-school ads on TV tell me it will soon be time for the kids currently on vacation to hit the books (and their after-school activities) again. It is already darker in the early morning. Soon enough it will be dark in the early evening, too.

I'll put the garden to bed and the seed feeders out for the cardinals and other birds hanging around my yard during the winter. Then another year will end, as it inevitably does.