Catching the Waves

Memorial Day, what many like to think of as the unofficial start of summer, will soon be here. In this age of the coronavirus it is taking on even more meaning as state officials, eager to keep their stir-crazy and/or unemployed constituents from rising up in rebellion more than they already have, are slowly reopening beaches to give the people some release and perhaps a reason to pretend everything is normal again. If only.

In my state of NJ alone, the governor has said beaches will be reopened by Memorial Day, subject to social distancing restrictions. Based on the reports I've seen, these aren't being followed much and I wish the police luck in helping the "knuckleheads" keep from infecting themselves and others.

Mexico Beach, Florida, April 2010 (RE Berg-Andersson)

I am not one to just sit on the beach. I'd rather be looking for birds there. That's why this year, at this time of year, it is particularly painful to me to be kept to my home because of the contagion that could kill me. I do not walk the streets of my town because it depresses me to have people jump out of my way, sometimes into the street with traffic, to give me distance, even though I wear a mask. MH runs the errands, masked and with the car, while I work from home.

When I have gone out this month, it has been at dawn's early light to catch a different type of wave - bird migration.

The first wave, in late April, are the earliest migrants including phoebes, ruby-crowned kinglets, pine warblers, Louisiana waterthrush and redwinged blackbirds. Ospreys are reported. Waves of sea birds including northern gannets head north along the coast.

Then come the first two weeks of May when things get interesting. The bulk of the other types of warblers pass through plus tanagers, the rose-breasted grosbeak and some of the shorebirds. This would normally be the time when MH and I would travel to some of our favorite birding locations - Old Mine Road in New Jersey, Sapsucker Woods on the campus of the Cornell Ornithology Lab in upstate New York, my brother-in-law's woodlot in rural New Hampshire. Migration will continue for another couple of weeks but by June the birds should be sitting on eggs and won't be as easy to find.

Cattus Island ospreys, Toms River, NJ, April 2019 (RE Berg-Andersson)

Things are different this year, of course. There are no facilities open for eating in or going to the bathroom, something MH and I need to do when making our long trips. So even though I have taken a week off in June, we really have nowhere to go short of day trips to areas no more than 20 miles from us.

Luckily, there are quite a few of these.

This year has been wacky not just for the pandemic but because of the weather. Two days ago it hit 84 degrees F. On May 13 and 14, at the time I left the house for different parts of Patriots Path, the temperature was in the mid-30s, The first morning I chilled myself as I ignored my discomfort to concentrate on the many, many birds I was hearing. The next morning I had more layers on, including two on my hands because holding a wooden stick in the cold can be uncomfortable after a while.

The reward was worth the discomfort. The birds I found (mostly by ear) included, of the warblers, northern parula, chestnut-sided, yellow, common yellowthroat, myrtle, black-throated blue, black-throated green, ovenbird, northern waterthrush, Blackburnian, worm-eating and hooded. Besides the robins, cardinals and catbirds I can also find in my backyard were Swainson's thrush, wood thrush and hermit thrush, which are in the wave following the warblers. So are the sparrows - swamp, vesper, savannah, chipping, Lincoln's and their relative the towhee. (The white-throated sparrows and juncos that spent the winter in my yard have moved on.) The rose-breasted grosbeak sang sweetly. Goldfinches and indigo buntings flew over the road. The Carolina wrens were joined in song by house wrens. A green heron flew along the Whippany River and was soon followed by a great blue heron. The list goes on.

Birding Old Mine Road, May 2017 (RE Berg-Andersson)

For a birder it is important to be out as the sun is rising for two reasons: First, the birds that have arrived after a night of flying are actively foraging, so there is movement, particularly important when you are looking at trees that have begun to leaf out. The birds are also singing territorial songs as the sun rises, warning others to keep out of their area. If the bird breeds in NJ, it is looking for a mate and a nest site, not necessarily in that order. Once the sun rises high enough, I've found the bird song stops. I don't know why.

The second reason to be out early if you're a birder is to keep the human traffic at a minimum. On the paved path I walked on May 13, the number of people increased as the sun rose and temperature warmed somewhat. On the unpaved path I traveled on May 14, there were only two joggers and four men on mountain bikes who might've been the park police making their rounds.

Because I can't get out as much as I did last year (when I did not have a regular job), it has taken me longer to find the warblers I used to hear in my travels. The weather had not helped. Until the strong northwest winds finally died down on the night of May 12, there had been little bird movement to my part of the country - it is harder to fly with a headwind - but, according to the radar I consult, there was a lot of traffic into the midwestern U.S.

That situation changed the night of May 14 when the winds shifted to blowing out of the southwest, bringing rain, warmer temperatures and plenty of birds to the northeast.

There are even waves within waves. The males precede the females so they can rush to the breeding territories and find just the right nesting spot. So when I was out I had a close look at a female scarlet tanager, for instance, and a female black-throated blue warbler, which are duller in color than the males so they can blend in. It took knowing their characteristics - the thicker tanager bill, the small white patch on the warbler's wing - so I could identify them.

Black-throated green warbler, Sapsucker Woods, May 2019
(RE Berg-Andersson)

That's part of the challenge and the fun and why early May is my favorite time of year as a birder. That I can't go to the places I KNOW have the birds I have yet to find is frustrating and more than a little depressing.

However, despite the exhaustion of rising early and then putting in a full day of work, thanks to the two midweek trips I took and another MH and I took Saturday I think I have caught up with the birds I can see in my area, for the most part. It's not the higher breeding terrain of Old Mine Road or Cornell or New Hampshire where there are other birds I can't find around here, but it will have to do.

It is unfortunate the enforced isolation has made me more wary of people than ever, and now the noise adults and their children and dogs make bothers me even more. I understand their need to be outside in good weather, particularly when it is warm. I feel it, too. I just don't want our times outside to coincide.

They can have the beach. For now I'm sticking closer to home.

Birding Without Trying

I admit it, I am getting to the age where I have stopped caring about a lot of things. For the purpose of this post I will restrict those things to birding.

There was a point when I didn't think twice - ok, maybe I thought once or twice - about getting up before dawn, eating just enough to keep the stomach growling down and then taking my gear and myself out to one of my favorite spots to look for migrant birds. Usually this was in the spring when the gaily colored warblers and others would be flitting around in trees starting to bud or leaf out and singing territorial songs that would make them a bit easier to find.

In autumn, when the birds are in duller colors and flying south, my bird watching would be less in the forests than at a hawk platform, where you don't have to get up as early and, if you are lucky, you can get to a good spot with a minimum of hard climbing.

Atop rocky Hawk Mtn. (RE Berg-Andersson)

This autumn was the first when I did not have a great desire to go to Pennsylvania's Hawk Mountain, one of the best places in the east to watch migrating raptors, but one of the harder places to climb to the top. Our first time there was magical - warblers in the forests lower in elevation, almost no crowds for a long time once we joined the counters at the top of the North lookout. Even the trip down the mountain allowed us to find a new bird for us, a Bicknell's thrush.

The second time, a few years later, was harder. No birds of note in the woods on the way up or down, but even if there were the rocky path was treacherous, and I nearly fell several times. I fear falling. People my age who fall break bones and mentally go into a tailspin, as my vibrant 90+ year old friend did after falling and breaking his ankle.

So this year I've restricted my hawk watching to New Jersey's Scott's Mountain, where one drives to the top of the mountain, pulls out her lawn chair and sits with a convivial group of people who have a fine view to the north.

I've also had no desire to rise early and go to the woods. My wood walking has been in the afternoons. Sometimes you get lucky late in the day and the birds are flying about trying to get a last meal before dark, when they will either bed down or take off to the south.

Still, for me to not go outside on the weekend after a week indoors working is anathema. So this past Saturday, MH and I went down the Jersey Shore.

We specifically timed the trip to avoid the "season," when the traffic is horrendous on the highways and on the beach. Unlike a lot of coastal areas in other states, almost all of New Jersey's beaches are regulated to make the towns money, and you can't sit on a beach and look at the water unless you pay for a beach pass, or are staying in a motel. That doesn't include the cost of parking.

We also specifically looked for an area not made famous, or infamous, by Snooki and her cohorts.

There was one more requirement: It had to be close enough to an area where we could do some birding later in the day or if we got restless. But our primary purpose was to sit on the beach and just relax for at least as many hours as it took to drive down.

My chair awaits. Strathmere beach, Sept. 21, 2014 (Margo D. Beller)

It has been a long time since MH and I just sat on a beach -- it was the year after we got married, when we stayed on Cape Cod and discovered the hard way the lotion we'd brought was old and useless. We've sat for short periods on town benches looking at beaches - Mexico Beach on the Florida panhandle comes immediately to mind, as do many areas along the coast of North Carolina - but not in NJ. We either bird or avoid.

I won't keep you in suspense any longer - we found that place in the northern part of Cape May County, about 20 miles from Cape May itself and all its birding temptations. The town is Strathmere, the beach requires no pass and the parking is free. The town is just north of the busier Sea Isle City, which that day was having a huge Irish heritage festival (who knew?), the kind of noisy, booze-fueled thing shore towns throw to draw visitors and just what we wanted to avoid.

We sat on the beach for over three hours. While the rest of the area beyond the dunes was warming to the upper 70s, we sat with a strong wind in our faces and clouds overhead keeping us cool enough where a fleece jacket was not out of place.

We were nearly alone. We had parked along the road, near the temporary toilet - another consideration for when I go birding now - and walked on the stairs up and over the dune to sit just at the high tide line. We had just passed the low tide point and ahead of us was a large flock of sanderlings running to and from the surf, feeding. I put my binoculars in my lap and every so often would pick them up to look at these shorebirds. At one point I looked more closely and realized there were other, smaller birds mixed in with them - semipalmated plovers, semipalmated sandpipers and one least sandpiper.There may have been others but, as I said, I wasn't there to look for birds.

Around us flew herring and Franklin gulls, several types of terns and two ospreys hovering over the same area as human surfcasters and for the same reason - fishing for supper.
 
After leaving for a late lunch we drove down to Stone Harbor's Wetlands Institute and found tricolored and little blue herons, black-crowned night-herons, great and snowy egrets and a variety of shorebirds in the impoundments. We were looking for birds and were not disappointed.

But sitting on the beach was for me. The birds came without my seeking them. I had a day of few people and the aggravations they cause (aside from having to drive on New Jersey's notorious highways for a few hours each way), with little noise aside from the roar of the wind and surf in my ears.

Is this anti-social behavior a good thing? Maybe not. But for one day I got as close to heaven as I am likely to get while maintaining a pulse.