Dreaming

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.

-- Langston Hughes

It is a sunny Saturday morning, no wind, just a bit of bracing chill. I am walking in one of my favorite birding spots, the gravely tour road at Great Swamp. There are no cars passing through. I am alone except for the birds at this hour, the trees filled with warblers, kinglets, tanagers and cardinals while the nearby ponds and brooks have black ducks, mallards, hooded mergansers and wood ducks. At the overlook, a mature bald eagle flies over, the sun shining on its white head. A red-shouldered hawk is sitting on a branch in the near distance, looking for its breakfast.

This is all a dream.

I am on my porch as a nor'easter passes through, wanting to be elsewhere.

Great Swamp in winter (Margo D. Beller)

In reality, at this time of year the warblers and tanagers are gone and most of the other passerines are too busy looking for food to survive the winter to be sitting in a tree waiting for me to see them. The number of ducks that have come to the Swamp from their northern breeding grounds is increasing, so that part of my dream is true. And there is an eagle nest near the Swamp's overlook. 

Aside from being able to see a large number of birds easily, the biggest part of my fantasy is that I am alone.

In normal times, the Swamp, particularly the tour road area, is very popular with birders, dog walkers, bicyclers and some drivers, even in the early morning. But in these times of the coronavirus, the number of people walking or driving through has spiked, the fast-moving cars kicking up the dust. 

I can understand it. I feel it. People have been told by the Centers for Disease Control via the media that no place indoors is safe to be without a mask except for their homes. The adults are working in their homes five days a week, their children doing their school learning remotely. The urge to escape is strong.

The outdoors is safe, as long as people keep their distance. The drivers feel safe to be in their cars with the kids so they drive without a particular direction or plan. A park tour road, even an unpaved one, is a way to work off the restlessness. As for pedestrians, the CDC now says you don't have to wear a mask when taking a walk. You can take your children out of the house. You can walk in your neighborhood or, increasingly, the parks and natural areas where people like me hope to find interesting or unusual birds. That means if I want to see anything, I must get out there early before the crowds build.

Pileated woodpecker (RE Berg-Andersson)

And they do build. MH and I went to a large county park for the first time last week and found a small parking lot; we were lucky to get a legal spot. When we left the cars were lined up in the road waiting to come in. The easier, paved paths were packed with people trying to keep their distance from each other. The path we chose, deemed "moderate" but unexpectedly difficult for tenderfoot hikers like us (in part because of the wet from a heavy rain the day before), also had people, though not as many, some with dogs and more than a few on mountain bikes. No one noticed the birds MH and I were watching, including a pair of majestic pileated woodpeckers.

When I go to more familiar, unpaved areas I find paths that have been eroded by feet and mountain bike wheels, particularly the bikes. Being on a bicycle is another way to get out, get exercise and keep socially distant. But fast-moving bikes in the areas where I see birds can be dangerous (if they don't warn me they are coming) and irritating (when they ride through and the bird I'm trying to identify flies off), particularly when the path is narrow and I must step aside. Several times people, including those on bicycles, have stopped at a distance and asked me what I am watching. They tell me what birds they have seen. One said he had just bought binoculars and wondered what he could see with them. I am glad to talk to these people because I know they are respectful of nature. But most are not.

So I dream. I sit on my enclosed porch, the wind and rain of this year's first nor'easter hitting the windows. I have not put out bird feeders, to the puzzlement of a couple of winter-colored goldfinches flying to one of the feeder poles. Bad weather may keep me inside but the birds must still find food. When the weather is really bad they will hide in the bushes and ride it out. Then, when the storm has passed, it is my privilege to put out food so they can survive another day. To stave off the restlessness that is rising in me I think of areas where there are birds I've never seen. The "Four Corners" area of the U.S. southwest. The Florida Keys. Point Reyes north of San Francisco. Even northern New Hampshire, where the White Mountains are home to boreal chickadees and gray jays.

(Margo D. Beller)

All are places I can't visit as long as a virus ranges that could kill people like MH and me.

When the sun comes up tomorrow, I'll have put the feeders out and then will go somewhere, perhaps the Swamp, for a walk and some birding. I'll listen for the hikers, bikers and cars that, like the birds, pick up in numbers as the sun rises. If people ask, I'll tell them what I'm watching. 

Once I get home, in my head I'll be elsewhere.

Family Time

It is a pleasant day for early July, and I am on my patio with my binoculars. Behind me, I hear my neighbor walking around her yard with her two little girls. She will soon give birth to her third child.

Unlike humans, who can conceive and give birth any time of the year, the birds are limited to a short period after they have migrated north to their breeding grounds in the spring but before they must leave for their southern feeding areas in the fall.

Jay (Margo D. Beller)

So now, in early July, even though the house wren box is empty, the yard is full of calling birds again. This time, it is noisy families of titmice, house sparrows, fish crows and blue jays.

With all the feeding activity, whether it is an adult going back and forth to a nest or being followed by hungry, raucous young, there are plenty of opportunities for birders to get out there and find something again.

Even the wrens are not completely gone - coming back up the driveway after putting the garbage can at the curb the other day, I saw several little birds poking between the paving blocks by the front door. One flew past me to a nearby bush. It was a house wren. Its parents have already taught it to stop begging loudly because it is no longer protected in the box but out in the open.

Today the apple tree has been visited several times by squirrels, and I have had to clean up after them. It is a temptation to knock down more apples but I still have too many that must be used soon. So I sit in my folding chair and watch as a noisy flock of jays goes into the trees to peck the apples for a cool drink or pick bugs off the apples and leaves. These big birds don't have to worry about danger as much as the small wrens and, like their cousins the crows, they call loudly to each other and stay in a flock. For the most part, they feed themselves. But when one parent gives a juvenile some food, they all rush to the tree branch and beg before the parent flies off and they go back to the apple tree and then to the next yard.

In the past I have seen grackles and both kinds of crows - fish and American - hitting the tree for the same reason as the jays. The squirrels are a little leery of these bigger birds but, despite some hesitation, they go up and the apples come down, some so ripe they fall uneaten for me to collect. Were the wrens still in the box I'd be more concerned because big birds will eat baby birds.

(courtesy of Mike Anderson, director, Scherman Hoffman)

Catbirds are flying around, a cardinal is calling and a speckled young robin, its breast in the process of turning red, is poking the ground around the lilac. Downy woodpeckers, the young male's red head spot not completely filled in, are calling to each other as they explore the bark of the various trees. I watch one in a hemlock and see that, unfortunately, the wooly adelgid is doing its destructive work again for the first time in years. In hot, dry summers this fungus is kept down but after all the rains this season, it is back and will literally suck the life out of the hemlocks unless I spray them with oil, a messy and time-consuming process.

Hummingbirds are also coming to the yard. At the moment there are two females, one rather dusky and fidgety, the other with a shiny green back and clear white breast. Until I looked at her with my binoculars today, the lighting of her head made her look like a male with a dark, ruby-red chin. This hummer comes to the feeder and sits to eat. You don't realize how long a hummingbird's tongue is until you watch her with binoculars and see the light rippling of the liquid below from her tongue lapping at it.

Both she and the dusky one - who hovers over the feeder, her wings going a mile a minute as she feeds - have nests somewhere but not in the apple tree, although I've occasionally seen one fly there to rest and preen when the squirrels are taking a break from their raids.

I've seen a hummer nest only once, and that was only because I was standing on a bridge over a brook at the Great Swamp and the hummer led me to it. The nest of moss and lichen was at the end of a thin branch hanging over the brook, to keep it safe from predators. She flew in and sat on her eggs. It was a remarkable construction, strong enough to support them now and two or three growing hummers later.

Goldfinch pair (Margo D. Beller)

Finally, I hear a calling male goldfinch. Goldfinches do their nesting later than other birds because they feed their young exclusively with seeds, and it is in the midsummer that thistle and other seeds are ready. If I put out a feeder at all during the summer, it is a thistle sock for the goldfinches. At the moment I have no plans to buy seed but that could change. In the meantime, I'll just sit and listen.