Leaves of Grass in a Sea of Green

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
- Walt Whitman

It is once more Sunday morning and I am in my "corner office." There have been chickadees rather than goldfinches at the thistle sock and the light plays prettily on the medallion atop my feeder pole.

At close to 9 am, I hear, once more, the drone of a lawn mower, likely that of a homeowner rather than the big mowers used by a lawn service.

Backyard lawn, Aug, 13, 2017 (Margo D. Beller)

By our town's laws, 9 am is when mower and blower noise is deemed ok on a Sunday and so, once more, I am hearing one of the most recognizable sounds of summer along with slammed screen doors and the whirring of cicadas.

Lawns are the cornerstone of suburbia. Mowing the lawn is mentioned as a suburban rite in the song "Pleasant Valley Sunday" co-written by Carole King and her husband at the time. A neat and tidy sea of green, the lawn shows the world you know how to take care of your property and you are a person of substance. An untidy lawn brings you stares from the neighbors, comments from passersby and visits from deer that think you have provided a nice little meadow in which it can bed down.

And yet, nothing is abused more than a lawn.

It is watered, by rain and sprinkler, sometimes daily. Then the mower - whether homeowner or service - cuts it down weekly, whether it needs cutting or not, to within an inch of its life. Then the mowed, cropped grass goes brown in the summer heat, prompting the homeowner to use the sprinkler, sometimes daily, prompting the grass to go green and grow, which brings the mower, etc., etc.

First 2017 mowing - note the ground ivy flowers
(Margo D. Beller)

There comes a point each summer when MH and I watch the service working on the lawn across the street and one or the other will mutter, "He's mowing dust."

MH, for assorted reasons, likes to go out every other week to mow, or he may leave it a tad longer. When he does mow the lawn, it is a higher cut than mowers on the neighbors' lawns. The grass cuttings are not put in a pail for the town to turn into compost for sale but left to nourish the lawn. The longer cut protects the grass' roots from the summer heat. So our lawn looks a bit greener.

Yes, that has brought deer but deer pass through anyway. We find evidence that they have visited, including the areas where they have bedded down. Without a high fence, that will continue.

Another thing we do not do is spray chemicals on the lawn to keep it green and perfect. We feed the grass in spring and fall because, after all, lawn grass is a plant as much as anything in a pot. But our lawn is not perfect. In the front yard it is fighting an invasion of ground ivy, one of my least favorite weeds. In back I sometimes find trees and wild rose growing where the seeds have landed and taken root.

There are also bugs, and that brings ground birds that eat them: flickers, robins, grackles, catbirds, Carolina and house wrens, chipping sparrows and, just today, an infrequent visitor, a phoebe diving for insects from my apple tree. There is no reason to use chemicals when the birds are just as effective.

We are not perfect either. When there has been no rain for a while and the grass becomes crunchy, MH will look at me and ask about putting on the sprinkler system. At which point it is programmed to go on during the wee hours of the morning, when the water will be absorbed and not dried away by the sun.

You would think this is a no-brainer. And yet I see plenty of my neighbors, even the ones who mow their own lawns and do not bag their clippings, using their sprinklers in the middle of the day when the grass is getting the full effect of the sun. Waste of water and their money.

Lawn care is a big business. There are plenty of books and websites on the topic such as this one. Much of the information is put out there by people who want you to hire their lawn service or buy their chemicals and other products. There are even scientific studies on lawns. According to a recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, mowed grass is the nation's largest irrigated crop. Between the lawns and the sod farms I can believe it.

American toad, backyard, July 2014 (RE Berg-Andersson)

Those times I mow our lawn I re-acquaint myself with its quirks. I pay attention to which areas get more sun than others, which are wetter. I have spooked up American toads with the mower and once, unfortunately, gave a young rabbit a scar on its ear when I went over a nest in a lawn depression. In spring, the lawn in front is filled with the tall purple flowers of the ground ivy, the only time it looks pretty. Then comes the yellow dandelions, which we try to dig out before the uglier seed heads rise.

As a former neighbor once said, as long as it's green I don't care.

It is unfortunate that more towns like mine do not encourage creating small grasslands where manicured lawns now sit. Grasslands bring different types of plants, insects and birds to an area. They are more interesting, less sterile. Certain birds -- grasshopper sparrows, for instance -- and insects such as monarch butterflies are endangered because more farms and their grasslands are being "developed" into suburban housing developments with, of course, a huge ocean of lawn.

Monarch butterfly, Griggstown Grasslands, Aug. 2011 (Margo D. Beller)

So I can look at a long, sweeping, immaculately mowed, green, unweedy lawn and envy the homeowner his or her money paying the lawn service that would spare MH and me a lot of physical pain if we used it. But I do not covet that lawn.

Going to Grasslands

 And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks .. Isaiah 2:4

Male bobolink 2015 (RE Berg-Andersson)

I wonder what old Isaiah would think of the movement to close military bases and turn them into grasslands. 

He would hope this demilitarization would mean less war, less fighting. But no, the downsizing of military bases has more to do with cost and the increasing technology of war than peace
.

Shawangunk Grasslands, 2009, runway

Why the focus on grasslands? Because farms are fighting to stay alive. Too many have sold out to developers who put up townhouses, large McMansions and other dwellings styled "estates," and that has left the birds and insects that would normally nest on farmland or unmowed grasses without a place to breed, and thus numbers are declining.

Grasshopper sparrows and bobolinks depend on grasslands, and because of the decline they are considered "threatened" birds by New Jersey.

There are a number of farms in New Jersey - active and preserved - that leave their meadows to the birds. Griggstown Grasslands and Negri-Nepote, both in Franklin Township, Somerset County, NJ, are among them. 

2012, snow and some changes (RE Berg-Andersson)

In New York, there is the Shawangunk Grasslands National Wildlife Refuge in Walkill. This was the former Galeville Military Airport. When MH and I first came here, in March 2009, it was because I had read of a remarkable gathering of rough-legged hawks - birds of the tundra that had come south for the winter to this part of New York. When we visited they were gathering in good numbers, making ready for that moment their instincts told them it was time to head back north.

At that time, you parked in the lot off the road, then walked down a driveway to the old concrete runways, which provided an easy way to get across the field and close to the area where the hawks were congregating.

A trail takes shape 2013 (RE Berg-Andersson)

The next time we were there was in February 2012. The area had been closed for several years for the beginning of the work that would change the nature of the NWR from former airfield to grassland. 

When we came back for the the roughlegged hawks, we also saw a fair number of harriers and, to my delight, short-eared owls hunting in the afternoon. There was still snow on the fields but now the runways were gone in some areas and we had to make our way through the unexpectedly heavy snow.

2015 - no runways, only fields. (RE Berg-Andersson)

A year later, in August 2013, snow was long gone, as were the rough-legged hawks. The fields were brown in spots and very muddy in others. There was the beginning of a trail and we followed it as far as we could, until it turned deeply muddy. The runways to the far end of the field were gone. The only birds I remember clearly were harriers, song sparrows, redwing blackbirds and, before we turned back because of the mud, Eastern meadowlarks.

By the time we came back on our most recent visit, June 2015, there was no trace of the runways in the field and just one small bit left as a parking lot. (You could drive all the way down now, although the old lot is still off the road.)

Eastern meadowlark (RE Berg-Andersson)

Beyond, all you can see now are grasses and wildflowers. Trails were mowed and are not very wide. As MH and I walked I listened to all the chatter around us. 

There were song sparrows and redwinged blackbirds, as usual, but this time there were bobolinks. A lot of bobolinks. In one back field alone, still wet from recent rains, I counted more than 30 males and a few females. 

Congregation of bobolinks (RE Berg-Andersson)

There were also buzzy grasshopper sparrows, mainly secretive in the grass unless you stepped too close, at which point you had to be fast with the binoculars to catch them as they flew off. 
There were also more meadowlarks, some of them singing. There was at least one Savannah sparrow plus Eastern kingbirds. All were feasting on seed heads and insects. A harrier and barn swallows hunted the fields. I expected kestrel - another bird in decline - but instead found a hunting merlin!
All of these birds have found a breeding sanctuary at this place, as they are finding in other farms and air bases converted into grasslands. 
And it's not just birds. We also heard a bull frog and a tree frog in our travels, and who knows how many different kinds of insects were there around us. (Luckily, we weren't bothered by mosquitos the cool day we visited.) It gives one hope that people are recognizing we need biodiversity in this world. 

But when you consider global warming and the continued militarization of this world, a grassland such as Shawangunk is but a small and fragile part of this planet. 

As is mankind.

Seeing the Forest for the Tax-Ratables

I may be wrong, but I believe in the office of every New Jersey county, town or state person in charge of creating or maintaining a park there is a manual.

Its title is something like “How to Get State Funding.”

Somewhere in the first chapter it probably says the following:

“To be able to maximize the greatest number of limited resources, the park shall be created to have the broadest number of uses.”

That means, if you want a park it can’t just have trees and perhaps a path or two. It must have an area for ball fields or a playground or a basketball court or soccer area.

It must be a “multi-use facility.”

That brings me to the Central Park of Morris County, and the clear-cutting of the trees.

Ever since the county (for $1) bought the land New Jersey no longer needed when the state was forced (by bad publicity) to close the old, hulking Greystone mental hospital and build a smaller, modern facility at the western-most end of the property, the county has been making improvements.　

One of the first things the county did was take down the abandoned stone buildings that used to house the inmates on either side of Central Avenue.

That was good. Those hulking buildings were dark and creepy, ghosts watching from the barred windows of the upper floors.

The buildings down and with all this land at its disposal, and all the time, effort and money expended to prevent trespassing, Morris County couldn’t just leave fields full of trees.

It started with a dog park, or “canine center“ as the county parks commission website calls it. I understand -- when you have a townhouse or condo or even one of the McMansions that have sprung up in the 20 years I've lived out here and your dog doesn’t have a big, fenced yard, you want a place to bring it.

Here’s what else is there, according to the website:

Two lighted, regulation-size, in-line skating rinks (that can be converted in summer for other sports). A baseball field for wheelchair activities. A 5K cross-country course.

That’s a lot of noisy activity on the south side of Central Ave., or “multi-use facility,” as it would be called in my hypothetical book. Not exactly the advertised “passive recreation” -- or hiking, as I call it.

Now the trees are down on the north side of Central Ave.

The north side of Central Ave. seen from Cottage Rd. The old hospital can be seen at the back.

I had hoped, fool that I am, the land would be left alone. The long grasses and very old trees had drawn wild turkeys, redtailed hawks, chipping sparrows, bluebirds, goldfinches, Eastern kingbird and others. I know because I hiked through that land and found them.

Now the trees are gone. The county has been cutting the trees for weeks. I’ve heard the sawing. I’ve seen the mountain of mulch.

Why?

What could the county NOW possibly be putting on that land between Cottage Rd. (the one that runs in front of the old administration building, which is state land) and the old hospital (currently under development; you can see it in the back of my photo)?

Soccer fields? A swimming pool? Maybe a condo village?

Who knows? I saw no notice of the county’s intentions anywhere.

I get it -- money is tight. If Morris County, one of the most built up in the most congested state in America, is going to create a park, it wants to get more bang for its buck. I think it did so.

I also think it should’ve created more hiking trails and left the trees alone.

But trees don’t pay taxes. Neither do the birds that nest and feed in them. It’s the same thinking that allows Parsippany to approve Whole Foods tearing down woods for a new store when there are half-empty storefronts throughout Morris County. In Livingston (Essex County) there is a completely deserted mall where the Borders used to be. Whole Foods could’ve had the whole thing to itself. But it wouldn’t have been paying taxes in Parsippany.

Or take Hanover, which allowed a developer to clear-cut property along Hanover Ave. for a shopping center, even though the nearby Cedar Knolls Plaza (formerly the Morris County Mall) and the Pine Plaza Shopping Center along Route 10, both also in Hanover, are half-empty.

You get the idea. Leaving woods alone is considered a “waste” of resources. Even my small borough is allowing 70 town homes to go up where a school used to be, which will make the Route 202 rush-hour traffic even worse since no one put in a traffic light for the residents to get into or out of the site.

Those park planners think they are giving us breathing room, and I suppose they are if you look at the over-development going on around us.

For those of us who think trees are important, there are still places to go. Some of these places are called National Wildlife Refuges.

They were created by the federal government with your tax dollars to protect the birds and animals that would otherwise be hunted to extinction.

To my thinking, they are also protectorates for trees, which in Morris County are also an endangered species.

Two mysteries

I am known as a birding expert among my city friends. When they travel and see birds they think, “Margo would know what that is.” Then they get home and ask me what that “big white bird” could be.

This is when my journalism training comes in handy. Where were you when you saw the bird? A beach? A forest? Was in in a tree or on the ground? Was there any other color besides the white? Was it bigger than a robin (or a more common bird they’d recognize)?

Eventually we work it out and my reputation is secure.

However, I know the only reason I can identify the birds and they can’t is because I took the time to learn, to observe, to read the birding books, to follow a call until I found the caller and note the field marks.

I was not born with this innate knowledge, although I am now at that point of being an enlightened intermediate who can recognize birds in my area without effort. It took a long time and a lot of practice.

But there are times when I don't know the answer.

Here are two examples, both seen on the same day, yesterday, at a grasslands in Franklin Township, Somerset County, in central New Jersey.

I am very, very bad on shorebirds. They generally all look the same to me. But I know from previous sightings the tall bird to the right is a solitary sandpiper, and not just because it was all alone at the edge of a small pond in the middle of the grassland. It has that eye ring and a white breast and is largish.

The other, smaller birds are the mystery. Because of the body shape I am guessing they are sandpipers rather than the stockier plovers such as the killdeer. But what types of sandpipers? Least sandpiper or the slightly larger semipalmated sandpiper? Something else?

The other mystery bird was seen in the tree bordering the grasslands. It is a remarkably dull brown bird, about robin size, with that slight mottling in the whitish breast. It had some barring in the back toward the tail that made me think it was a large house wren. But this was no house wren.

I saw a male indigo bunting in the area so I thought this might have been the duller, browner female but the bill is wrong - buntings, like finches, have stout bills for cracking seeds. This one is thinner, pointed and looks like the bill on a blackbird, which includes members of the meadowlark and oriole families. The big eye and eyebrow made me think it was a thrush, but it doesn’t have the spotting of the wood or hermit thrush and it doesn’t have the reddish color of the veery.

Both have me stumped.

I continue to look through my books and have asked at least one more experienced birder what he thinks.

Can you identify these mystery birds? Let me know at bellerbirder@gmail.com.