Count Me Out This Year

The morning after the storm
(Margo D. Beller)

This is the 3-day Presidents Day weekend, and that is when the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Ornithology Lab hold the annual Great Backyard Bird Count. It is meant to encourage people to really look at the birds around them and note how many they are seeing. The data gives the scientists information as to what kinds of birds are increasing in numbers, which are declining and where this is happening.

Most birders enjoy the Count and the counting. They like being "citizen scientists" and use the Count as an excuse to go visit as many places as they can (almost like a winter World Series of Birding), see as many birds as they can and then file their reports. I've done that. But I've also written of how I don't like to count because it makes the birding more like work. 

Well, this year, for the first time in many years, I am not participating in the Count. Why? I'll count out the reasons:

1. I forgot it was going on until late Saturday, about midway through the Friday through Monday period.

2. Because of the 2 feet-plus of snow we've had since early this month I can't walk that easily in the places where I usually look for birds. It's costly to send out a plow crew for a town or county with limited manpower and budget. That's why, for instance, at Greystone, the county park near me, only the main road and some of the paved paths are plowed. The unpaved back areas where I would find all sorts of birds, even in winter, are blocked by piled-up snow mountains.

In another area I hike, Patriots Path, I discovered I could walk in one area but only because some sort of heavy vehicle had driven through, pushing down the snow under heavy treads that helped make walking with my stick a tad easier. But other areas of this linear park were not done, I found. I don't walk in deep or uneven snow anymore. The effort is hard on my lungs and using the stick to keep my balance is hard on my arms and neck.

There was a time when I would joyfully walk in deep snow. Falling into a drift and needing my stick to help get me off my back and on my feet was fun then. It's scarier now. I might not make it back up.

Shoveling the front path, again
(Margo D. Beller)

3. There have not been as many birds at my feeders lately. I thought it was my fault. During autumn there were times I left the feeders inside because of the rain or took them in before dark to keep them from bears. Birds go where there is food. If no food is out they go elsewhere and might not be back.

Before the Feb. 1 nor'easter I made sure the three seed feeders and the suet feeder were filled and outside. After the storm ended I used my shovel and my feet to tamp down a walkable path to the two poles so I could brush the white stuff off the feeders and unblock their openings.

I was sure the snow would bring the birds back in greater numbers than I've seen. Maybe they left for less-snowy areas. Maybe the storms killed them. Or maybe there are more birds visiting than I think. I would not know because...

4. I don't have as much time to spend watching. That might seem strange considering during this time of coronavirus I am working at home, but that is the point. I am in my upstairs office working. I can't sit on my porch all day and wait for the birds, especially when it's quite cold outside. I no longer walk to the train and see or hear birds in my neighborhood in the morning. I no longer look out the train window and see a redtail hawk sitting atop a tree in the sunshine, or the ducks in a Meadowlands impoundment. Now I get up, spend a little time on my porch or in the kitchen and then must get to work.

The birds are on the periphery. I get my breakfast and from the kitchen table I see a male downy woodpecker at the suet, or house finches taking seeds. I sit on the porch in the early morning with my first cup of coffee and see a female cardinal, maybe a titmouse. I hear the churring of a redbellied woodpecker. But I can't stay out there. If I am lucky I can look out the open shade in my office and maybe see a chickadee in the locust tree, or I can hear honking Canada geese as I take a walk at dusk around the block.

And finally...

(RE Berg-Andersson)

5. I just don't feel like it. I have been under a lot of stress. The virus has kept me from traveling, from seeing friends and family. My work has become harder and more tiring, and with no commute I don't have any of the down time where my brain could relax. I go from one job (where I make money to pay the bills) to another (taking care of MH and the household chores). That is why this year, even more so than usual, watching for birds and counting them seems more like work. After being cooped up in the house for five days, on the weekends my inclination is to flee, not sit in the house and wait for anything to come to the feeders. But this weather makes fleeing that much more difficult, and that depresses me. 

That's what nearly a year of pandemic life has done to me.

I wish the snow was gone so I could take longer walks in different places and see more birds. But not now. That will have to wait until the spring.

Catching Up

Spring is usually a very busy period for me because birds are heading north to breed and I want to see and hear as many as I can. Now that I am on a much more flexible schedule, I was looking forward to having the time to do that.

However, this spring was not the usual spring in my part of the world.

After having a warm February we had a cold, wet March followed by a roller coaster of weather in April. Plants that had started growing too soon in the heat were stopped in their tracks by the cold. In March we had several nor'easters within a two-week period. The first brought down trees with hurricane-like winds. The second brought down 20 inches or so of wet snow that buried the early flowers and took down my protective fencing in one area.

Apple tree after the storm, March 10, 2018. (Margo D. Beller)

Even after the snow melted in March, it was too cold for me to consider being outdoors and repairing the winter damage to the garden. So I rigged the fences as best as I could to protect my shrubs from hungry deer. I hoped for the best.

In early April I'd finally had enough and went outside to survey and do some repairs. There was a lot to repair besides the fencing. Luckily, the early bloomers were still very much alive and were soon followed by the vast array of daffodils. Slowly, very slowly, the other plants started growing or, in a couple of places, not growing. Was it winter kill or did the squirrel do damage where it could get into the area? I'll have to wait and see next year.

Meanwhile, where were the migrant birds? Reports were few in April. The lack was understandable. After all, if you are a bird that weighs less than an ounce and you meet a 35 mph headwind, you're not traveling very far, no matter what your instincts tell you.

So I concentrated on putting in new fence posts and new netting to protect the three garden areas where, in my ignorance as a new homeowner long ago, I had put some flowers and shrubs that deer find delicious, particularly when they are in bloom. I had not planned to do all three beds - one of them had been done in October and had to be redone because of the snow - and it was a long, tiring job to do that once I had weeded the beds and pulled out leaves, twigs and other debris.

Once that was done, and I recovered the use of my limbs and back, I could concentrate on the birds. Thus it was in early April and not the more normal mid-March when I saw one of the earliest migrants, a phoebe. The bird made it easy on me by appearing in my apple tree early one foggy morning while I sat on my porch.

Same apple tree, now with flowers and wren box. May 7, 2018
(Margo D. Beller)

Now it is May and the floodgates have opened. The maples, oaks, apple and dogwood trees have flowered and leafed out. Even my peppers, potted and put outside, are flowering and showing signs of production.

The birds, like the tree pollen, flooded the area at once. For instance, the day after I read a report of a house wren in a nearby area I put up the wren box. The day after that, a bird appeared to claim it. He's been singing ever since and a female is in the nest. There'll be young soon.

This has been the same with other birds. They are making up for lost time, quickly nesting and mating.

Nowadays I have the time to listen to the dawn chorus and get an idea what birds are around. I can go walking in nearby parks and find all sorts of visitors and sometimes find multiples of the same type of bird. By the rivers, there are yellow warblers hunting and calling "sweet, sweet, I'm so sweet." In the woods are red-eyed vireos with their monotonous "here I am, look at me, up here, in a tree" call. One day this week I found three male scarlet tanagers and one female in adjacent treetops (for good measure I found a male cardinal and could compare the shades of red on the feathers).

It's truly the most wonderful time of the year, when it's finally allowed to come around.

Dazed and Confused

In my part of the U.S., it was 70 degrees F at Christmas 2015. Everyone loved it, except people like me who knew that being warmer in New Jersey than it was in Daytona, Fla., was not normal.

snow from another year (Margo D. Beller)

Today, on the first day of Spring 2016, I write as it is 35 degrees outside, cloudy, snow and a nor'easter off the coast and the house heat on. I wear fingerless gloves as I type.

 I could go on about this abnormal weather and global warming and such, but right now I am wondering about the birds.

When we had warmer than usual temperatures last week, I saw many reports of first migrants arriving - phoebes, pine warblers, redwinged blackbirds. (I have seen two out of three; no pine warblers.) There were lots of bugs and the flowers were opening. Forsythia, daffodils. The iris is starting to grow, the crocus and snowdrops are finished. Magnolias and cherry trees have started flowering. The garden stores have started selling fruit trees and pansies for the color deprived and early vegetables for those itching to start their plots.

I would hope these store plants have been covered because the cold must be a shock to the system.

pine warbler (Margo D. Beller)

Same with the birds. They came up on southwestern winds and found a feast of bugs (aside from my feeders - I rarely get migrants at the feeders for some reason). Now they have come face to face with a cold front. What do they do? Turn around and head south again? Head north and hope for the best? Die?

I don't know the answers. I do know the yardbirds have been visiting the feeders a lot, and they've been singing territorial songs. With the clock now set ahead an hour, it is just light when I rise. Outside I can hear singing song sparrows, titmice, cardinals and American and fish crows. But these are not the migrants.

We birders can only hope that when the warm weather returns, so will the migratory birds.