The Stranger

It is a cloudy weekday morning with a chance of rain. The young woman pushing the baby carriage down the grassy park path sees a figure ahead. The figure is in black - pants, wool cap, raincoat. The woman has a moment of panic and hesitates, but as she comes closer she sees the figure is another woman who is wearing binoculars on a harness. This woman is leaning on a large walking stick and looking intently into a weedy area. She looks up, notes where the woman with the carriage is walking, and goes back to looking into the weeds. The woman with the carriage passes by. They don't speak.

(Margo D. Beller)

A short time later an older couple, each walking a large dog on a leash, also sees the woman in black. They come down the small hill from the parking area where the woman has also parked. They see her and the binoculars. The woman sees them and the dogs. She walks to the other side of the path from where the dog walkers go, her back to them, looking up into the trees. When they leave she goes back over to the weeds and continues to watch.

After a time she shifts her position as the birds' calls draw her attention. Over here, a flock of goldfinches. Over there, palm warblers, a little duller in color but looking not much different from their spring plumage, batting their tails every time they alight on a tree branch or tall weed. 

The woman looks over and sees the couple coming back. Once again she shifts her position away from them. Once again they look at her. No one speaks. The couple goes down a hill and are gone to another part of the park. The woman goes back to finding the calling sparrows her Merlin app says are in the area. She will ultimately find six types of sparrows that come out of the weeds and sit in the open just long enough for the woman to see and identify them.

I have been doing this a long time and knew what I was seeing. 

The weedy area ahead of me is in a depression that, ringed by ragweed and filled with that, some milkweed, goldenrod and other weeds, provides a deep, relatively secure hiding and foraging place for the sparrows, warblers and other birds I found there. I had discovered this birdy area, located behind a playground and picnic area at the Central Park of Morris County (formerly the Greystone Psychiatric Hospital), after birding in a different area of the park the day before. I came on this weekday morning to explore it further without the crowd of noisy people the park draws for after-school soccer practice or weekend sporting events.

The weedy field. (Margo D. Beller)

I try to imagine what others see when we encounter each other. I usually wear a hat to protect my scalp from sun and bug bites. I keep my hair down and my shirt and jacket collars up to protect my ears and neck. I wear gloves tho' if I use Merlin or write something in my notebook I have to expose a hand.

I figure the binoculars is what allows people to relax, realizing I'm just some old bird watcher and not a sex offender or thief ready to ambush them. Still, I must look strange all covered up as others are walking or running the same paths in shorts and T-shirts.

Greystone, as I still call it, is a more-open piece of property than some of the places I go to bird. Where the playground sits once stood stone dormitories for the patients. I don't know if the weedy depression where I stand was there before and, if so, its use. But Greystone is filled with weedy areas, and at this time of year they provide food and shelter for migrating birds and those that will be hanging around for the winter.

Ragweed, in another part of Greystone. (Margo D. Beller)

When I am in areas where the paths are more narrow people passing me will sometimes say hello or good morning or even ask me what I am seeing or have seen. Runners don't usually speak to me unless it is to say "on your left" as they pass. Most people on bikes say nothing, don't even ring a bell. I have to hope to hear them coming so I don't step in their way. If I hear them and step out of the way maybe one in three thanks me.

Most of the time I am not out there to be sociable or exercise, I am out there looking for birds, particularly during the migration periods in spring - when birds are colorful and singing - and autumn - when they are dull and, if I'm lucky, making soft contact calls.  

One of the narrow paths I usually walk.
(Margo D. Beller)

People with dogs can be troublesome, particularly if their dogs are not on a leash. I used to make comments but after a few times I stopped because the reactions ranged from ignoring me to downright hostility. Concerned birders know unleashed dogs can kill birds. Dog owners know these concerned birders can be troublesome, too. We pass each other and I hope they don't come back this way.

Most times the people I see with dogs are pleasant, leash their pets and clean up after them. If the dogs are friendly I pet them. Since Covid there seems to be more people spending time outside in the parks, often with the dogs they bought during the pandemic. When someone is heading my way with a dog I stand aside and let them pass.

If they look at me as strange, I don't care. They are strange to me, too.

The Good, the Bad, the Birding in the Rain

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
-- T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"

Well, what about May?
-- Margo D. Beller

Thanks to Omega Blocks and riding lows and the other technical jargon weather forecasters like to throw at us, it has seemed more like Seattle than New Jersey so far this May. Rain, clouds, drizzle, cold. We've had to put the heat on again and use two quilts on the bed some nights.

Lord knows we need the rain to fill a major deficit, but why May? Why not April, when the showers were supposed to bring May flowers?

Whippany River, Patriots Path, May 7, 2016 Note the raindrops. (Margo D. Beller)

So it has been raining. And that has slowed down the northbound migration of the birds. But migration hasn't stopped and I have been seeing too many reports of warblers, tanagers and other passerine (perching) birds making their way to the various regional hotspots - Central Park in New York, Garrett Mountain and Great Swamp in New Jersey, among many others.

It was making me miserable. My free time during the week has been taken up by a number of things - starting with WORK - and I have been unable to get out to find some of these wonders. Recently, the weekends have been busy.

Finally, free time opened up Saturday and out I went - later than I had planned and wetter than I wanted it to be.

I don't know of any birder who likes birding in the rain. For one thing, it is hard to use your binoculars to look for movement in treetops. When the rain isn't making a branch twitch as though a yellow warbler is on it, the water is blurring your vision. And let's not forget the mud under your feet depending on where you happen to go.

Local knowledge is extremely helpful. So when the light drizzle started getting much harder, I knew that where I was going - part of a linear park known as Patriots Path that is lined with gravel, minimizing water ponding and muck - was going to be ok to bird in my sneakers rather than putting on heavy boots.

I was extremely lucky that day. Many, many birds were calling even though it was many hours past dawn. Maybe birds like singing in the rain, or they didn't realize time was passing because the clouds obscured the sun. Whatever, they were singing and since I had to depend on my memory and my hearing I had a fine time noting the many birds out there.

Another benefit - I was alone. The exception was a woman who opened her car door and two giant yellow labs bounded out, barking, and ran to me. Don't get me started on how much of a pain it is to encounter an unleashed dog in a park as I am seeking birds. The dogs scared off the hooded warbler that had just started singing close enough for me to touch. I was trying to find it when they arrived. I yelled at the owner, who quickly leashed the dogs and took them up the trail and into the woods.

Patriots Path itself. One of the few really wet areas, despite the crushed stone below.
(Margo D. Beller)

I went the other way. The only person who passed me was a man, in full rain gear, on his mountain bike. I expect he ran into the woman with the dogs and can only hope she kept them on the leash once out of my sight so they didn't charge him.

Aside from that, it was me and the birds.

Birding in the rain can be tricky. Besides the discomfort of being soaked to the skin, looking up for land birds is difficult. There was the time we got caught in a downpour at Prime Hook in Delaware. Luckily we found a lean-to and waited for a letup that never happened. We might've heard a sparrow of some kind but otherwise, nothing.

Once we were in Chicago only for a very short time and wanted to bird some of the big areas near Montrose Beach on Lake Michigan. It rained our one day there and it kept up when we got off the closest El stop and only got harder as we walked to the lake, the famous wind making the rain hit us sideways, our umbrellas nearly useless. A birder in shorts and sandals (wisely, no umbrella) ran up and asked if we were looking for the common loon that had been reported. "We're all loons here, brother," I thought but did not say. (No, we did not see the loon, which is very common in New England, where we've seen it many times, but not in the midwest.)

Not only were we completely soaked, but so were the contents of my knapsack, despite my attempts at protection. That was the worst "birding in the rain" experience we've had. Thank you, Windy City.

Great Blue Heron (R.E. Berg-Andersson)

Not every rain experience is bad, however. We wanted to visit Pea Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I'd read a volunteer gave free tours on only one day. That day it poured. MH said, they won't hold this. We went into the office and there was the volunteer, ready to go, whether anyone showed up or not. We and one other couple went out with him but the other couple quickly bailed.

He set up his scope atop one of the dikes and we had a wonderful time observing water birds not disturbed at all by the rain - great blue herons, great and snowy egrets, white ibis and the usually reclusive American bittern among many. Looking straight out rather than up was a big help.

Rain doesn't bother water birds. And as I learned the other day, rain doesn't bother land birds singing without stop because they are intent on setting up territories and finding a mate to continue the species.

Still, I hope my next big bird outing is in sunshine.