First Snow, 2015

As I write, the first snow is falling in this new year of 2015. It started as a few flakes as I went out for a walk and then quickly intensified as I made my way home using a shortcut I've seen people use, which brought me to my street.

Snow from another year (Margo D. Beller)

In a mere 20 minutes an inch has fallen, whitening everything. But this snow will not hang around long. The temperatures will be rising and it will become rain, heavy at times, removing the pretty white.

This is in marked contrast to the beginning of 2014 when we'd already been hit with several snowstorms. It would be a winter of a lot of snow, a lot of rain and a lot of ice on top of the snow, which made the deer, squirrels and birds desperate for food. The year ended with one snowstorm at Thanksgiving. That's been  it until now.

I get restless at this time of year and the cold and threat of snow don't help. It seems to take more effort to walk when it is biting cold - I need to wear warmer shoes and a long, bulky coat, a headscarf and a hat. I have to be especially careful in my early-morning walks on days when even the sun doesn't seem to help. I am not 20 anymore, and when I inhale too much cold air through my mouth the lungs burn and my heart seems to pound so hard I fear I'm about to expire.

Halfway through the 2014 snow season (Margo D. Beller)

(I do not understand those I see who wear shorts in winter or walk around without a hat or gloves. Do they drink anti-freeze? Do they keep their homes at 80 degrees, making a walk in 20-degree chill seem refreshing? Or am I just old and painfully creaky?)

Today it is not that cold, although it is raw. Despite the discomfort, I was driven by the need to get outside and look around before the snow so I could justify staying inside the rest of the day.

I remind myself that getting caught in a snowstorm isn't fun. I've been caught at the Great Swamp when a snow squall hit and only my familiarity with the roads kept me from panicking when I started driving unable to see far out my window. I don't want to worry MH, who has been obsessively watching every weather channel and radar.

Thanks to him I knew this storm was expected around noon. He wanted to stay home. So I kept today's walk short.

I do not like birding in rain and I find very little when birding in snow because most birds are smart enough to hunker down in bad weather, like MH. In my walk today I saw one flying turkey vulture and eight pairs of mallards swimming in the one part of the local pond that hadn't frozen after several days of below-normal temperatures. (That makes it hard to reconcile with the forecast of temperatures climbing to 60 degrees tomorrow and then dropping to the 20s a few days later, another sign of the wacky weather caused by global warming.)

(R.E. Berg-Andersson)

Winter cold, the end of the outdoor growing season and the longer nights make me gloomy and filled with depressing thoughts. So while I am outside I walk briskly to keep them at bay, listening for any bird calls or the sound of human activity in the "Deer Quality Management" area I skirt. (I now wear an orange hat. It is too easy to blend in with the woods otherwise.)

I pass the community garden and see frozen tomatoes on the shrunken vine and several stalks of brussel sprouts someone didn't bother to harvest. Why grow food when you're not going to use it or give it away? A garbage pail overflows. The pond is nearly frozen. The sky is gray and dreary. The snow is now coming down thick and I am not wearing boots. But I know where to go and if my neighbors don't assault me for cutting through the edges of their properties I can get safely home. This time.

I've been relatively lucky in my life but I know a time is coming when I might not be able to take these winter walks, or take care of my house or take care of MH and myself. I am hoping these brisk, restless walks keep that time at bay for as long as possible.

Coming Out of Hibernation

In the middle of August, a 45-degree day would have me running for my fleece jacket and the thermostat. In the middle of February, however, when we've been through extremely cold weather and still have a lot of snow everywhere, the recent spate of 45- to 50-degree days feels balmy.

For the first time in weeks I wanted to walk because the ice on the streets and sidewalks was gone. I threw open windows to let in fresh air. I could shovel away what was now slush (instead of a cement mixture of snow and ice) and liberate the last branches of the yew hedge before the deer destroyed it.

I am hearing birdsong now, too. As the days get longer (light after 6:30am until 5:30pm), I have been hearing all sorts of birds for the first time in months - pileated woodpecker, flicker, redbelly, mallards, Carolina wren, house finches and white-throated sparrows.

Driveway and snow wall, February 2014 (Margo D. Beller)

After ignoring my garden because of the snow drifts, I can now see just how much work I will have to do to repair what winter destroyed. With the snow down to more human levels, I discovered the deer have been back to their old habits - one found a weakness in my netting system, ripped it apart and ate a good hunk of two bushes. This happens at least once a year, and the bushes grow back. But it doesn't make me any less angry.

This year, however, I also see the bushes the deer couldn't reach are brown, and I fear they were done in by too much polar vortex.

And I saw a chipmunk this morning - joy. This is the one mammal that can easily get behind my netting and dig huge holes, knowing the larger predators aren't going to get at it. The little bugger reminds me how much work I will have to do if I really want to protect my garden from destruction above (deer) and below (chipmunks).

But that's later. Right now I see more of my roof and my neighbors'. I hear the crash of ice and snow falling to the ground. I see older people taking their walks again, shaming me for using the car of late to get the morning paper. For the first time in over six weeks, I can empty my compost containers into the large composter because what is already in there has defrosted enough to shove aside for this new/old stuff.

This taste of spring won't last, of course. It is, after all, February. More cold and possibly more snow are expected, and soon. For now, I am glad my muscles have finally recovered from all the shoveling (at one point we had three storms in one week dumping significant snow), the recent rains helped the melting along rather than turning my street into a raging river and I had some time to get the stale air out of my house.

But next week it will be March and that means spring is just around the corner.

The Winter of My Discontent (Squirrel Edition)

I was once at my brother-in-law's house when a wasp flew in. I don't like wasps. Had it been a fly I'd have gone after it - no one can say of me "she wouldn't hurt a fly" because I have, with extreme prejudice. But not wasps. One painful sting was enough.

My sister-in-law caught it in a glass and put it outside. I was amazed but felt no shame at what I would've done to that wasp had I had more courage.

I admit it, I do not love all of God's creatures equally.

In this current winter of my discontent, the piles of snow and ice stand at least two feet high and can support my weight. The squirrels have discovered they can jump up to the baffles and then either climb up one of the poles to the open house-like feeder or, as seen below, grab the end of the long feeder's "squirrel-proof" cage on another pole and feed its furry face.

2014 - winter of my discontent (Margo D. Beller)

This winter, particularly since 2014 began, we've had snowstorm after snowstorm, making walking or driving hazardous. It is mid-February as I write, and we are currently getting our 11th - at least I think it's the 11th, I've lost count - snowstorm. Snow is piling up and a couple of the female squirrels are hungry. My husband says at this time of year the females are likely eating for six. They still do not have my sympathy.

As the snow falls there are a lot of birds hitting the different feeders I have out. They, too, have it tough if not tougher - they can't scratch at soil for insects unless they are in an area where the snow is ever so slightly starting to recede. Especially when the temperatures plummeted from the "polar vortex," they needed what I could put out.

With my seed and suet supply diminishing from all the hungry birds, I don't take kindly to squirrels helping themselves in the feeders (picking up what the birds drop to the ground, fine).

Even within the birds there are some I take pains to shoo off the feeder. Starlings, for instance. They can't crunch the large sunflower seeds the way a finch or cardinal can, but they do sit in the feeder and keep the other birds away. One starling is bad - a flock is far worse. Worse still is when starlings mix with the larger grackles and redwing blackbirds and hit the backyard at once. At that point I take in the feeders and wait. There can be thousands of birds.

This snow isn't going anywhere fast, even with temperatures above freezing at the moment and projected to stay that way for most of this coming week.

Front walk/trench (Margo D. Beller)

When I found a squirrel in the house feeder today it was my worst nightmare. I took the feeder in but it tore at me to see cardinals and chickadees - two of my favorite birds - come to the pole and look around confused when the snow started. So I put it back out as well as the long feeder I had taken in a few days ago.

As I expected, one squirrel found it easier jumping to the long feeder on one pole than trying to get to the house feeder on the other. She is eating and dropping seeds to her squirrel friends and those birds that crowd in. It is an accommodation I am making for them, even tho' once in a while I go out to scare her off.

What I am hoping is a Cooper's hawk or a redtail will swoop in and pick her off for a meal.

Cruel? Yes. But, hey, even these birds have to eat once a day.

And as with other unpleasant things, there are always more squirrels down the road.

Groundhog Day

I have never seen the Bill Murray film "Groundhog Day" but I know the premise - you hear about it every February 2.

A weatherman finds himself living the same day over and over again. 

I would not want to relive the same day over and over again until I get it "right," whatever that is. I look at every day as an experiment. What will I do this time that is better than last time?

When you work every day and do the same thing over and over again, it isn't easy to accomplish this. When you get to the weekend it seems there is not enough time in the day.

As I write today, Feb. 2, it is 52 degrees. It feels like spring after weeks of "polar vortex." Last night I kept the heat closed and a window open, rising in the morning to find a 56-degree house. Once the heat warmed the house to a tolerable level, I shut it off and opened a few windows again, letting in some valuable moisture from the melting snow. I want all the snow gone but it takes a long time to melt the 14 inches (12+2+2) that fell from three storms within 10 days, and more is expected tonight into tomorrow.

(R.E. Berg-Andersson)

And more cold, forcing the windows shut, the heat on and my hands to return to the sandpaper they were before I opened the windows.

By coincidence, it is also Super Bowl Sunday. People say how the National Football League "lucked out" that what could've been an extremely cold championship game last weekend will be seasonable or better today. People are going to parties. They will pay more attention to the advertisements than the game because the alleged "news" reports have told them to do so. They have been told all week what an "event" this is. It has dominated the news, more so than the killings in Africa, the Middle East and even in parts of Newark.

People are "stocking up" on junk food and beer and will stuff themselves as they do on Thanksgiving -- only this "holiday" is truly secular and they can spend it with people they choose, not their relatives. They will hope to win huge amounts of money from their office betting pools.

The football game itself will be almost an after-thought.

The spectacle is the same every year, and this is as close to "Groundhog Day" as I get - not a repeat of the same day but the same events every year. If it is February, we will spend the next few Saturdays, weather permitting of course, celebrating my birthday and that of a friend - and I have a lot of friends born in February. It is like getting 3 birthday parties. That part is good.

But sitting here with the open window reminds me of another annual ritual I do not like - barking dogs and home repair noises by my more energetic neighbors (or the men they hire) and children finally allowed outside to play. The same windows that have kept in the dry, hot air that makes me sneeze and drink glasses of water also kept out the noises that distract me as I work.

Soon enough will come dog walkers (like the ones passing by now) and kids not in school and more owners with dogs in the dog park and the smell of barbeques and the roar of lawn mowers and leaf blowers.

The thought of all that happening again and again until the bitter end depresses me, like looking down an endless, dark corridor. In a sense, that is what aging is.

It is inevitable, but for now let us not go there.

Cardinal pair (Margo D. Beller)

Let us, instead, think ahead to the annual ritual of when the birds head north. Right now, my feeders have drawn an assortment including juncos, white-throated sparrows, cardinals, titmice, chickadees, Carolina wren, downy and hairy and redbellied woodpeckers. I long for the bright yellows of the warblers and to see some of the larger birds - tanagers, flycatchers, grosbeaks and ducks. I want to go out and find them on my work breaks and my weekends.

Even though I will once again be struggling with pots of vegetables and repairing the damage done by chipmunks, I want to look up and see northbound Canada geese. I want the snow to be gone. I want to complete the projects I didn't have the time or energy to complete last fall.

I want to try and do better this year.

Isn't that what spring is all about, having another chance to get it right?


(Happy birthday, Candita, wherever you are.)

It's That Time Again...

As I write, in mid-August, we had a break from the usual hot, humid weather with cool, dry air and bright sunshine. In the evenings, the wind died down and the skies were clear and cold.

Black-throated green warbler

During that time, some birds started heading south.

It doesn't seem like that long ago I was heading into my favorite birding areas to seek the migrants heading north to the breeding grounds. Now, suddenly, I am reading reports of black-throated green warblers and American redstarts passing by the hawk watches of Sandy Hook and Chimney Rock.

As a kid I would get restless in August because I knew I would soon have to go back to school in September. As an adult, if I haven't taken a vacation - and nowadays as a contractor it costs me a day's pay to take a day off, including holidays - I get restless in August, remembering my family's annual vacation.

In August, the birds get restless to fly south. As noted, many birds are already on the move when the right conditions permit. Sept. 1 is when many of the hawkwatches, including the one at Scott's Mountain abutting the Merrill Creek Reservoir in Harmony Township, NJ, set up shop to count all the southbound raptors.

Is my desire to "fly away" in August because, after 10 years of following them, I am in sync with the birds as much as to have some time off from a stressful job? I think so.

Scott's Mountain Hawk Watch, 2012

I read a study recently, "No-Vacation Nation Revisited" by the Center for Economy and Policy Research, that found the U.S. was dead last of the 19 "rich" nations that are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in terms of providing guaranteed vacation days and holidays.

This makes perfect sense if you consider we are a nation where you start a business, work hard and then expect your employees to work just as hard and be happy to be employed to keep the operation going. The Horatio Alger myth of picking oneself up by the bootstraps says nothing about a vacation once successful. Cheap labor working every day but Sunday was once the rule until unions were created and grew. Now, with unions on the wane, we seem to be backsliding.

Remember, the U.S. government has passed no law ordering private companies to provide vacation. It's not the American Way.

At one job we only got holidays off because the U.S. Mail wasn't delivered anyway. That was back when newspapers and other businesses needed the mail to get the product out. Now, with the Internet, that isn't necessary. You also need fewer employees. So my current, Web-based employer cuts back on staff - to which it would have to pay benefits - and bulks up on "contractors," to which it does not. 

House wren, 2013

 

 

And if you don't want to do it, there are lots of people looking for work who can replace you.

Birds don't have to worry about that. They just need to worry about mating, breeding, raising young and then getting back to an area where they can continue eating until it is time to go north once again.

In August they sense the days are getting shorter. In my part of New Jersey it is now dark before 8pm EDT. At the time of the solstice two months ago, it got dark 40 minutes later. It is also now darker in the morning, with the cardinals waking me at first light around 6 rather than 5:30am.

So the birds in the north know it is getting time to leave. When it gets cold there are also fewer bugs to eat. The young are flying and able to feed themselves on the seeds of spent flowers and weeds and shrubs. When the wind comes from the north, a small bird - such as the house wren that spent some time at the nest box I provided - instinctively will take advantage of that push southward. Every little bit helps on a long, perilous journey.

So here I sit, earthbound in August. I wish I could drop everything and fly south to where it will be warm and sunny and filled with good food and so enjoy myself for a few months before I have to head back north and return to my responsibilities.