Frozen but Surviving

December 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

I have never seen either "Frozen" movie but this week I got an inkling of what it is like to live in a frozen world.

In the past week we've had freezing rain that coated tree limbs, power lines, blades of grass and shrubs; followed two days later by an intense snow squall that threw about an inch of white on everything, including the roads; then came the intense cold. Only now, on this first full day of winter, is there any expectation of above-freezing warmth to melt the ice and allow my bowed-down yew hedge to rise and me to add matter to my compost pile.

In the meantime, as I watch the thermometer, the sun is shining prettily on the iced limbs of the trees and shrubs I can see from my porch.

Bowed boughs (Margo D. Beller)

It has been a hard week, particularly because I have started a new job and, for the first time in years, I must commute into New York. The sun rises later but I must rise earlier, and I must dress in layers to be ready for the harsh cold in my town and the (somewhat) warmer temperature when I arrive in the concrete jungle. Today, on the porch, I can see the sun is lower and its arc much shorter from when I could last spend time out here.

Feeders are out, but aside from some titmice and a cardinal in one of the bushes, there's been very little activity.  But I know that will change because when the feeders have come in at night this week they have been nearly empty.

In midtown Manhattan, it's another story. If I have the time to walk through some of the smaller parks near my office, it is easy to find what I call the "usual three" types of birds - house sparrows, pigeons and starlings. These birds will eat anything, including bread tossed by people. To survive they have adapted to life and people in the city.

Frozen feeder baffle (Margo D. Beller)

So, too, have white-throated sparrows, which I'm now finding so often in my city travels I may have to start referring to the "usual four." While these sparrows don't go for tossed bread, they manage to survive by scratching the soil for insects or gleaning what they can find (insects or fruit) from foliage. At night, they roost where they can - the other day I heard something as I walked along Madison Ave., and found a white-throat atop an office tower display of Christmas trees surrounded by concrete!

White-throats are winter visitors - they are common in my yard at this time of year - but catbirds are not. On the coldest day of this past week, when the wind chill in New York City was in the single digits, I found one catbird sitting at the base of a shrub in the sun. Catbirds have been gone from my yard for months (usually the white-throats replace the catbirds) and yet the previous week, before the frozen rain and cold, I had found a total of five catbirds in two Manhattan parks.

Sun on ice (Margo D. Beller)

I was astounded. They were not perturbed by my closeness at all. One, in fact, sat on a railing and looked at me. Then the cold came. Obviously, these birds either fly to another, more hospitable habitat, work harder to find food in this park or die. On this day at least one catbird has managed to survive. But it is a tough world out there and a small bird faces large odds, so who knows what happened to the catbirds and other birds I've seen over the last two weeks that should've been elsewhere (including a brown thrasher, swamp sparrow and ovenbird).

No doubt the annual Christmas Bird Count, where people comb the streets and parks all over the U.S., if not the world, to see what birds are around at this time of year, will find all sorts of birds in the urban parks. I know there is an annual count in New York's Central Park, that oasis of green that attracts dozens of types of birds during the spring and fall migration periods and likely many staying for the winter. But for me, finding a bird in a small patch of green in an area surrounded by traffic, noise and people is more than just a bit of wonder, it is a small miracle. Like that catbird basking in the cold sun.

I've been thinking of it a lot as I make my way along in this frozen, hard world.

Frozen world (Margo D. Beller)

Winter Spirits

There are many depressing things about winter, but one of the worst is when it comes weeks early.

Shriveled viburnum leaves, Nov. 17, 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

I'm no great lover of winter, especially when it brings cold that forces me to turn on the furnace, dry air that chaps my skin, and kills off the few days of comfortable autumn weather when the foliage seems to be at its peak.

Meteorologically, winter is Dec. 21, considered the shortest day of the year in terms of daylight. Nowadays in the U.S., we turn the clocks back to standard time in early November. In the space of a day the sun sets at 5 p.m. and then increasingly earlier, bringing darkness at a time when I am trying to finish my work before making supper. I bring in the bird feeders in the dark nowadays and soon I'll be rising in the dark again, too.

We had a major cold snap in mid-November that killed or damaged any plant that was not taken inside or covered. So foliage on several of my shrubs and those I see during my hikes along the Whippany River is shriveled and brown, not given a chance to change color. And then there is my lawn, which seems to get covered with leaves about a day after MH and I take a rake or blower to it. (The large white oak leaves are the last to come down in the backyard, while the neighbor's walnut tree takes its own sweet time dropping leaves that are blown over my front yard.)

Oak leaves hanging on (Margo D. Beller)

And don't get me started on the pods still hanging in the black locust tree.

Raking is a pain, literally, and so is shoveling snow, another hazard of winter.

No, I don't like cold or the increase in darkness. I spend a lot of time in the early morning on my enclosed back porch, watching for birds and waiting for the sun to rise above the neighbor's house and hit me square in the face, the ultimate in sun lamps for those of us seasonally disordered folk.

But since my complaining about it won't change anything, at least until continued global warming brings more hot days or a lake at my front door from extreme weather, I might as well look at the good things winter brings.

With the shrub foliage down along the hiking path I can see usually hidden streams. Sometimes there are ducks - mallards but also wood ducks and hooded mergansers.  If I am lucky, there's a great blue heron. When tree leaves are down it is easier to see hawks flying overhead.

Shriveled forsythia (Margo D. Beller)

The colorful warblers and other passerines are gone but other birds are arriving from the north because they consider New Jersey warm enough to survive winter. White-throated sparrows are plentiful, as are juncos, the American tree sparrows and fox sparrows, all winter visitors. There may be the occasional surprise, such as a goldfinch hanging around my feeder or a reported rough-legged hawk over a field. In some years, birds of the far north must come farther south to find food because of the lack of seed crops or, in the case of some owls or hawks, animal prey.

And, of course, there are the local birds that don't leave so they will be coming to my feeders because they can't find enough weed or other seeds and the harsh cold has killed off the insects. I'm already seeing more titmice, chickadees, cardinals and various woodpeckers.

Another advantage: The garden work is just about over for the year and I can concentrate on important things, like taking a long walk in the bracing cold and looking for birds foraging to survive.

In the end it will still be cold and winter will still come, whatever the calendar says, and whether I am ready for it or not.

Keeping the Cats Out

I like cats. This is important for me to say because of what I will be writing.

I like cats, just not in my backyard.

We all know people can get very attached to their pets, which is why I have to wonder why some of my neighbors here in suburbia persist in putting their cats outside where they can stalk and possibly kill the birds visiting my feeders.

Outdoor cats (RE Berg-Andersson)

Mind you, I have no objections to cats taking out those blasted digging chipmunks. I have seen a cat in the neighbor's yard chowing down on one. When done an American crow, like the turkey vulture a member of Nature's cleanup crew, took the remains away.

But cats and bird feeders don't mix.

The other day was the third time in two weeks I had to chase a cat away from my yard. Each time it was a different cat and not the first time they've visited. One short-haired tabby looked mean and pregnant. One long-haired, black-eyed cat was mangy. The third, a black short-hair with green eyes, wore a collar. When I chase this one off it always runs across my street toward the homes that abut the community garden.

These cat visits seem to come in cycles, but there is no denying that as the weather chills I am putting out more feeders and these are drawing more birds and those - both four-legged and winged - that can kill them.

When I mentioned these cat visits on a birding Facebook page the comments - mostly anti-cat - rained down. The one woman who wondered how we can consider ourselves animal lovers because we are pro-bird and anti-cat was forced to delete her comment, unfortunately. Cats have been venerated for millennia. There are cat-lover societies in the U.S. and abroad. There is even a group I recently found of people who paint nothing but cats. I have always found it sadly ironic that in one of the best birding areas in the U.S., if not the world - Cape May, NJ - there is a large feral cat community that is rigorously protected even as other residents fear the effect on the many migratory birds that pass through, particularly in spring and fall.

Some friends have cats and I like to watch them walk around the room. All these cats are rigorously kept indoors. They move the same way as their bigger cousins the lions, tigers and jaguars. Their personalities are as different as people. Some are skittish, some disdainful, some friendly and almost dog-like. One brother-in-law once had a cat that came when called. She would bring "gifts" of dead mice to the front step, sometimes into the house.

This may be one reason why people put out cats: It may go back to our rural past when cats were let out to kill mice and other vermin hiding and eating in our barns. Have you ever wondered why many old bookstores have cats? (I know, I'm dating myself here.) Besides entertaining customers (guilty) they kill the mice that could destroy inventory.

Cat on car (RE Berg-Andersson)

Another brother-in-law would always say, "If I have an animal it has to work." So the cats would be let out (luckily, they ignored the feeder birds) until he lost so many of them to predators or automobiles he finally started keeping his cats inside.

Many towns hire animal control companies that will come, lure and trap the cat and take it to a place where it can be adopted or put down if it doesn't have a tag identifying an owner. Too many unspayed loose cats, like the mean short-hair in my yard, could have too many kittens and before you know it you have a real mess.

Perhaps the owner of the black cat had it spayed or neutered. That doesn't make it right to let it go outside on a cold day to show up in my yard and take an interest in a visiting cardinal. This isn't a rural area. Maybe cats are smarter than the dead dogs, deer and other animals I've seen on the roadside, but maybe not, particularly at night.

I can only stay vigilant while hoping any cat I chase off isn't hit by a speeding car. As I said, I like cats.

Nuts (and Pods) to You

Last week, as is my habit at this time of year, I spent two hours one day raking locust pods off my front lawn to the curb. Raking pods is my least favorite garden chore, worse than turning the compost pile (which I don't do every year), worse than cutting back the dried ornamental grasses in the spring, worse than replacing fence posts and deer netting. But I feel compelled to do it, with or without MH.

Acorns on lawn (Margo D. Beller)

Pods are ugly to look at, heavy to rake when enough of them are put together and have a sickly sweet smell. My leaf blower isn't strong enough to move them and I am not buying or renting one of those hurricane-strength fans I see others rolling along to blow leaves and what-not clear across the street. So I must rake them. Pods are good for nothing except feeding some of the birds (I've seen woodpeckers whacking them to get at the seeds) and making more locust trees. If left alone I would have a forest where the lawn is now.

Each year I wish I knew who came up with the idea of planting locust trees so I could punch that person in the nose.

I don't mind raking the falling leaves. I find it a calming activity when the day is sunny, the wind is light and the birds are singing. My rake is quiet compared to the electric blower and I enjoy the time outside. But in the years when the one female locust tree on my property is fruitful, it is literally and figuratively a pain. (I have discovered that, like many plants, there are separate male and female locust trees. Of the four on my property, three are males that do not produce pods. All are town trees I can't cut down and replace.)

Another thing I have in excess this year: Acorns. The oak and elm trees are having a boom, or mast, year - same as the locust. For weeks the squirrels have been running along the tree branches after the nuts. As they go for one they drop five more. As they were with the apples, they are sloppy eaters. Acorn caps they tear off and pieces of the nuts they are gnawing on fall from the trees, whose long branches hang above my enclosed porch's roof and the patio. At dawn and dusk you can hear the loud "thwack" as the falling nut hits porch roof and bounces down to the patio, usually just in front of the back door. It has become so bad I must wear hard-soled shoes or slippers or I'll step on something and hurt my foot. I've been sweeping or kicking nuts away from where I walk with the bird feeders. It is particularly bad after a heavy rain or wind storm.

Trees overhanging porch roof (Margo D. Beller)

If I left the acorns on the lawn, perhaps the squirrels would eventually come get them to cache for the winter. But I do not want to wait that long for the same reason I don't want the locust pods sitting on the lawn.

Like the pods, acorns feed certain birds (jays, woodpeckers) plus deer, bear, squirrels and chipmunks. At this time of year I am likely to find deep holes in the lawn and next to certain plants behind the deer netting as the critters cache their acorns for winter or rob another's cache. I have found tree saplings in the spring where such caches have been forgotten.

In boom years, the increase in food fuels larger families of the eaters. In turn, more of those eaters, such as squirrels or chipmunks, become more food for those that eat them, such as raptors. This can also have a big effect on which birds I see this winter both at my feeder and elsewhere. For instance, according to the annual winter finch forecast out of Toronto, the pine and spruce trees there have been so prolific there is plenty of seed for the evening grosbeaks, white and red crossbills and redpolls, among others, which means they won't be heading south to the U.S. for food this winter. No purple finches at the feeder this winter.

Pods on the grass, alas (Margo D. Beller)

After the boom comes the bust. Somehow, by a process botanists are still not sure they understand, the trees "communicate" with each other and will coordinate their mast. Boom years create more nuts and create more trees, even with the squirrels, etc. Then come the bust years when the trees produce fewer nuts as a way of  regulating the populations of trees and feeders so we're not overrun with either.

Weather may also be a factor. In my area we had a lot of rain this spring, which might have contributed to the seed boom. In past, drier years, there have been fewer nuts or pods produced as the tree focuses on taking care of itself.

But that is not this year's situation. At some point, the acorns will be done. Today, after the town took away the leaves and pods at the curb, I looked out my office window and can see plenty of locust pods still hanging in the tree. They'll be down after the next storm. It is as regular as the sun rising in the east.

Disposing of the Fruits of My Labor

Dahlia, Autumn 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

As I sit on my enclosed porch, the weather is most definitely autumnal. I am in my warmest robe. The windows are closed. A feeder has drawn cardinals. The sun's arc is shorter and it doesn't rise as high in the sky. Days are most decidedly shorter.

And in the corner are four pots of vegetables continuing to grow.

Every year around this time I begin the slow task of closing the garden and getting the house ready for winter. I wait for as long as possible before bringing indoors the houseplants I've put on the porch for the summer because they are going to get more humidity outside than in, especially once I start using the furnace. This year I made it until the beginning of October when the projected overnight low one night would be 37 degrees F. My porch would've kept the plants a degree or two warmer but since many of them are tropicals they had to be brought in.

The pots of cannas and dahlias in front behind the deer netting are staying put for now. The dahlias are autumn flowers, just starting to bloom. The cannas' leaves still look fresh although what flowers they had are long since done. Once frost hits and the foliage goes brown I can cut it off and put the pots in the garage, while I pull up the dahlias and store the bulbs, wrapped in newspaper, in a box nearby.

Tomato plant, still bearing fruit (Margo D. Beller)

That leaves the vegetables. Most people, if they grow vegetables, seem to harvest what they can and leave the rest to rot. I've seen this in my town's community garden. I've walked there after a frost and found many tomatoes still on the vine until the plot holder makes it there to rip out the plants. (One of those holders allowed me access once and now I know what a frozen tomato looks and feels like.)

I, however, grow vegetables in pots. Usually I have anywhere from two to five pots of peppers and one of basil. The basil is used up first, long before the first frost. But if the peppers are covered with flowers (connoting the fruit to come), I bring them indoors for the winter.

Things are different this year.

Two autumns ago, I found a tomato seedling near my compost pile. I potted it and it grew into a tree that was difficult to keep upright. Just as it was about to put out fruit, it became infested with white flies that also affected the nearby peppers and my houseplants. Out went the tomato and the peppers, the former into the front yard where, despite the sun, it died in the cold, the latter into the one corner of the enclosed porch where the sun shines the longest. (Each houseplant was examined and cleaned outside before coming back in.)

Peppers  and base of tomato plant; note the pepper flowers
(Margo D. Beller)

This year, I had two of the four peppers I had kept inside for the winter (two died and the other two were continually moved to rid them of white flies) plus a basil, a third type of pepper and a cherry tomato plant that also grew to be like a tree. All were in a protective cage but the deer soon discovered they could reach up and eat the upper parts of the tomato. Thus I covered the tomato and the cage in netting. The plants continued to give me vegetables and, as usual, seemed to get a second life late in the summer.

So once the houseplants were brought into the house, I transported the four pots to the porch where I continue to pick tomatoes even as more grow. Of the peppers, one has been a disappointment (the one decent pepper it produced wasn't particularly good), one is nearly done but the last is covered with flowers and growing fruit.

Tomato flowers and small, unripe fruit (Margo D. Beller

What is different this year is my attitude - none of these pots are going to be taken into the house. I am done with battling white flies. I am done with moving heavy pots. In the autumn of my life, there are more important things I must consider, such as my declining physical strength.

Next year I plan on following Thoreau's dictum of "simplify, simplify" and have one pot of peppers and one of basil. I'll leave the majority of vegetable growing to the farm markets.

When the really cold weather comes, which it inevitably will, I will pick what tomatoes and peppers I can use and leave the plants on the porch and let nature take its course. Then the plants will be pulled out and composted to feed the worms.

Meals on the Wing

Dogwood, with reddening leaves and berries. (Margo D. Beller)

At this time of year, if I want locally grown fruit I can go to a farmstand and buy peaches, plums and apples. I could also go to a supermarket at all times of the year.  

Birds don't have that option. As they head south to their winter areas they need to find food where they can. That can mean stopping at a bird feeder or scouring trees and shrubs for insects, seeds or, my focus here, fruits.

I have plants I bought specifically to provide fruit for the birds, either during migration or into the winter. One such plant is a dogwood tree, which has lovely pink flowers in spring. Its leaves are among the first to go into fall coloring. It has provided many red fruits for the taking.

In my yard and beyond there is a smorgasbord of food Nature has set out for migrating birds that will sustain them on their journey. In my previous post I showed some of the plants that provide nectar and seeds for the birds in return for pollination or spreading the seeds. However, here I focus on plants that provide fruit the bird (or squirrel) eats, digests and expels, another way of perpetuating the species.

Here are a few of the many fruiting plants I've seen in my travels (I took these photos):

There are over 150 different types of viburnums that flower in spring and fruit in fall. I see them in the woods and along stream beds. This one, an arrowwood viburnum, I planted in my yard. For the first three years I kept it surrounded by fencing but it made it hard for MH to mow around it and on windy days the fencing would be blown on the plant. Worse, no bird went for the berries. This year I didn't put up fencing, which made MH happy as well as the deer, which snacked on the leaves they could reach as fast as they could grow. (I never see viburnum browsed in the wild.) Luckily, the plant grew tall and the deer could not reach the flowers or these berries at the top, which I hope will feed the birds.

Many of the plants in my backyard were either put in by previous owners of my house (such as the apple tree) or sprang up in areas and left alone. I've see privet in many a yard. Its flowers have a sickly sweet orange smell (its other name is mock orange) but the hedge grows tall and thick and is very good for privacy. Imagine my surprise when I discovered several privet plants along my backyard border fence (widely separated, unfortunately). These are privet fruits that will go blue-black when ripe.

Wild grape vine (like poison ivy or Virginia creeper, which also provide birds with fruit) will take over if allowed to spread. This one, not in my yard, has foliage that looks like fig leaves but there are others whose foliage looks like a spade. The berries ripen from green to blue and are very popular with sparrows, from what I've seen in my travels.

Multiflora rose is considered an invasive species and I am continually pulling up plants that take root in areas where I don't want them. However, there are many areas where I leave them alone because the white roses, unlike modern hybrids, smell wonderful and the robins, catbirds and occasional mockingbird enjoy the rosehips. Left alone the thorny plants can grow to be very tall and will then grab onto the nearest plant to continue its ascent. This photograph, from a recent hike, was taken from below the rosehips.

Unlike the cultivated strawberries you can buy in the grocery store, wild strawberries are smaller and not as sweet. They are also available for me to pick in autumn as well as spring. I am finding wild strawberries all over the yard (we don't spray pesticides or weed killer) but, unlike the equally spreading ground ivy, I leave the plants alone because I enjoy the fruit as much as the birds. 

A Walk Among the Autumn Weeds

It is nearly autumn. Leaves on the maples and the dogwoods are turning and the days are getting shorter. Now that I have more time on my hands I find that unless I can get out and take a walk I don't feel comfortable in my skin.

A lovely autumn plant with an ugly name - snakeroot.
It is poisonous so deer leave it alone.
(Margo D. Beller)

The other day I went to one of my usual bird-spotting places but there were very few birds to be had aside from the ubiquitous jays and catbirds. The tree swallows that had been zipping around the sky over the open field had been replaced by a variety of dragonflies, also hunting for food. No calling warblers, wrens or even a red-winged blackbird. All gone south.

The field itself was now filled with wildflowers - bright yellow goldenrod, pink joe-pye weed, milkweed and a variety of seeding plants and others that had already boomed and busted.

It is an unfortunate fact that now I can no longer make myself rise before dawn and rush out after the birds, especially at this time of year when there is no birdsong, no bright-colored feathers, no prospect of something possibly hanging around for a while. Now, the birds just want to go south whenever the weather allows them. I have seen more hummingbirds visiting the jewelweed along rivers than my feeder.

That doesn't mean nothing is flying at midday. There are many types of butterflies including sulphurs, cabbage whites, tiger and dark swallowtails and the mighty monarchs, all heading south. If a leaf isn't falling, the fluttering will more likely be a butterfly.

This time, however, the wildflowers and weeds have my attention. Let us take a walk along this path, Reader, and see what there is to see. (All pictures by me.)

My fall garden is mainly shades of pink - rose of Sharon, sedums, coneflowers and liriope - but I was given some goldenrod and that has brought a welcome shade of yellow. In the wild, there are large stands of goldenrod. Some forms bloom early, some much later in the summer. 

Unfortunately, ragweed is another fact of autumn life. You will see it everywhere, including in parks.

Milkweed, by contrast, is something to encourage. Monarchs need milkweed to survive - the adults lay eggs in it and the caterpillars eat the foliage.

Japanese knotweed grows in thick stands and at this time of year it flowers, enabling it to spread its seeds. I have been in many parks where it was cut down, even burned, but it comes back and thrives. It is one of the worst invasive plants you'll ever see in this area.

This one was a surprise. If you look closely you'll see the thin, feathery, green branches of wild asparagus. If the park mower doesn't destroy it, it should provide edible stalks of asparagus in the spring.

Bermuda grass is right up there with crabgrass and ground ivy as one of the worst plants to invade my yard. Every summer I find a large stand growing under my rhododendron, where it is hard to reach it because of the deer netting. It comes out easily but it is a perennial so you can expect more next year.

By contrast, I wish I could grow more joe-pye in my yard instead of grass. But while I've never seen a field of wild joe-pye browsed by deer, some that I planted was nearly destroyed, forcing me to put it behind deer netting, where it hasn't been happy. Seeing stands of it in the wild makes me envious.

I can't know everything. I have no idea what this is but at this time of year it looks like it is full of spikes. Was this a lush plant with flowers that dried? I don't know. I'll have to come back here in the spring and see what comes up.

Another mystery. The leaves suggested columbine when I saw this in the spring. But there are blue berries. Columbine doesn't produce blue berries. I found this and nearby stands in the woods, and at some point I'll look at my references.

If ever there was a plant I wish was on my property it is jewelweed. It is found in wet areas, near streams. It can grow in large stands and attract bees, flies, beetles and hummingbirds, which pollenate the plant by taking pollen from the small yellow-orange trumpet flowers. Whenever I see jewelweed I look for hummingbirds.

There are other plants, of course, many on the decline but others that are producing food such as the fruiting vines of wild grape, poison ivy and Virginia creeper.

As I discovered, even while concentrating on the variety of textures and colors in the weeds and wildflowers, there is always the possibility of a bird surprising me.

For instance, as I was taking the picture of the joe-pye seen above, I saw a raptor flying high over the field. The binoculars revealed a broadwing hawk, easily identified by the broad white stripe in an otherwise dark tail. That bird reminds me why I must get out of the house, whatever the time of day.