A Delicate Dance Around the Apple Tree

I was so hoping the cool, wet spring would keep the squirrels hydrated so they would not need to climb into my apple tree and start eating. But no. The first spate of sunny, warm days and they were in there, even though to me the fruit was not large or ripe enough. But to squirrels, apples of any type are a temptation at this time of year.

The first of this year's apples (Margo D. Beller)

And so over the last few days I have been outside either picking up usable dropped apples or picking what I can reach. Most of these apples are not ripe but when I cook them with enough sugar they will taste just fine as apple sauce.

Most apples can be picked in the fall. This tree has always bloomed in the late spring. When I first realized these apples were sweet and thus edible, they would ripen red. I took one to the manager of a farm market near me and he said it was a type of Macintosh. All I knew was of the five apple trees planted by the previous owner of my home, this one had usable apples. (The other four trees have since been removed.)

The problem is the house wren box, which prompts me to do a delicate dance when it comes to gathering the apples. I hang it in the apple tree. When I get too close to the box, one of the wrens starts to fuss, either from high in the tree or from a nearby bush. On occasion both adults scold because I am too close. I had hoped that by standing under the tree when the apples were first appearing the birds would get used to my presence. Perhaps it has worked, as long as I stay away from the box.

Apple tree with this year's crop and house wren box (Margo D. Beller)

In past years, the squirrels didn't start hitting the tree in droves (the record is six at once) until late June or even early July. Some years the tree provides a meager harvest while others there is too much. This year, based on the number of blossoms that bloomed for over a week this spring, looks like it is in-between.

Under the late June-early July scenario, the house wrens were usually done with their brood and they, and young, would have left for larger quarters (such as a nearby hedge) before separating and flying south. But this year with all the drama over whether there would even be a wren family, the nesting started later than usual.

So thanks in part to the increasing global warming affecting even my part of the U.S., my yard has a bad combination of late nesting and early apple picking.

There are two other figures in this dance: deer and birds. Squirrels are sloppy eaters, I've found. If they take an apple and run off to a safe location, I'm ok with that. But when they eat in the tree there is a likelihood part of that apple will end up on the ground. That is particularly true when I go out to shoo them away. Unless I pick up those apple parts and either throw them in a corner of the yard or put them in the garbage, the deer will stop by and eat this free food. I know this because they leave lots of calling cards.

As for the birds, some, like American crows, like to eat fruit but in my experience most of the time a bird will peck into the apple to draw insects to it or to get at any insects already inside. I don't spray the tree, so when I do use the apples I have to cut off a goodly amount of them to make sure that, at minimum, I'm not mixing a worm into my apple sauce.

Feeding the young in 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

So once again I will be stiffly going outside early in the morning and then perhaps again at dusk to retrieve any fallen apples. Many are the times I've picked up a pail's worth of apples and maybe one-third of them have not been partially eaten or pecked. When the wren young have left the nest I will take out my long stick and start whacking the tree for the apples in the mid level while the squirrels go after the ones in the highest branches I can't reach. They can have those.

The good news is, this madness should be over in about 10 days and the cooking will begin sooner than that. In the meantime, I'll be trying to disturb the house wren family-in-the-making as little as possible.

Watching for Hummingbirds

This post is based on one that originally ran on May 29, 2013, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

I hear like you see — like that hummingbird outside that window, for instance.
– Ray Charles

This morning (Sunday) a Ruby-throated Hummingbird hovered over the feeder briefly, then flew into the nearby apple tree. It did not return while I sat on my porch with my binoculars.

Another year's backyard hummer. (Margo D. Beller)

For my yard, this is typical. Every year the hummingbirds visit infrequently in late spring, then more regularly in late June into July when the female, which does all the work feeding the young, stops for a sip of sugar water so she has the energy to find insects to feed her chicks. 

When I hang the seed feeders, I know a host of different birds will come to eat all year long. But the sugar water feeder is meant for only one type of bird that visits over the summer, and the food can go bad quickly in the heat. I have a pole in a shady area but I can't see the feeder from the kitchen, unlike the seed feeder poles. 

My brother-in-law, noted below, has no trouble drawing these tiny colorful birds to his feeders. But even he has been known to complain about the "waste" of having to dump nearly full feeders when the sugar water has gone bad:

It is dusk in New Hampshire. It is raining and unusually cold for late May and I am sitting on my brother-in-law’s wide, covered porch.

As it darkens, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird comes to one of the two feeders hung from a support for the grape vines. It perches and takes a long drink of the sugar water that will help keep it alive over the expected cold night.

A second, slightly larger hummer arrives. Despite two feeders being out, this one chases the other away because this is what hummingbirds do, they battle each other for food and territory. These little birds are tough. The first one leaves and the second takes a long drink, then perches for a while until it gets almost too dark to see. Then it flies off to roost in a nearby sheltering willow.

(Margo D. Beller)

I am always taken aback when a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, looking more like a bug than bird, flits by me. They are fascinating to watch, the only bird that can fly backwards, bright green back, long bill and, if a mature male, a deep, red throat. John J. Audubon referred to the Ruby-throat as the “glittering fragment of the rainbow.”

Hummingbirds are so small - they weigh the same as a penny - and so colorful. In the U.S. they have interesting names including Broad-billed, Broad-tailed, Anna’s, Allen’s, Calliope and Magnificent. But in New Jersey, the hummingbird you’ll see 99% of the time is the Ruby-throated. Go walk in the woods wearing a red hat or bandana and you might draw one to you, checking out what kind of flower you are.

People love to watch hummingbirds. They put out red feeders with sugar water (1 part sugar to 4 parts water) to feed them. They plant flowers for them – preferably those that are red and/or trumpet-shaped (yellow jewelweed is a favorite, if you happen to have a stream or river along your property). They make documentaries about them. There’s even websites to track the Ruby-throat’s northbound migration.

One year I was in New Jersey’s Great Swamp, crossing a bridge over a brook, when I was buzzed by a hummer that flew to a tiny nest made of lichen and spider webs at the tip of a thin branch hanging over the water, a good defense against predators. This was a female: Once the male has done his part, he’s gone, frequently heading south as early as July, leaving the female to build the nest and raise the brood alone.

New Jersey Audubon’s Scherman Hoffman sanctuary has a feeder attached to the bookstore window so those inside get a close view of the feeding bird. It is nice to be inside, perhaps talking to sanctuary director Mike Anderson or one of the volunteers, and suddenly have a brilliantly colored male hummer appear out of nowhere. Very little deters a hungry hummingbird, as the ones I saw in New Hampshire reminded me.

When I see a hummer at a feeder, its whirring wings beating thousands of times a second, I appreciate the great lengths it has gone - and the dangers it has faced - to make it here from central and South America.

In his book “The Big Year,” Mark Obmascik gives a harrowing account of northbound migration over the Gulf of Mexico, from the point of view of a female Ruby-throat. Like all birds the hummer eats and eats and eats, then takes off and flies nonstop over the water, burning fat supplies as she goes until she can get to land to eat and rest. Many don’t make it. The one in the book does. Read it and I guarantee the next time you look at a hummingbird you will be awed.

If you want to attract hummingbirds you can create a garden with the right type of flowers. Trumpet Vine is a hummer favorite, and so are other native plants including Beard Tongue, Wild Bergamont and Bleeding Heart. If you have a wet garden, there’s Fire Pink and Cardinal Flower and its blue cousin Lobelia.

The nice thing about these flowers is that besides hummers you will also draw butterflies – another long-distance migrant that is tougher than it appears. These plants evolved along with native birds, insects and wildlife. Putting these in your garden is like buying heirloom tomatoes with their strange colors and textures and juicy taste instead of the bland orange tomatoes used for fast-food sandwiches. Natives are just more interesting, and so are the birds and insects they attract.

Hummer at a friend's feeder (Margo D. Beller)

Here is Audubon on hummingbirds and native flowers:

No sooner has the returning sun again introduced the vernal season, and caused millions of plants to expand their leaves and blossoms to his genial beams, than the little Humming-bird is seen advancing on fairy wings, carefully visiting every opening flower-cup, and, like a curious florist, removing from each the injurious insects that otherwise would ere long cause their beauteous petals to droop and decay... Its long delicate bill enters the cup of the flower, and the protruded double-tubed tongue, delicately sensible, and imbued with a glutinous saliva, touches each insect in succession, and draws it from its lurking place, to be instantly swallowed. All this is done in a moment, and the bird, as it leaves the flower, sips so small a portion of its liquid honey, that the theft, we may suppose, is looked upon with a grateful feeling by the flower, which is thus kindly relieved from the attacks of her destroyers.

Makes you want to go native and plant a few Fire Pinks, doesn’t it?

I get a grateful feeling about hummingbirds, too.

Hydrogen - Atomic Number 1 With a Bullet

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 12, 2015, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

After a mainly damp and cool spring, getting hit with a hot and humid day is hard to take. Even harder to take is knowing that when the electric bill comes next month it will be much higher since the utility company is allowed by the state regulator to increase its charges because people will be using the air conditioner a lot more. (The same happens in winter with the gas company, which knows you'll have the heat on when the north wind is blowing.)

Mike Strizki with hydrogen-powered toys

With my curtains closed against the hot sun and the AC making it cool enough for me to think, I wondered yet again about ways to cut my electricity bill short of not using the AC at all. I do what I can but humidity can make an 80 degree day feel like 95.

With that in mind I bring you the story of a guy who has been trying to spread the word on hydrogen as a power source. He made his pitch at New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. His Hydrogen House Project is still running and you can see pictures and videos from the site.

I may have to give him a call after I get my next electricity bill. (I took all the photos):


What would you pay to get the utility companies - electricity, oil, gas - off your back and never pay them a dime again?

The average house uses approximately 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per month.We all know there are other options out there -- costly ones -- including windmills, solar panels and geothermal, which is drilling into the earth to draw its heat to power your home.

Mike Strizki has another way he claims will save you money, create no emissions and take you completely off the grid, preserving Earth for generations to come.

He uses hydrogen.

The sun is over 70% hydrogen. Hydrogen is the first element in the periodic table -- colorless, odorless, literally lighter than air and, when combined with oxygen, creates your water. It is this basic chemistry, with more than a little help from the sun and the fuel cell system he created to transform hydrogen into power, that he uses in the 11-acre house in Hopewell, N.J., he completed retrofitting in 2006. That house is the nucleus of the educational Hydrogen House Project.

"We have to educate the public that hydrogen is safe," he said at a recent program at N.J. Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. "We can't keep going down the same path. It just doesn't work that way."

Hydrogen-powered truck

To that end New Jersey Audubon is partnering with Hydrogen House to be the state coordinators of the National Wildlife Federation’s (NWF) Eco-Schools USA program providing free materials to schools to include "sustainability education" in their curriculum. That includes tours of Hydrogen House, learning the nuts and bolts of creating sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels.

Hydrogen is safer than crude oil (remember this crude oil explosion in W. Va.?). It creates none of the unpleasant side effects of fracking. For those who know history, Strizki insists the only reason the Hindenburg airship blew up over Lakewood, N.J., in 1937 was because of rocket fuel that coated the shell, not the hydrogen inflating it.

Looking at his website you can see Strizki is no mere tinkerer. He spent 16 years at the state Department of Transportation's Office of Research and Technology, leaving it when funding for renewable energy was cut because, unlike oil and gas, "you can't tax free," he said. Since then he has worked on renewable energy and clean water projects around the world. He’s also come up with fun stuff, like the hydrogen-powered toys he brought that can be directed from his hydrogen-charged cellphone.

How does hydrogen power work? According to his site: Hydrogen House operates by collecting solar energy from a 21-kilowatt array of solar panels mounted throughout Strizki's property. The energy from the 70 thin film and 80 polycrystalline panels passes through inverters where it is collected in a relatively small battery bank used to run a low-pressure electrolyzer.

The electrolyzer splits water molecules into their base elements - hydrogen and oxygen. Strizki's system stores the hydrogen in 11 reused low-pressure propane tanks, similar to those found at a typical gas station. The hydrogen can then be burned for cooking and heating similar to natural gas, and can be converted into electricity by way of a hydrogen fuel cell. The only emissions from the system are medical grade oxygen and chemically pure water.

There are 10 used propane tanks in back of Hydrogen House to store the gas to get him through times when there isn't a lot of sun, such as the short days of winter. Those 10 tanks provide enough hydrogen to power his house for a year. And you can make more - put in purified water and you can split it into hydrogen and oxygen or, using another of his products, the joule, recombine it with oxygen to form water that can be split again. It is the ultimate in recycling.

But as with anything new, there are two daunting drawbacks to using hydrogen as an energy source- the cost and the government bureaucracy.

Hydrogen-powered cellphone charger

It cost Strizki $500,000 - that's half a million - to retrofit his Hopewell home back in 2006. He said he put in $100,000 of his own money and got the rest from New Jersey Board of Public Utilities grants and donations, he said. He is now building a second home (since completed) in Hopewell that will cost about a fifth of that, in part because he has developed more streamlined and simpler storage technology that doesn't require a tank farm.

He said it took 3 ½ years to get all the permits to retrofit his house because of those 10 old propane tanks. The local building inspector took one look and refused to do anything, he said. The process was moved to another agency that treated the home as an industrial facility, also because of those tanks. Even then the process sat in limbo until, he said, he got the New York Times involved. He got his permits.

Strizki said that now, with his smaller, more portable fuel-cell system - which uses flexible, lightweight solar panels rather than the heavier ones seen on roofs or in solar panel farms -- the only permit a homeowner has to get is for the connection to the house, just as someone must do to install an outside, permanent generator -- the kind that became very popular with homeowners after Hurricane Sandy.

Such generators "just sit there and cost you money," he scoffed, while his system saves money. As for the simpler permitting, the regulators are "not happy about it but there is nothing they can do about it."

That was certainly on the minds of those in the audience, who peppered him with questions. There is something very appealing about saving money and becoming self-sufficient.

For instance, Hydrogen House never lost power after Sandy, he says on his website, at a time when "New Jersey’s electric utility companies scrambled to fix downed power lines and busted transformers." As you can imagine, his house became very popular with the neighbors who were without electricity for over a week and needed to power up their phones using the charger he developed (pictured). This charger, the streamlined power system and other products he has developed are detailed on the site, too.

The cost of the technology will come down over time - as it has with computers that are smaller but have more power than the ones that used to take up a whole room, for instance - as will the retrofitting cost and the cost of your energy usage. But the initial outlay is high.

Scherman Hoffman Director Mike Anderson said he'd love to have a renewable source of energy to power the education center and offices. Right now they are powered using propane. Most of the old oil tanks used in the former Hoffman estate were removed.

Sustainability is a wonderful idea but it's a costly reality.

To Strizki, it's all about self-sufficiency and not being "squeezed and controlled" by the government. It's also about removing your "carbon footprint" and saving the planet for our children and grandchildren.

How much is that worth to you?

The Further Adventures of a Suburban Backyard

The house wren sang incessantly starting at dawn. I did not mind the wake-up call. Considering I thought the nest box was abandoned, this is music to my ears.

Things happen so fast in my backyard that I must restrain myself from writing every day because I am sure to be proven wrong. Such is the case after last week's post when I needed to update on the fawns being led off the lawn by their mother. I am now sure the one that appeared under the apple tree after the doe had led off one of her twins was Fawn 1, the one that started to follow me thinking I was its mother. I didn't know where it had gotten to once I got on the porch. It must've remembered Mom's instructions to lie down under a tree surrounded by high grass and wait for her.

Wren nest box (Margo D. Beller)

Neither fawns nor doe have been seen since and MH was able to mow the grass over several days this week when the rains held off.

But there were other dramas in my backyard that literally changed by the day.

The late afternoon of Memorial Day - a sunny, clear and windless day - I came out to get the feeder and found the female cardinal on the ground, her head smashed from hitting the side of the screened porch. The flies were already doing their own feeding when I shoveled up the body and deposited it under a shrub on the other side of my flood wall, the usual place where I place any dead birds or animals I find. (They decompose very quickly.)

Cardinals mate for life, and it was sad to see the male cardinal coming to the feeder as usual and not seeing its mate. However, I was sure that would change and two days later I was not surprised to see an adult female started coming to the feeder with the male. What did surprise me, however, was the begging young that appeared on the floodwall: not a cowbird, as I'd thought, but a juvenile cardinal after all. Like the adult, this bird was brownish (to better blend in) and had a small crest and red tail but its bill was gray rather than red. That will change as the bird matures, as will its coloring if this is a male.

While it is easy to tell the red cardinal male from the browner female, the same can't be said about house wrens.

Female cardinal from another year (Margo D. Beller)

Last week, I was unsure if I was going to have to clear an abandoned nest from the box I hang every year in the apple tree. I had seen one individual that would softly "scold" and then fly into the box. I presumed that was a female. I wondered how she would survive as a single parent, especially if she was sitting on eggs. There had been a singing male at the box a week ago but he turned out to be a one-day wonder.

A few days later another male started singing and this one was more persistent. It sang all around the box, sat just outside the opening, even stuck its head in. It sang for most of the day and at one point I saw it and the female flying around the yard. The singing has continued and today (Sunday) I see twigs sticking through the opening of the box, a sign the nest has been enlarged. If there were dead eggs from her first mate, they've likely been removed.

All this activity has me wondering about many things.

How does a mother deer communicate with its young to tell it to stay in a particular area until she comes back?

How did the male cardinal advertise his availability to another adult female after losing his mate?

Why did the female house wren accept this particular male rather than the earlier one (presuming this wasn't the earlier one returning)?

Some things I can infer. Instinct plays a heavy role. The fawn that followed me saw me as a big creature like its mother. Once the real mother showed up, the fawn followed her off my property.

The female cardinal accepted the young cardinal even tho' it was not hers because instinct tells her to do so. Besides, this pair might have their own brood once the youngster can feed itself.

Blossoming apple tree with nest box (Margo D. Beller)

The female house wren knew it would need a partner, even one that only lasts one season, if she was to lay eggs, brood them into hatching and raise them so they could fledge and take care of themselves. Unlike other birds where the male's responsibility ends at conception, male house wrens help feed and protect the young, usually three or four to a brood. So she needed a new mate.

Now I await the sound of peeping wren young. I hope the birds are hatched, brooded and fledged before the annual summer race between me and the squirrels to harvest the apples now quickly growing around the nest box.

The Secret Life of a Suburban Backyard (with two updates)

Who knows what goes on behind the picket fence?

The typical suburban backyard is not very interesting. The large lawn is mowed down to a small height. The weeds are either dug up by hand or bombed with chemicals. The shrubs are not particularly showy and designed to require little in the way of maintenance. Those with a fenced-in yard put the dogs out in good weather. Humans are only out there when they use the grill or perhaps play with toddlers.

Fawn 1, May 25, 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

Perhaps I am stereotyping my neighborhood but that's how my neighbors' properties appear to me. I doubt any of them know what the birds are doing in their trees and shrubs or the critters on their lawn unless they notice browsing damage or the waste left behind.

This morning I was distracted by three wildlife dramas I noticed taking place in my suburban backyard. One was quickly resolved, one is ongoing, one I don't know how it will end.

Drama One: Twin Problems

The first involved deer, this time twin fawns about a day old.

While most people think of Memorial Day as the unofficial start of summer, I think of the period as birthing time for does. I have found day-old fawns on the property every few years and I am usually on MH to get out and mow the grass before it can be turned into a nursery. MH likes to leave the grass longish so it will protect itself from the sun's heat.

But since I was the one who mowed the backyard only a week ago, I can't blame him for what happened when the rains made the grass grow back quicker than I expected.

I put out a bird feeder this morning and noticed grass matted down from a deer that used it as a B&B. I walked to the back door and listened to the many birds - robins, catbirds, cardinals, a few types of warblers. My reverie was broken when a big doe bounded across the yard into my ornamental grass garden, knocking over plants. I noticed the size and deep in my brain must've remembered another big doe. I shooed her away.

About 15 minutes later, I saw two fawns under the dogwood. I remembered the other big doe - the one who came to nurse a crying fawn that had been left in our long grass several years ago.

Fawn 2 (Margo D. Beller)

I don't know why but I went out to get the fawns to move off my lawn to someplace less open to the street. On their spindly legs they slowly went to a border shrub and hunkered down. I went inside. Later I went out and there they were again. One soon bedded down under the dogwood, invisible unless you knew where to look. The other, however, was far more active and started heading toward the street.

I have protection against grown deer and smaller pests like squirrels and rabbits around some of my garden beds but I didn't want this little thing to get caught so I went out to shoo it back to its sibling. To my shock it started after me thinking I was its mother! I ran back to the porch.

Later, I went into the front yard to make sure this fawn hadn't gotten caught in the netting. There was Mom looking at me from the lawn across the street. I was not surprised to see her about 15 minutes later leading off a fawn, preumably the one that had been under the dogwood. Since I didn't see the other one anywhere, I am hoping she took care of that one, too.

Drama over, at least for now. Soon the fawns will grow and, like any curious child, will come to explore. Any plants not covered with netting will be sampled, including supposedly "deer-resistant" plants. I've had many bites taken out of such plants and that's why this year what I can move are behind some kind of barrier.

(Update: I later found one of the fawns under my apple tree. I left it alone and went out for the afternoon with MH. I don't know which fawn it was but it was gone when we returned. I know the whole family will return after dark and bed down in the lawn until we can mow it.)

Drama Two: An Alien

For some time now I've been hearing the sound of begging from a forsythia shrub. Today, while repairing damage done by the big doe mentioned above, I saw the cardinal pair at my flood wall followed by a begging bird nearly as big as they.

Cowbirds struck again.

I don't like cowbirds, as I've often stated, because the female lays her egg in another bird's nest. This egg frequently hatches first and then destroys the competition. So the parents feed this alien until it gets big enough to feed itself, at which point it somehow knows to find other cowbirds and start the cycle all over again.

Male cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

By now I usually take in the feeders but this year I've been slowly decreasing the number, in part to allow the parent cardinals to find seed to give them the strength to find insects to feed this voracious youngster (cowbirds don't eat seeds). First the suet was removed and put into the freezer. Then the caged tube feeder came in. Now the house feeder remains. Few birds are coming to it when insects are so plentiful.

This cardinal pair, however, seems so dependent on the seed I provide the male is frequently on the pole as I open the back door to put out the feeder. The male feeds on one side, the female the other. Then the chick starts begging and one has to fly off to attend to it. There are no babysitters to help out this family.

Drama Three: Evict or No? 

We recently returned from a week away to find a strange situation at the house wren box I put out every year. The male, which had been singing up a storm in late April into early May, appeared to be gone. A bird I presumed to be the female would make a soft scolding call from a nearby hedge, fly to the box, go in and stay put for a long while. I wondered, is there a nest going and are the eggs hatched or did something happen?

The other day I saw the bird leave the box for a bush. I didn't see it come back.

Today, for the first time in a long time, a male house wren was singing around the backyard. It flew into the apple tree and around the box. It came to the opening and looked but did not go in. Significantly, nothing flew out to chase him off and there was no cheeping. The male wren flew to several places in the yard, singing. It came back to the box and again looked in without entering. Now, it is gone and I don't know if it will return.

My quandary - Should I empty the box so another wren pair can start over? Or, as MH said as I fussed about the twin fawns, will nature take its course?

House wren from another year (Margo D. Beller)

Several years ago, a chickadee took over the box before a house wren could find it. I came up my driveway one evening to find what looked like a squirrel tail streaming from the box opening. It was the chickadee's nest of fur. It had been pulled out by a wren, which soon filled the box with its stick nest.

But if there is already a stick nest in the box (filled with dead eggs or, worse, a dead bird), the wren isn't going to go to the trouble of pulling it out and starting over. It will just find another sheltered place. If I want another pair to use the box this year, I'll have to empty it.

For now, I'm leaving the box alone to see what happens. I'll let you know what develops next in this suburban wildlife drama.

(Update: I took in the feeder for the night and walked over to the box. An adult wren quickly flew out and scolded me. I apologized and went back into the house. So the box isn't empty, at least for today. But what will happen tomorrow?)

What We Found After a Week Away

Time isn't the main thing, it's the only thing.
   -- Miles Davis

In the greater scheme of things, a week is a very small period of time. It comes and goes before you know it. But after a recent week away we returned to find major changes had taken place in the small bit of ecology I call my backyard and in the behavior of the birds that live in it.

Before we went away the first full week of May to chase the northbound migrants closer to their breeding grounds, I could go out early in the morning and hear or see a host of birds feeding on the strands of seeds hanging from the oak trees. The locust trees appeared bare. The forsythia, lilacs and quince were flowering. The grass was just starting to green and grow.

Blackpoll photo by jerryoldenettel is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

Where we traveled it was unusually cool and rainy most of the time. The one day of full sun and spring-like warmth, the weathercasters warned, "Don't get used to it." They were right - the cold returned. But while we were away our part of NJ got a lot of rain and a lot of heat.

So when we returned last Sunday we found our lawn had turned into a long, bushy meadow, complete with matted-down areas where the deer had rested unmolested. The forsythia, quince and lilac flowers were done. The apple tree lost its blossoms and was in full leaf. Same with the dogwood. I found the irises, azaleas and rhododendron flowering and the cannas had sprouted. And the weeds were, as usual, everywhere.

The front-yard locust tree leaves came out and the backyard oak and maple trees are now casting lush green shade. Several of the bushes, including the viburnum I planted three years ago, jumped in size. The wrongly named "dead area" was filled with overgrown wild onion, wild rose, garlic mustard, ragweed and plants I can't name. In another corner of the yard, the space was filled with wild strawberries.

All this happened in a week.

As for the birds, the white-throated sparrows left when the feeders were taken in. Others came back once I put the feeders back out but they have other concerns now. I hear young begging for food when a parent returns to the hidden nest. One nest must be cardinals, based on the activity of the adult pair. While the young will only be fed protein-rich insects, the parents are coming to the feeder for the quick energy they can get from the sunflower seeds.

Robin's nest, found on the stairs
leading to the observation platform,
Montezuma (NY) NWR (Margo D. Beller)

The male house wren that could be heard daily before dawn before we left is silent. When I go outside to look at the nest box a wren will scold me from a hedge nearby and then, when I back off, fly into the box but it does not immediately come out. This means the wren is an adult who must sit on a nest full of eggs. Is this bird a female or male? Wrens of both sexes look the same. A single parent will have to work that much harder to get food for the brood (and itself) plus protect the nest.

As for the migrants, in the last couple of days I have been hearing the squeaky-brake call of the blackpoll warbler, a call I associate with the end of migration. This little bird, which has a superficial resemblance to the black-capped chickadee, has a very long migratory route and is one of the last to pass through my area on its way north. So migration is basically over, as far as my yard is concerned.

This past week it was time to catch up on bills, groceries and the yards. MH and I mowed the long, seeding grass and I spent several cool, wet early mornings pulling weeds (far from all of them) and untangling some of the plants growing into the deer netting before they could open flowers that would get stuck. I potted the vegetable and herb seedlings bought before we left and put them behind fencing in a sunny part of the yard. You'd hardly know we'd been away, presuming anyone had noticed.

For the moment we can relax and enjoy our bit of property before summer's heat and humidity comes back with a vengeance and the yard will need attending to again.

Following New Jersey's Passaic River

This post is based on one that originally ran on August 5, 2015, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

Recently, MH and I went to the Great Swamp. It is spring, and I wanted to see what might've been hanging around. I also wanted to get MH out and walking. I took him to a 0.6 mile loop toward the back of the property where the education center named for Helen Fenske is located. (Fenske led the call to keep the area a swamp rather than turn it into the New York metro area's fourth major airport.) This trail was flat and cindered so he could walk it easily.

Passaic River, Bernardsville, NJ, not far from the source. (Margo D. Beller)

I have been on it before and usually take the left fork. With MH we went right, and almost immediately were on the banks of the Passaic River, the natural border between Morris County, where we stood, and Somerset County on the other side.

While I scanned the banks for birds, MH voiced his amazement. "I never knew this was so close to the Fenske Center," he said. "I've lived in New Jersey almost all my life and never knew this was here." MH's nickname is Mr. Map because he uses (and collects) maps and is rarely ever lost, so finding a river someplace unexpected really threw him.

This happened once before, when I wrote a post for the NJ Audubon blog on the Passaic River. One of the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary trails goes along the river. One autumn day, driving to the place, I saw the river through the trees. When I got home I pulled out one of MH's detailed maps and realized that when I passed Liddell's Pond, I was passing the source. I showed MH the map and he was amazed. "I never knew that was the source," he said.

We both learned a lot from the post, as you'll see below:

Every river, even the mighty Mississippi, starts small. Water bubbles to the surface from underground and gravity brings it downhill. As it rains, the waters rise, the flow increases and brooks and streams are created. They feed larger water forms that have become rivers.

Before highways took us from Point A to B, New Jersey and the other original 13 colonies were wooded wilderness. It was hard traveling over the land so people and their goods got from one town to the other via river. If you remove the highways from a map of New Jersey and look at where the state's original towns were located, the importance of rivers becomes more obvious.

For a small state, there are many rivers, among them the Delaware on the state's western coast, the Hudson on the east and, within, the Raritan and the Hackensack.

What these rivers have in common, besides their importance in trade and transportation, is they are natural borders between states and counties.

The border between New Jersey's Morris and Somerset counties is the Passaic River. "Passaic," if you believe Wikipedia, is from the Lenape word "pahsayèk," which has been variously attributed to mean "valley" or "place where the land splits." There are many sources where you can learn more about the river's history, starting with the formation about 11,000 years ago of the Ice Age's Glacial Lake Passaic.

At 80 to 90 miles (depending on which source you use), the Passaic is one of the the longest rivers in New Jersey, starting in Mendham, Morris County, and ending up the much larger river that drops in a giant waterfall at Paterson and flows by Newark before emptying into New York Bay.

The river is very noticeable if you are walking Scherman's yellow-blazed River trail. At this point the Passaic is about the size of a large brook and filled with rocks. Water draws bugs, and the Passaic is no exception. Birders put up with this because bugs draw the birds that feed on them. The movement of the river draws flycatching phoebes and the Louisiana waterthrush, which have nested at Scherman for years.

Passaic River plants (Margo D. Beller)

The river ecosystem encourages such plants as trout lily, Canada mayflower, cinnamon ferns and skunk cabbage, one of the first plants to grow in spring. Rivers are a source of life.

I've heard the distinctive rattling of a belted kingfisher flying back and forth along the river looking for fish. The river provides birds and other creatures a place to bathe and feed. Families come to Scherman's part of the Passaic to sit on the shore and cool off during a hot summer day.

The part of the Passaic at Scherman is clean water. But the part at the Newark end is not and its tortured industrial history reminds us rivers can be killed quickly.

Many of suburban New Jersey's rivers are threatened by too many suburban houses and homeowners who over-treat their lawns with chemicals that not only kill beneficial insects but run off in heavy rains into storm sewers and from there to rivers.

That's nothing compared to the lower Passaic. If the upper Passaic is Dr. Jekyll, the lower Passaic is Mr. Hyde.

It has been a major chemical dumping ground for decades, filled with toxins that have hurt people living downriver. Paterson, for instance, was once known as the Silk City because of its mills. That was a long time ago. More recently it has been a byword for crime, urban decay and, thanks to its many now-closed factories, the creator of the "toilet river" that was the Passaic.

As a 2009 New York Times article put it: "The Passaic begins in the clear trout streams of rural Morris County, provides drinking water to 3.5 million New Jersey residents, reaches a peak at the Great Falls of Paterson and then devolves at the end of 80 increasingly foul and dispiriting miles into a dark, malodorous industrial sink."

Six years later I wouldn't eat any fish caught in Paterson.

(Margo D. Beller)

If you go to Scherman Hoffman to hike the trails you are what has become known as an ecotourist. It is a big business in some parts of the world. Towns in New Jersey have been catching up to the concept. The people running the cities and towns along the Passaic, whose people got sick from the chemicals in their air and water, have been literally trying to clean up their act, promoting ecotourism opportunities such as fishing, kayaking, and in the case of Paterson visiting the Great Falls, which only recently became a federal park.

Environmental groups have used the river as a teaching aid. The Hackensack Riverkeeper, for instance, within the last few years has run an ecotour that takes people up the urban end of the Passaic. As with their trips up the Hackensack - another river trying to recover from nearly being killed by industrial pollutants dumped into the Meadowlands marshes - the idea is to show the importance of the river and and how fragile the river's health is still.

Things are slowly improving for the lower Passaic, despite the long time it takes to get a polluting company to pay for river cleanup and government inefficiency.

At the upper Passaic, along the Scherman Hoffman River Trail, we don't have that problem -- at least not yet. It is easy to forget the clean, Dr. Jekyll, suburban one and the polluted, Mr. Hyde, urban one are the same river. But it is connected. The upper Passaic is healthy because its headwaters are not in an industrial area. But it wouldn't take much - say a farm sold to developers who build a massive condo development in a watershed, as many would like to do in the New Jersey Highlands - to do a lot of harm.

Rivers are fragile and their health shouldn't be taken for granted.