The Smallest Survivor

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. 

--Anne Bradstreet

I'm thinking about a gold-crowned kinglet this winter morning. 

It is at 8 a.m. the rising sun now comes out from behind my neighbor's house and hits me as I sit on my enclosed porch. Little by little the sun's arc has been lengthening as it rises higher in the sky. At this point I can only sit outside on the weekend for the 35 minutes or so I am in full sun at this point of the year because I need time to have breakfast and then ready for work. (In the pre-coronavirus days I would be on a train during this time.) 

The thermometer shows me it is 20 degrees F on the enclosed but unheated porch and my phone showed me it is 19 degrees outside, windchill of 9. That's why I'm thinking about the kinglet.

I am wearing a number of layers from head to toe, including a long down coat with hood. A gold-crowned kinglet, a tiny bird (about the weight of a couple of pennies) with bold markings on its face and wings and a yellow patch on its head (the male has an orange stripe on that yellow patch), does not have that luxury. The one I saw while taking a recent hike in the woods, trying to stay out of a fierce, cold wind, was flitting around quickly in a low shrub, looking for food. 

Gold-crowned kinglet, Pennsylvania, December 2013
(Margo D. Beller)

Usually I see this tiny bird high in a conifer, its preferred habitat, once I'm alerted to its presence by its buzzy tse-tse-tse call. They breed in conifer forests but when I see them it is during migration periods, mainly in autumn. But this bird seems to hang around in areas like mine in winter, as long as it can find food.

According to the people at the Cornell Ornithology Lab, a gold-crowned kinglet can survive in temperatures of -40 degrees F at night. That's 40 degrees below zero. How do they survive?

The scientist Bernd Heinrich wanted to know that, too. The gold-crowned kinglet (as opposed to its cousin, the ruby-crowned kinglet, which does not hang around here in winter) is among the creatures he studied in his book "Winter World" about survival in the harshest conditions. Heinrich, who is professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, owns a lot of property in Maine, which he has traveled for the observations in his many books. He found these kinglets, which normally eat insects, will eat what they can find in winter including spiders, insect eggs and moth caterpillars. They need to maintain an internal temperature of 110 degrees F, Heinrich found.

The gold-crowned will use old squirrel or bird nests and huddle together to stay warm, he found after following several to their roost one December twilight. Like me in my coat, sleeping kinglets fluff up their feathers to make an inch-thick, downy blanket. These feathers make up 10% of a kinglet's body weight. 

Heinrich also found that without this down layer, a naked kinglet would cool rapidly, which would be fatal. He caught one bird and weighed the wing and tail feathers, which are primarily used for flying, and compared them to the weight of the body feathers, which are primarily used for insulation. Kinglets have four times more feather mass committed to insulation than to flying, he learned.

Still, as I sit in the sun's warmth, warmly dressed in my down layer and holding a hot cup of coffee, I can't help but think of that little bird having to stay in perpetual motion on such a wicked cold day so it eat and thus survive. It is a cold, cruel world out there. I hope it survives.

. 

A Holiday Wish

As the year draws to a close, remember that each new year has the promise of being better than the one before.

Already the days are getting slightly longer because we've passed the first day of winter. Soon there will be more light, flowers and other plants will grow again and the birds will be on the move -- migrating, singing, coming to your feeder in beautiful arrays of breeding color.

2016 was not a good year for my health but I know from several tests and exams that 2017 is going to be a much better year for me. Soon I will be the same age my mother was when she died, and I am more than grateful to the Almighty for the time I've had and the time yet to come.

The future, particularly here in the United States, may look scary but I am hopeful humanity will win out over bellicosity and 140-character acts of cruelty.

May you and yours have a joyous new year filled with hope, light and the promise of a new day.

Sunrise over Appalachicola, Florida. (Margo D. Beller)

December in My Soul

Winter finally arrived in New Jersey, bringing with it arctic air, biting wind and even a bit of snow.

Winter is not one of my favorite times. Snow and ice make it harder to walk. Shorter days mean I can't do as much outdoor activities, such as birding, as I would like. Longer periods of darkness make it hard to get up at my usual early hour.

The journey begins, 12/10/16 (Margo D. Beller)

I've had health problems this year, and sometimes I don't feel like myself, which can be depressing. Winter makes that feel worse.

So this weekend, with the threat of more snow looming, I decided to go out and see what was flying around. I went to Great Swamp.

The Swamp is a large piece of land that is mainly run by the U.S. government although there are smaller parts run by Morris and Somerset counties.

My trip was to the federal area, which is in two parts - the "management" area where hunting is allowed in season and underbrush is burned or severely cut back (in short, managed) and the "wilderness" area where maintenance is minimal. The wilderness area is more of a challenge, but I didn't want a challenge when it was very cold. You get to be a certain age and you think of what happens if you're alone and fall and can't get up or, in the case of one unfortunate man I once worked with, you slip into the Passaic River and your body isn't found until winter is over.

My usual winter hiking attire. (RE Berg-Andersson)

It is scary getting older. You don't move as fast, even when driving a car. You forget things. Moving around seems harder and more painful. You feel weighed down. For that reason, I eschewed the frozen mud and rocky trails of the wilderness area and took the more wide-open trails of the managed area.

I started with one area of the Swamp where one trail is a boardwalked loop and thus is very popular with parents with children and those who want an easy stroll. At the time I visited it was super cold and relatively early so there were few people around. However, I wanted the second trail to the duck blind, which is partially boardwalked, partially frozen ground.


(As I was lacing up my boots a couple drove up in a powder blue Jaguar. They looked at me and moved to the boardwalked trail, which I expected. But they seemed perturbed by my orange hat, boots and walking stick because they kept stopping to look back at me. Maybe they thought I would try to steal their car. By the time I came back the car was gone, presumably with them.)

I was the only one in this area. I walked slowly and quietly to listen for calls. It was the first time in a while I felt like myself, completely in sync with all around me -- alive. I scanned the sky for hawks and was pleased when a redtailed hawk hovered over my head and then flew to the top of a tree, allowing me a long look.

Frozen - 12/10/16 (Margo D. Beller)

The waters were frozen solid enough for the juncos to skate on the surface as they picked at whatever infinitesimal things they could find to eat. The titmice were as much on the ground as they were in the trees.

The duck blind showed large water fowl way out in the swamp - Canada geese, mute swans, noisy mallards and a few black ducks that decided to fly in. I've been at this blind in many seasons. One year, a channel was open in the frozen water and down it swam pintails, green-winged teals and American wigeons in a sort of parade. Not now. If these smaller ducks were in the far distance with the big guys I couldn't see them.

Passing over the bridge on the way back, I thought of the time one spring when the thick ice started to melt, cracking like rifle shot. Then I looked up to see a flock of snow geese heading north. But now all was ice. A small flock of titmice and white-breasted nuthatch were hunting for food along with two gold-crowned kinglets. This is why I look at everything, because you never know who might be tagging along with the more familiar birds.

Redtail over parking lot. (12/10/16)

Back at my car, I drove to another part of the Swamp, the tour road created out of what used to be part of a mapped street, Pleasant Plains Rd. At other times I've seen harriers over the fields, yellow warblers building nests and bluebirds singing from their boxes. This time a winter visitor, a fox sparrow, popped up from the brush just long enough for me to admire its coloring. I found another one farther up the road in a flock with its cousins - song sparrows, white-throated sparrows and juncos.

It is tempting when it is cold out, especially after a serious medical condition, to stay holed up all winter like the bears in their dens. It can be depressing to do that, making you feel trapped, the furnace heat drying out your skin and making your eyes tear.

You might as well be dead.

So when the damp, drizzly November in my soul turns to cold, hard December, I account it high time to get out of the house and go birding as soon as I can.

Call me Crazy. But at least I'm happy.

Summer in December

The birds come to the seed feeder - titmice, chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches and the occasional cardinal. If I'm lucky, a hairy or downy woodpecker will appear at the suet feeder. My presence on the enclosed porch is keeping the house finches and the horde of house sparrows at bay - the way I like it.

Blackcapped chickadee (Margo D. Beller)

I am blaring Santana into my ears to block out the lawn service - on a Sunday! - blowing the bits of leaves it didn't get last week off a neighbor's lawn, and my next door neighbor, who is screaming as loudly with delight as her toddlers.

If it wasn't for the fact it's dark by 5 pm you'd think it was summer. As I write, in mid-December, it is over 70 degrees in my part of New Jersey.

If there is one word I've used in the past few years to describe the weather pattern, it is "unnatural." Last year at this time we had a Thanksgiving snow storm in New Hampshire and then came weeks of intense, unrelenting cold back home in New Jersey. We learned a new phrase - polar vortex.

Now we've gone in the other direction. It is still not natural. It should not be 70 degrees now. I admit, it is a relief to not be shivering under several quilts and wearing four layers of clothes, keeping myself to my south-facing office. However, I get the feeling Mother Nature will say, "That's enough now, time for reality to return" and hit us with nor'easters, snow 6 inches deep and high temperatures in the single digits.

On the plus side, I can keep water out overnight for the birds. I can turn the dry and dusty heat off and keep a window open at night. But the bears are still out there seemingly unaffected by the longer bear hunt that started this year. I don't have to put the feeders out every day, but when I do they must still come in at night. If I take a walk in the woods I know I won't be finding any warblers or other summer birds because they left weeks ago.

December as I remember it - cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

I know winter is coming. It always comes. After much delaying I forced myself to winterize my gardens - extra deer netting over the fencing in the front garden and burlap on the back fencing. At some point it will get "seasonably" cold and hungry deer will be desperate. I don't want them interested in my evergreen shrubs.

At this point I could say something about global warming or climate change, and the new agreement hammered out by over 100 countries in Paris that likely won't be ratified by a Republican U.S. Congress in bed with industry and against any agreement worked out by our current Democrat in the White House.

But why bother - that would just solidify my image as a grouch, a Cassandra, some old woman who should play outside, grill a steak and wear shorts and flip-flops like my (younger) neighbors instead of fleece and enclosed shoes. Lighten up! You only live once!

Yeah, man. Don't I know it.

So bring on the 5 pm darkness that will send me, the lawn services and the parents and toddlers inside. Bring on the cold already. I'm ready for winter, if winter ever gets ready for me.

Winter Blues

There is nothing scarier, for me, than seeing a man who tends to stay up into early hours of the morning holed up in bed, huddling under the quilts shivering, at 9pm.

But that was because MH was reacting to this intense period of sub-normal cold that has been afflicting New Jersey and the rest of the eastern half of the country.

(photo by Margo D. Beller)

When you hear of people dying in Tennessee from hypothermia or getting into accidents because they are driving fast on ice-covered roads, you know something is not normal.

When it is warmer in Anchorage, Alaska, than it is in Morris County, New Jersey, something is not normal.

When the New York Times devotes space to an article in its science section on what to call people who do not believe we have climate change or global warming or whatever it's hip to call it at the moment, something is not normal.

We know about the winter blues, that depressed feeling you get because it seems to be so dark for so much of the day. SAD is the acroynm, and it is appropriate. But this is beyond SAD.

Here we are at the end of February, two months on from the shortest day of the year, the first day of winter. There is more light during the day, starting earlier in the morning. Cardinals, titmice and other birds are singing, calling or drumming out territorial warnings based on the length of daylight, not the temperature.

(photo by Margo D. Beller)

We humans also sense that maybe spring is just around the corner. But for the last month, it has rarely been above freezing and my area is still blanketed by the snow from several storms that fell earlier in February. I can't keep up with the birds (and squirrels) hitting the feeders for food. I have to bundle up and put on my boots to refill feeders on the coldest mornings, and handling metal feeders is no fun even with gloves on.

It is hard just to take a walk - how warm should I dress? Should I wear boots or can I get away with shoes? Is the neighbors' sidewalks shoveled out? What is the windchill? I am sure weather.com got a lot of traffic over the past month.

Back to MH. Today he told me he just couldn't handle the cold - not the fact we keep thermostat at 66 degrees or so to save money but the cold in general. He said he felt the need to go upstairs, lie down and pull up the covers.

In effect, he went into temporary hibernation, just like the bears, chipmunks and many other woodland creatures.
We humans still have that instinct, to sleep through those times of intense cold and long darkness. We tend to eat more and exercise less and eat more "warm" meals with starches than "cold" meals of leafy salad greens. We eat too much, get lethargic and, at least in my case, sit in a chair near the heat register and let the sun shine through my windows to warm me.

So while MH's behavior was unusual for him, it actually makes some form of sense.

(photo by Margo D. Beller)

So does the reason for the sub-normal cold afflicting us this year as it did last year. Last year we learned about the "polar vortex" and how the air that normally flows over the north pole got bent out of shape, if you will, because of shifting wind patterns.

Now we are learning about melting polar seas and how that warming - that global warming - has pushed down the jet stream over the eastern half of this country while the western half has gotten next to no snow and is warmer than usual, which means another summer of drought. Cold comfort to my friends in New England buried under feet of snow right now.

Global warming, climate change - call it what you will, it is there and it is real. It is creating extreme weather. It is putting ice in the deep south and creating hurricane-force winds in deep winter. It created several feet of snow in one Buffalo snowstorm this winter and has created dangerous windchills over New Jersey four times in the last two weeks.

This is not something we can get under the covers to avoid. But I fear it may already be too late to repair the damage.

Chickadee Winter

Winter morning, about 12 degrees F. As usual one of the first things I do in the morning is to refill feeders and put them back on the poles. I take the feeders off one of the pole at night because, until I got a new baffle, the deer would stand on the old one and knock at the longer feeder to get the seed to fall. (In the process, the deer knocked out several large holes, prompting the replacement.)

Black-capped chickadee (Margo D. Beller)

Now, refilled, I am outside hanging them on the pole. A black-capped chickadee is in the nearby dogwood tree and it flies to the top of the feeder pole over my head. We look at each other and it takes off for the tree again until I finish attaching the feeders and walk away. Then it comes to feed.

Had I been wearing a bowl of seed on my head it would've flown to it and taken one.

Another morning I put one of the feeders down on the lawn to go inside and get something. I came out and found a chickadee had flown down to grab a seed, taking advantage of my absence.

I have lots of chickadee stories.

My three favorite birds are the cardinal, the Carolina wren and the black-capped "dee." They are my favorites for different reasons. The cardinals are big, red and travel in pairs. When the male feeds the female a seed during mating season they look like they are kissing. You could call them the marriage birds.

Carolina wrens sing all year long and are not common visitors to my yard, making their appearance this year at the seed and suet feeders a sign of just how cold it is. I used to think the wrens sang only to defend territory but they also sing warning. They are a reliable alarm for the other birds.

Carolina wren (Margo D. Beller)

The dee, however, is a favorite because it is not put off by people. They have learned that when I come out on my enclosed porch and rap on the glass to disperse the horde of house sparrows and house finches from the house-shaped feeder, they can zip in and get seed before the horde returns. (The dee's cousin, the tufted titmouse, also does this).

They will eat from your hand if you stand there with arm outstretched long enough. They can be made tame that way, as I have seen at several parks where people put a seed in their hands and the birds readily come and feed. In fact, if you don't do that they will literally fly in your face and call, as if to say, "See me, feed me." This has happened to me many times.

They make all sorts of cute sounds from the gurgling and "dee-dee-dee" calls that give them their name to the song that starts at a very high note and then falls, sounding like "hey, sweetie." I was on a hawk watch once, my first one. It was a hard climb and, to my horror, there was no place to sit, not even a boulder. Hawks were specks in the sky and as counters called out "sharpy" or "broadwing," I couldn't keep up. However, at eye level, close to me, was that gurgling and a flock of about 15 chickadees were feeding right up on the mountain.

I have seen dees exploring an outdoor telephone booth back in the pre-cellphone days. They are the most reliable visitors to my brother-in-law's feeders in New Hampshire, where it is far colder than where I live. Like other birds dees find shelter wherever they can get out of the cold and wind and puff up to trap air under their downy feathers.

(Margo D. Beller)

I like them because they take a seed and fly off to crack it open, holding the seed in their feed and pecking at it. They don't sit there and block the feeders as those sparrows and finches do. A dee I saw this morning had a seed, flew to the pear tree in front of me (standing on the other side of the glass) and pecked at it. When the wind blew it turned its back. At one point it continued pecking hanging nearly upside down like an acrobat before righting itself and finishing its meal. Then it flew back for another seed.

I've seen them take mouthfuls of snow for moisture, too. Unfortunately, I've also seen them picked off by hungry sharp-shinned hawks, an unpleasant side effect of putting out feeders.

There are many different types of chickadees. The ones I've seen from southern New Jersey on south are Carolina chickadees. They look virtually the same except they are a little more pale, a tiny bit smaller and their calls are faster. Another one I would love to see is the boreal chickadee, which I could find if I go up into the higher elevations of northern New York State or New England.

According to Cornell University's Ornithology Lab, which runs the annual Great Backyard Birdcount every February in conjunction with the national Audubon Society, last year the black-capped chickadee was reported on 16 checklists in my home county of Morris, the 23rd most seen bird behind the robin, starling and Canada goose, among others.

There were years when I was lucky to see one dee in my backyard. This year I've discovered a family of them roosting in my yew hedge, which I don't trim at the top because the deer eat at it from the bottom. That thick part at the top hides a lot of birds.

I'm happy to have them there. And when this year's bird count takes place Feb. 13-16, I look forward to counting them.

Adapting to Winter

The female redbellied woodpecker flies to the house feeder, grabs a black-hulled sunflower seed, then flies the short distance to the pear tree. She climbs up the trunk with the seed in her long bill to the top of one section that has been sawed off flat. She puts the seed on it and pounds until she has broken off the hull and can then grab the seed with her long tongue.

She goes back and forth five or six times to do this as I watch from my enclosed back porch, not too close to the window or I'd scare her. Each time she flies to the feeder she dislodges a young, male cardinal who has been eying the feeder but hanging back while other birds, including two other male cardinals, fly over to get food. She has no interest in the suet feeder nearby. Today, she wants seed.

Finally, the redbelly flies off and the young cardinal flies over and grabs a seed, only to be chased off by a posse of house sparrows.

Female redbellied woodpecker (Margo D. Beller)

At this point I take on my position of omnipotent ruler and tap on the window, scaring the sparrows off and allowing the black-capped chickadees to fly in, grab seeds and fly off. A couple of them go into the upper branches of this same pear tree to grab the seed with their feet and then peck to break the hull and eat.

I've been witnessing this behavior in my backyard for the past 20 or so years every winter. Same routine, different generations of titmice, house finches, jays and white-throated sparrows.

We had a heavy snow last night, and this morning I added to the number of seed feeders because I know it is not going to be easy for the birds to find food. But if I didn't put out a feeder - and I seem to be the only one around in this part of the area hanging feeders - the birds would still find ways of surviving. They're used to it.

They do better than I do. When the snow falls, especially the heavy, wet type we had, my first reaction is to groan. I know I am going to find shrubs bent under the weight and I might find fence posts down because the snow has weighed upon the deer netting. I don't have to worry about feeding myself but I do have to worry about getting groceries in ahead of time or getting the snow plow guy over to clear the driveway before the temperatures fall again in the evening.

Cardinal pair (Margo D. Beller)

I walk around repairing the damage as the birds check for microscopic insects in the branches of the black locust trees over my head.  I hear the sparrows calling from the hedge and the local Canada geese flying overhead. I hear the cardinal pairs calling to one another. A few weeks ago when we had a smaller snow storm but colder temperatures there were six male cardinals in my backyard at once. Today there were three and at least two females. The pecking order - which one eats first, second, etc. - was very much in evidence because only one of the three seed feeders will allow a cardinal to comfortably sit and eat a seed.

As I get older I find myself liking everything about snow less and less. I don't like the shoveling -- it tires me and makes my back sore. I don't like knocking snow off tall hedges and getting it all over me. I don't like depending on the plow guy when there is more than 5 inches of white on the driveway. I do not like the cold at all, and that dislikes gets worse with every falling degree.

It is easy for me to complain because I am bundled in a warm coat and will be going inside a warm house momentarily and can eat when I choose to eat. The birds have to depend on the kindness of strangers - me. I can provide them seed and suet, hedges for roosting at night and, every so often, aid and protection by chasing off cats or raptors. But that's it. They are on their own in the cold and have to depend on puffing themselves up and creating a layer of warm air under their feathers. They will "sleep" in their way to conserve energy to fly and feed the next day in order to survive.

There will still be winter fatalities, just as there are always stories of humans who lose a finger clearing out a snowblower or have heart attacks lifting heavy loads of snow with their shovels.

Today, I'm not one of them. You could say I've learned to adapt, too.