When You Know Migration Is Truly Over

As I write, October is nearly over. We have had nearly a month without rain in New Jersey, where I live, and the shriveled leaves rain down with every puff of wind. We had lovely color for a while but then the temperature, which had dropped, started rising again. Now, Halloween might be 80 degrees F, a new record.

The "Sparrow Bowl," Sept. 29, 2024
(Margo D. Beller)

Every day I check the lists to see what other birders have found and also the interactive "Bird Migration Forecast" map that uses the information picked up by the nation's radar system to track bird movement. Lately, movement has been light.

So in my head I know this year's southbound migration is just about over. But it was still a jolt to visit an area I only recently discovered to be a good place for a variety of sparrows, warblers and other birds needing a place to rest and where they can feed on the weed seeds and the fruits on assorted vines. 

This weedy area is in the Central Park of Morris County, which I still refer to as Greystone for the former mental hospital that moved up the road. The site is 5 minutes from my house, making it very convenient to visit daily. It is a very large piece of property and one can find birds, deer, even foxes if you hike early in the morning before the dog walkers and runners show up.

This particular area I'm mentioning consists of two drainage ditches located behind the playgrounds. These ditches became overgrown with weeds, as open areas like this will do. One of the ditches also has small trees in it, and that made a difference to what I now relate.

The same area, Oct. 30, 2024. (Margo D. Beller)

I came to the area today for the first time in a week. As I walked over from where I parked I saw half of what I called the "sparrow bowl," was gone - completely mowed down. The other half, where the trees are growing, was left basically alone except for the mowing down of ragweed at the edge. With my binoculars I looked up the path at nearby areas where I discovered more birds would hide in the ragweed. All gone.

Logically, I can understand why this county park would want to mow down ragweed. I don't like it in my yard either. This area of the park gets a lot of foot traffic between the dog walkers and the cross-country runners, with a birder like me showing up here and there.

Emotionally, I was ready to throw up.

There are still plenty of weeds near where I was standing in the park and in the fields beyond, but the only birds I heard or saw today were the ones I'd expect to hang around during the winter including juncos, various woodpeckers, jays.

[UPDATE: Between the time of this post and today, Nov. 3, the weeds in the second drainage area were cut down. The trees were left standing. I found late migrants in a field down the hill where they can hide among the dried goldenrod.]

The other part of the "bowl" (to the right) where only the weed
border was mowed down thanks to the trees.
(Margo D. Beller)

I was reminded of when I worked in Jersey City, on the waterfront. There were plenty of open, empty lots filled with weeds. During migration I'd find plenty of birds, including the types others reported from more typical migrant hotspots such as Central Park in New York City. But soon "development" did away with those open lots, and with them the birds.

Many weedy areas in parks and vacant lots are important stopovers for birds on the move, but most people don't look at weeds that way. What was a nearby bird paradise for me (and the birds) was just so much wasted land to the Jersey City "developers" and, I realize, those who want Greystone used by everyone, birders and nonbirders alike. So once again something has changed, and not for the better.

In this particular area, at least, migration is over. I'll have to look elsewhere farther afield and hope to find this paradise restored next year.

Wild Goose Watching

Winter's not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way.

-- William Shakespeare, "King Lear"

A cool October Sunday morning and I am sweeping. The trees are starting to color and the leaves are falling in earnest when shaken by the breeze coming from the north. It is blessedly quiet, only a couple of dogs barking in the near-distance dog park, the occasional jay or crow calling and the sound of my broom brushing together the acorns on the patio. The clouds are being chased across the sun. 

It is slow right now, no runners or dog walkers or kids yelling. No one heading to church or VFW pancake breakfasts or pick-your-own apples or cross-country running matches. I fully expect to soon hear this activity as well as neighbors using their blowers on the fallen leaves (fighting the wind blowing more down) once it is the legal start time for noise on a Sunday. (I hear them now as I write.)

There are fewer acorns to collect this time than last time but they are still falling in smaller numbers on the roof of the enclosed porch and in the lawn, where I have to step carefully if I am doing any yard work. I raked locust pods from the front lawn before our mowing guy came through, and expect to do it again before he next comes. The yew hedge, I notice, has dropped its uneaten red berries on the edge of the driveway, and I push those away with my broom, too.

"Moongooses" by Wildlife Terry is marked with CC0 1.0.

I enjoy the quiet, but then I hear the distant honking. I stop and look at the sky where it is not blocked by trees, and I wait. 

This time there are only about 40 Canada geese very high up. Most of them are in a long V while some are in an uneven line to the V's left. They are flying southeast because at this time of year they are migrating to their winter grounds. I always stop to watch the flying geese when I hear the honking. 

It is not as though these are rare migrants. In my part of the world they are far too common. Decades ago a few did not migrate. They found parks, office campuses and backyards full of food, the weather not too bad and few to no predators. They stayed, they bred, they created a large number of little fuzzballs (one brood each year can include from two to eight goslings) that start off looking so cute but then grow to look just like their parents. Then the cycle begins again.

Canada geese, whether they are wild or domesticated, are protected by treaty. They can't be hunted except during specific state hunting seasons. The hunters must be licensed. Those hunts help keep down the population. But people in cities are horrified when officials order a goose "culling" to cut down the number befouling the parks. They rally, they protest. These are people who do not hunt and do not see an ecological imbalance, they see "nature" being destroyed for (to them) no good reason.

At their worst, grass and ponds are green with goose excrement. When the young are small the goose parents, which mate for life, are extremely protective and will attack a person who gets too close. Most of the time when I hear honking it is from geese that are in the nearby community garden, or the pond a quarter mile away. When they fly they are not heading north in the spring or south for the winter, they are rising from one pond and heading to another so they can continue eating. When people walk their dogs at the community garden the geese take off with a noisy clatter, scattering in many directions but then meeting up later. (In that they are like another now-common pest where I live, the deer.)

How I see Canada geese all too often. (Margo D. Beller)

But this morning's calling geese are wild geese, doing what wild geese are supposed to do - get out before winter comes and the lakes and ponds freeze.

Why are they flying in a V? According to an article by the U.S. Library of Congress:

First, it conserves their energy. Each bird flies slightly above the bird in front of them, resulting in a reduction of wind resistance. The birds take turns being in the front, falling back when they get tired. In this way, the geese can fly for a long time before they must stop for rest. The authors of a 2001 Nature article stated that pelicans that fly alone beat their wings more frequently and have higher heart rates than those that fly in formation. It follows that birds that fly in formation glide more often and reduce energy expenditure (Weimerskirch, 2001).

The second benefit to the V formation is that it is easy to keep track of every bird in the group. Flying in formation may assist with the communication and coordination within the group. Fighter pilots often use this formation for the same reason. 

Easy birding atop Hawk Mountain, Pa. (Margo D. Beller)

If I am outside at the right time of morning on the right day in the right month, I can see multiple large Vs of geese, sometimes with hundreds of birds. This is an easy type of bird watching, just as being on a hawk platform and watching the migrating eagles, buteos, accipiters and falcons heading south over mountain ridges each autumn is easy birding. The birds fly in daylight and are big and easy to see, not like the small warblers jumping around quietly from branch to branch in still-leafy trees. Finding warblers in autumn is a challenge, but there are times I don't want a challenge. I just want to stand still on a quiet Sunday morning and look up at a V of wild birds flying away to the south.

Earthbound, I envy them. 

Autumnal Thoughts

As I write, a tropical storm named Ophelia hit the North Carolina coast and will slowly make its way north. While still many miles away, rain and strong winds are currently lashing my northeast-facing windows. The fact it took a very long time for this storm to get strong enough to finally be named while being big enough to be constantly pointed out by local and national weather forecasters is, to me, another manifestation of the, shall we say, unusual weather afflicting us in recent years. 

This pot of coleus will eventually come inside. (Margo D. Beller)

This storm will not be like October 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which hit even my inland New Jersey area with storm-force winds that ripped off one of my window shutters and put us into cold darkness for two days. Sandy was, according to the federal weather agency NOAA,  the "second-largest Atlantic storm on record, and affected the East Coast from Florida to Maine, as well as states as far inland as West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana. The storm made landfall in southern New Jersey on Oct. 29, 2012, battering the densely populated New York and New Jersey region with heavy rains, strong winds, and record storm surges."

Ophelia shouldn't be nearly that bad, and the raw, wet conditions we're facing now are nicer, by comparison, than earlier this year when the wildfire smoke blown south from Canada turned the skies over New York City orange. And then there were the fires in Hawaii that killed hundreds of people, mainly older people. The Environmental Protection Agency, in the emotionless prose of a federal bureaucracy, has even provided a report on the key threats of climate change on older people, including heat illnesses, respiratory illnesses, insect-related diseases (including ticks), water-related illnesses and, my personal favorite, mental health issues.

A couple of the zinnias I grew from seed and
cut for my kitchen. I will grow more next year.
(Margo D. Beller)

So an older person not only has to contend with physical and emotional issues but environmental ones far beyond his or her control. In my case, there is the shortening of the days and knowing at some point there will be leaves to rake, gutters to have cleaned and a garden to cut down and put to bed. My husband (MH) and I now hire people to clear the gutters and get rid of the leaves (tho' I've been known to go after the blanket of pods that falls on the front lawn), but I, however, am the one doing the work on the garden, and that work gets harder each year.

I finally had someone come over with a chainsaw to cut off the dead parts of the dogwood. Two-thirds of the tree was removed. The remaining part is still filled with leaves slowly going red. It is struggling to stay alive. As am I.

What remains of the dogwood. (Margo D. Beller)

In past blog posts I have mentioned walking among the autumn weeds and enjoying the autumnal colors. I've even mentioned the feeling of peace when cutting down the garden. Nowadays I don't feel that enjoyment, likely because as I get older it gets harder and I feel the resulting muscle pains for longer. (MH, having ceded his grass-cutting duties to paid help to spare his balky knees, is much happier.) 

This year's wet summer - not as bad for us as for New England - has been a boon for my flowers, keeping the red spider mites and the white flies away (unlike last year). It has also benefited the weeds, which proliferated until the unusual September heatwave we had subsided and I could go out and pull them. 

I guess what bothers me even more than climate changes I can't control and the aches and pains of my older body is the inevitability of it all. The summer ends. The birds fly south. The leaves fall. The days grow shorter. The plants must be cut back or brought inside from back porch or front yard before the winter cold can kill them. Daylight savings time ends (this year on November 5). The year ends. 

Life ends. But not anytime soon for the world or for me, I hope.

It Happens Every October

I know I've written before about late-summer blues and how December can be especially depressing, but in this year of coronavirus I am feeling particular sad this October for many reasons.

Speedwell Lake, Morris Township, NJ, Oct. 24, 2020. I had to walk
some distance to get away from all the other people and get this
picture. (Margo D. Beller)

October is when my mother died and when a good friend, gone too soon, was born.

October is when the lawn services switch from mowers to blowers, both the usual loud and the hurricane-level superloud types. If the services are not working the homeowners are, which means nearly constant noise at most times of the weekday and on the weekends (such as now, as I write with headphones on).

October is when the locust tree pods once again darken the lawn. This year we have far fewer than last year, which means less to rake to the street - a good thing because until this week MH has not been able to mow due to work on our street by the gas utility, including digging in our yard. When he mows he will crunch up the mat of leaves covering front and back yards but I don't want him to crunch the pods and spread the seeds to create a forest of locust trees. So I must still rake.

In October the garden gets cut back and the pots of cannas, coleus and dahlias are left out until frost kills them or their foliage, at which point it will be time to compost the plants or store the roots in the garage.

Makeshift greenhouse (Margo D. Beller)

October is when the house plants must come in from the porch and the table can now hold bird seed containers and feeders. I am trying an experiment this year. I have two pots of peppers and one tomato on the enclosed porch, in the corner that gets the sun the longest, in the cage I used to protect them this summer. The cage is wrapped with medium-grade plastic in such a way there is a flap I can pull up and over the plants at night. If the night is very cold, and we had at least one night so far when it got very close to freezing, I can add an old sheet as a cover.

As a control I have one pepper and one part of the tomato plant I rooted and potted in the house. This year I did not see white flies. However, if I see any in the house, or if the tomato grows like a weed, the plants will be moved outside to my makeshift greenhouse.

October is when there is a tug of war between warm weather and colder chill. More nights are in the 40s but some last week were in the 50s or low 60s, creating thick fog in the morning, making it even darker and so harder to get out of bed. When I sit on my porch now I have to put a throw on my knees on colder mornings.

October is when there is now less daylight than before, the sun's arc far shorter than it was in summer. I must bring in the feeders at 6 p.m. before it gets too dark (to avoid bears), and it isn't light out in the mornings until close to 7 a.m. If I want to get anything done before I start work at 9 a.m. I must rise in the dark, which I dislike greatly.

October is when the farm markets begin to close, if they aren't offering corn mazes, pumpkins, petting zoos or pick your own apples. The place where I go closes on Halloween this year and I've already stocked up on tomatoes, peppers and spinach. But they won't last forever, even if cooked or frozen. 

Pine siskins, visitors from the north, a
one-day wonder, Oct. 9, 2020
(Margo D. Beller)

October is when I realize that, for the most part, bird migration is over. The hummingbirds, house wrens and catbirds are long gone from my yard (tho' there have been reports from elsewhere). Yes, there are white-throated sparrows and juncos whose migration brings them to my area and there are plenty of the usual backyard birds visiting my suet and seed feeders. There's even the occasional surprise, such as the small flock of pine siskins, visitors from the north, that have been passing through lately in an irruption year. But now it seems I have little reason to get out of bed early most weekend mornings to look for new birds in the parks near me. New birds are now few and far between.

And this coronavirus year has brought additional challenges. I work in the house five days a week again (MH runs the outdoor errands). While I don't miss the commute, I do miss the daily walk to the train. On some non-rainy weekend mornings, unless I know we are going somewhere or I am busy in the house I feel an almost urgent need to get out, despite the dark. Unfortunately, other people (a LOT of other people) also working at home feel the same and not many of them are birders. Unless I travel in the dark somewhere to start birding at first light I run into walkers, runners, bikers, dog walkers. (Many times they are out at that early hour, too.) More people are on the local streets and in the parks where I used to have solitude. Not many of them wear masks.  

You can feel the intensity as people rush around on the weekends to make up for the time lost working or helping their children, also stuck at home, with school. When MH and I travel on weekends, I make our lunch and we have to hope there is a convenience store with an open bathroom because most park bathrooms are now locked, unless there are port-o-sans. We don't feel comfortable around people, including in diners.

As I write, this virus has been with us since March, nearly eight months. The infection rate went down a few months ago for the summer (in my state where there have been more restrictions than elsewhere) and we were able to make short trips to visit family or look for birds. Now, with the October cold, infections are starting to come back up as people gather with friends or family indoors. For those who fear this illness, even getting together with generations of family for Thanksgiving is threatened, and that is extremely depressing.

October's end means it's only a week or so later we turn back the clocks and it will be dark at 5 p.m. Winter, its deep chill and the potential for a lot of snow are not that far off. 

It is the inevitability of that and everything else that happens every October, even without a pandemic, that may be the saddest thing of all.

October means death.

Pre-Autumn Colors

Coleus, coneflower and euonymous bushes
protected by deer netting. (Margo D. Beller)

At this time of year it is hard to deny summer is finally ending.

Labor Day has been and gone. Children are either back in school or in their homes doing their learning remotely because of the continued coronavirus pandemic. It is now dark until about 6:15 a.m. and is dark again around 7 p.m. Even on warm days the evenings and overnights are cool enough to keep the air conditioner off. Several times this week the temperature will dip into the 40s for the first time in months.

Perhaps the best sign of autumn's approach is to see what is growing in the garden. It's more enjoyable to look around now that I've finished with my weeding. The late summer heat diminished the coreopsis, the coneflower and the daisies. However, now the garden is full of pinks and purples from the Rose of Sharons, the liriopes, the sedums and the big pot of 4 coleus plants I had indoors over the winter, and which grew and filled in with the summer heat.

Peppers on plant, 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

There are other colors. The green of the viburnum is contrasted with the red berries growing where the flowers were too high to be browsed by deer. The berries will be eaten by birds, I hope, rather than squirrels. There are a number of green peppers that started coming in with the late-summer heat and are now very slowly turning red enough for me to pick and use. Until recently there were tomatoes ripening to gold. But now chipmunks have picked off the small, green fruits and I've brought what's left of them inside.

The green lawn is looking lusher now that it isn't being blasted by intense heat. But when MH does not get to mowing it, the long grass hosts other plants, in this case some of the nearby sensitive ferns and small locust trees growing from the root of one or more of the trees at the curb. I do not care to dig up the yard so I must depend on MH's mowing or me cutting these mini trees down with a lopper.

Rose of Sharon, a favorite with bees
(Margo D. Beller)

The birds are in transition, too. I have seen no hummingbirds at that feeder since Aug. 31. They are on the move south. Now that nesting is over and the young have left, some of the yard birds are making noise again. The cardinal calls "teek!" as it flies around the backyard, waking me at first light, and I am reminded it will soon be time to put out the feeders. Titmice are coming to the water dishes and there is still a catbird calling from the bushes. The catbird will be gone by winter. On those mornings I can make myself get up in the dark and get out to look for them, there are warblers in their autumnal coloring and other birds I haven't seen since spring, all heading south for the winter.

Unlike the spring birds, these fall migrants are mainly silent, which means I must work harder to find them as they dart around in treetops feeding on insects after a long flight to my area from their northern breeding grounds. When I can find them I am pleased, especially if I can identify them. It doesn't make it easier that I must now contend with floaters in my left eye that make me think there is something flying above me when there isn't.

There are also raptors. They migrate, too and, unlike the smaller birds, they travel by day on the warm winds called thermals that rise off ridges and mountains. The hawk watchers have been been busy doing their counting since August, and I have been lucky to see hawks, eagles, accipiters and ospreys.

Joe-Pye weed, goldenrod, ferns at Tempe Wick Reserve,
Mendham Township, NJ 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Of course, the most obvious sign of autumn's approach is the leaves starting to color. The dogwood's are going red, the apple tree has been losing leaves since the apples stopped in June and there are plenty of little yellow leaves in the street, on the lawn and tracked into the house from the locust trees. Soon the oaks, maples and elms will drop their colorful leaves and MH and I will be out with rake and tarp. So far I have not seen many locust pods so I am hopeful that, as with the apple tree this spring, this won't be a year of plenty.

I will enjoy all these garden colors for as long as possible, but I know that, inevitably, winter will return, too.

Late Summer Blues

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.
-- Robert Browning

T.S. Eliot was wrong. August is the cruelest month, not April.

In April you can sense the days are getting longer, the plants and tree leaves will soon be coming out, the temperature will warm. In August you realize that, hey, it's awful dark at 8 pm. In August the heat and humidity eventually gives way to cooler, dryer days and you walk outside to discover the weeds are everywhere and your summer flowering plants are shot and ready to be cut down and composted.

Monarch feeding on butterfly bush flowers (Margo D. Beller)

When I look in the trees, I am as likely to see a falling leaf or a migrating butterfly as I am a bird. Already the apple tree is nearly bare and many of the maple and dogwood trees I see are losing the green in their leaves and showing the underlying red or yellow.

In August the squirrels are dropping as many acorns as they are caching, making it likely I'll either get bopped on the head or step on something that will hurt my foot and might make me lose my balance.

In August many weeds are tall and flowering, particularly ragweed sending out its pollen, just in time for when I can finally open my windows for fresh air instead of being stuck inside in air conditioning circulating the same stale air.

In August many of my peppers seem to come ripe at the same time, so I am cutting and freezing most of them. My tomato plant has suddenly covered itself with yellow flowers, so I will have more fruits soon. My basil is just about done. The coleuses are tall and lovely and I have taken cuttings to pot for next year. But because of the hordes of white flies I am leaving these and the vegetable plants outside to be killed by the frost. At that time the dahlia and canna bulbs will be removed for storage.

In autumn I prefer asters to the ubiquitous mums. (Margo D. Beller)

In August many of my neighbors go away on vacation because it is the last time they can before school starts in September. Even tho' it has been decades since I've attended school, there is something about the advent of September that depresses me. Perhaps it is realizing it is only a couple of months until the end of the year. Where did the summer go? When they return they will start filling their doorways with pumpkins, mums, ornamental kale and corn threshes to connote a harvest time they've never experienced unless they grew up on a farm.

August is when birds are on the move south. The mature female hummingbird I've seen at the feeder for the better part of two weeks has not re-appeared, although an immature (grayer) hummer has come to the few remaining coral bell flowers to feed. There have been others at the feeder but I have not been outside long enough to see if they are the same bird or different.

Inkweed, like ragweed, grows huge in fall. The berries will turn
black and be eaten by catbirds and other birds
heading south. (Margo D. Beller)

Hawk-watching season is already upon us. Hawk Mountain, one of the premier viewing sites in the eastern U.S., opened for fall watching on August 15 and has already reported osprey, bald eagles, various accipiters, harrier and broadwing hawk. There will be many more "broadies" moving through my area, peaking in mid-September. Warblers may pass through my yard but unlike in the spring they won't be brightly colored and won't be singing territorial songs. Mating season is long done, the young have fledged and now the only thing on these birds' minds is getting back over land and sea to the winter territories.

Finding these migrant birds in the trees is harder at this time of year. It's a little easier in more wide-open areas such as the shore or a sod farm. I went to one sod farm recently and found some unusual sandpipers and plovers, including the upland sandpiper, which are endangered because of increasing development eating up the dry open spaces they need to survive the trip south.

Finally, August is when I realize it is dark in the early morning and it is dark before 8 pm. Daylight will continue to decrease and before long we will turn clocks back and it will be dark by around 5 pm. Lack of sunlight makes me moody, in part because I can't avoid the inevitability of the passage of time. I know the longer days will return in the spring but until then the cold is coming, and possibly worse.

Hawking

Here in New Jersey we have been given a gift this late August - cool, dry, breezy weather, more like September than late summer.

The cool air has inspired me to go outside and deadhead the spent flowers on the perennials in hopes there may be new bloom before winter. My peppers have started growing, at last. Leaves are falling off the apple and pear trees, and the dogwood has a hint of red in the leaves, even as its fruits are starting to form. The female locust tree in the front yard will have a bumper crop of seed pods this year, unfortunately, and when they fall they will have to be raked to the curb with the inevitable leaf piles.

Male Harlequin-you can hunt it in season.
(Margo D. Beller)

For now, however, I am thinking about migration.

There is still the occasional hummingbird visitor to the feeder. The adult males are long gone, the adult females are leaving and the juveniles are now big enough to feed and travel on their own. The rubythroated hummingbird I've been seeing of late seems to have a tinge of red on its "chin," making it a juvenile male. He perches and takes long drinks. With the accumulated fat he's building he'll soon be heading to the lush tropics for the winter. I hope he survives the trip.

Overhead, the clouds are moving from north to south. In the bird reports I see warblers and other migrating birds showing up in greater numbers on their way to their winter grounds. The north wind is a tail wind, and when September comes that means it will be time for me to look in the skies for southbound raptors.

Buteos such as redtail hawks, accipiters, falcons, harriers, vultures, eagles: When they fly south they use the warm air rising off mountains to help them stay aloft. So unlike the warm spring winds from the south, which don't seem to limit the hawks' flight patterns, in autumn the best place to see these birds is along mountain ridges. I enjoy the hawk watch from Scott's Mountain and have seen hawks from elsewhere in New Jersey, including New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary and from the front lawn of an office building in Englewood Cliffs, across the road from the Palisades and the Hudson River, which the hawks follow south.

Redtail hawk (Margo D. Beller)

The view of raptors from the top of Pennsylvania's Hawk Mountain, an extremely rugged hike each way, is awesome. No platform here, just jagged rocks. This was one of the many places where sportsmen would see how many hawks they could shoot out of the sky.

That doesn't happen anymore, at least officially. The outcry over such slaughter as well as the killing of birds such as great egrets for their feathers led to the passage of the 1918 Migratory Bird Act. No more raptor target practice. Birds such as grouse, woodcock, ducks and geese can be hunted, but only during limited times of the year and with a strict limit on how many you can kill, just as with the deer and bear.

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: For over a century, wildlife conservation laws and regulations have been enacted to keep our bird populations healthy. As part of our mandate to conserve birds and their habitats, we administer the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. These acts are at the foundation of the Migratory Bird Program.

Hawk feathers (Margo D. Beller)

Among the artifacts in my museum of collected oddities are three feathers. I see, but don't usually collect, feathers all over my yard and from all kinds of birds. But these three feathers (at left) were found while I was hiking and for some reason I took them. From the pattern, it looks like they came from a Cooper's or a sharp-shinned hawk, presuming these are tail feathers, but I can't be sure. They are fascinating to study.

But was my taking them illegal? Under the law what happens when you kill, say, a Canada goose during hunting season? Can you collect its feathers for sale?

According to this site, created by a person who sells feather art, some situations are legal, some are not. One of my friends, who is handy with crafts, recently found feathers from a great blue heron that was preening in one of her trees. She is angry at what she sees as hypocrisy -- that she can shoot a bird for supper but can't use its feathers for art and commerce.

So she won't be hawking her wares anytime soon. I, meanwhile, will be waiting for autumn to come for real and the north winds bringing the great raptor push southward. Feathers will be flying.