Breakfast With the Birds

It is 32 degrees F at first light. Sitting on my enclosed porch I can see some frost on the neighbor's roof. In my coat, hat and gloves, a blanket on my knees and a large cup of hot coffee in my hands, I do not feel the cold. It is early Sunday morning and I am enjoying a time of peace while the washing machine works inside, behind the closed back door.

I have put out feeders and now I have breakfast with the birds.

Carolina wren at feeder. (Margo D. Beller)

Things start slowly on a Sunday, especially on a cold morning. No leaf blowers, no barking dogs, no shouting children, perhaps one or two people jogging or walking dogs. I take note of what birds I can see or hear as I rest from my week's labors. 

Two goldfinches, now in their winter brown feathers and the male with just a hint of yellow at his throat.

Larger house finches and house sparrows.

A redbellied woodpecker with his brilliant red crown.

Smaller downy woodpeckers, the male with a bit of red on the back of his head.

Blackcapped chickadees, tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches. All fly to the feeder, grab a seed and take off for a safe place to break the seed apart and eat what's within.

Not at the feeders but flying around the yard are juncos. As winter wears on these dark winter visitors will start coming to the feeders. For now, they glean what they can from around the yard.

A Carolina wren sings from various places around the yard, then investigates both seed feeders. 

Male redbellied woodpecker (Margo D. Beller)

A male cardinal calls from the pear tree, watches as the smaller birds come to the house feeder, then flies to the ground to pick at what is dropped, as the squirrels will soon do. This male doesn't seem to like the feeder but his browner mate is not as skittish. She flies to the feeder, shoos away the smaller birds there, has a few seeds and flies off.

Two larger birds fly a few backyards away, American crows. Had they been hawks, such as the Cooper's hawk, and closer the little birds would've flown to avoid the predators. MH always says the hawks have to eat, too. I understand that, but I don't want my feeders to be involved.

One bird not at the house feeder this morning, at least not right now, is the blue jay. It will come to the house feeder, scarf up a lot of seeds and then fly off to digest them, only to return for more. The force of their leaving makes the old feeder swing wildly, and I fear it dropping to the ground and finally breaking apart. So I am glad the jays have not come by while I'm here.

At this time of year, when I am no longer distracted by chasing migrant birds, it is easy to feel depressed and forgotten. There is less daylight. The majority of garden chores are done. Younger neighbors are wrapped up in their families. Older people like me are just part of the scenery, like the birds, and barely noticed. It is hard for me to get going some mornings.

Female cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

During this year of coronavirus, these feelings are intensified because of another element - fear. Older people are often shunted aside. Now they can be told it is for their own good. You give them "special hours" to shop because they are "vulnerable" to this virus. Most of us have longstanding conditions where exposure to the virus would put us in the hospital. It is safer staying home. Those of us with jobs can be "attached" to the world without being in it. But many seniors don't have that.

With the cold comes deprivation. It would be harder for the birds to survive without help from people like me putting out the feeders. Many people nowadays do not have that safety net. Unlike many of the birds, many of us won't be with our family groups this winter.

Sitting and watching the birds, the sun peeks through the clouds. I can see its arc is now short enough that the sun rises just past my neighbor's roof. Were it not cloudy I'd have the sun full on my face for a longer time until it rose above the porch window. Still, I close my eyes and time seems to stand still.

But time does not stand still. When the clouds move back in I can see a black cat in my backyard neighbor's yard, heading away from mine. The birds were not perturbed - I have frequently found this well-kept house cat curled up in the sun on my flood wall as the birds eat - but the squirrels rush up the trees and start their alarmed barking. This is when there is a sudden frenzy of birds at the feeder, eating as if there is no tomorrow.  

Cooper's hawk, a common backyard predator. Not today.
(Margo D. Beller)

I don't know what goes through a bird's brain. I can make some guesses. I can guess the suet is being ignored because it is not that cold (the porch temperature rose at least 5 degrees during the time I was out) and it is more important to cache seeds for later, when other food might not be available. I can guess the birds "understand" the sounds of an alarmed squirrel mean danger and eat so they can have the fat in them to take off quickly and fly far if need be.

But when the squirrels and birds calm down, I find myself agitated. I am not free as a bird.

So I leave the porch before the dogs, leaf blowers and other disturbances start for my warm kitchen to tend to the laundry, consider my other chores and wait for MH to wake and come downstairs. Like the birds, he will be fed.

I look at the clock and see I was outside for over an hour. Time I'll never get back.  

It is too easy for people like me to feel depressed, shut in, fearful and forgotten. The birds don't have these "advanced" human feelings, thank goodness. Sitting on my cold porch and watching them on a Sunday morning helps me forget mine.

Warbler Neck, Birder's Ear and Other Ailments

(RE Berg-Andersson)

"We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” 

-- George Bernard Shaw

The birds sang around us as we walked the path through the woods at a federal park near where we live. Towhee, wood thrush, veery, white-breasted nuthatch, catbird -- all heard and tallied in my head as MH and I slowly stepped downhill.

He carries a stick wherever we happen to hike, even on a flat, paved trail, because of his knees, girth and fear of falling down. On this particular trip I left my stick at home, but I have had more than my share of falls, one of them on another trail at this same park, and so I walked slower than usual, avoiding the rocks, roots and areas where runoff from recent rain made the ground almost too smooth.

"There's a peewee," he called from behind me. "There it goes again."

I didn't hear it. 

It called about a dozen or so times, he told me. With all the birds that I could hear, it rankled me I could not hear this bird, whose call ("pee-oh-wee!) is its name. It is a thin and high-pitched call. 

This is not the first time he has heard a bird I did not. This has happened several times with the peewee alone. Unless the bird is close to where I am standing, I am not hearing it.

I don't like this high-frequency problem, another in a series of ailments that affects my birding and my aging life in general.

Like others of my generation, too much loud music heard at concerts or through headphones has damaged my hearing. According to the people who make hearing aids, 48 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss. If I can't hear higher pitches, there will be some birds with faint, high calls (Cape May warbler, Blackburnian warbler, the aforementioned peewee) I won't hear. Rather than call it "deafness" or "approaching old age," I call this condition "birder's ear."

But wait, there's more. Hearing problems can also affect balance, something you need if you are going to hike in the woods alone. Aging knees are a problem when hiking up and down hills, frequently over rough terrain, and there are many trails we now don't hike anymore as a result. I have met people who watch for birds from the comfort of their cars so they don't put pressure on their legs. They won't see as much but they are content with what they can find.

(RE Berg-Andersson)

I am not,. I always want to find more birds so I need my hearing. Long ago I realized that once trees leafed out I was never going to see all the birds calling around me. I would have to learn their songs. Since then I have refined that to learn tones so I can tell, for instance, the buzzy trill of the worm-eating warbler from the dry trill of the chipping sparrow and from the sweeter trill of the pine warbler. Although each bird has a different type of favored habitat, there are occasions when these overlap, such as the time I was in one park that had pines (pine warbler), fields (chipping sparrow) and brushy hillsides (worm-eating warbler) and I heard each bird singing.

So if I can't hear a call as easy to identify as a peewee's, I wondered, what else am I missing?

Busy birders such as me also get sore arms from poling ourselves along the trail, aching ankles if they are not braced and sore knees from walking for miles, especially around water or mud. And that workout includes standing still. Try standing in one place without making a sound for more than five minutes. (I find my stick very good to lean on.) It all starts to add up after a while.

Same with another condition that afflicts we of a certain level of age and experience: "warbler neck."

I consider myself to be in decent physical shape. I exercise and try to control my eating. For me, birding is a way of getting out of the house, away from stress and into nature. It also allows me to test my memory and keep my brain sharp. I never thought of it as exercise for those, like MH, who don't do a lot of physical activities. But it is, and no less an authority than Prevention Magazine recommends it for the sedentary. 

In the field (Margo D. Beller)

Of course, as in all exercise, no pain, no gain. And while I have seen a lot of birds in my time, they have recently become a pain in the neck. Literally. 

You look in the treetops for little birds flitting around and there is a ping that, after continued use, becomes painful enough to make turning your head hard to do. This is another reason I have been using my ears instead of my eyes. My bad posture doesn't help. Nor does wearing heavy, 10x50 binoculars. Neck pain prompted me to switch from the usual strap to a harness that spreads the weight over my back and shoulders. But a strap still presses on the shoulder near the base of the sore left side of my neck.

The National Audubon Society, knowing a trend when it sees one, has an article that not only lists the best exercises to help your warbler neck but provides a YouTube exercise video and a helpful list of "jams" to help you bust a neck move. 

MH likes to remind me birding is supposed to be fun. It is. As long as it remains so I'll put up with the ailments and, by extension, the aging. After all, consider the alternative.

Old Reliable

I was sitting on my back porch today, watching the continued rain, thinking of how I tend to keep things around for a long time as long as they are in working order. My car is 12 years old. One of my winter hats I've had since I was 10 years old. I can't remember how long ago I bought some of the shirts or coats in my closets. (Some would say I keep MH around for the same reason.)

House feeder with Velcro and duct tape, Feb. 25, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

Then there is this house feeder.

This simple wood feeder has been attracting birds of all sizes since we received it as a housewarming present well over a decade ago. The first bird it attracted, according to my records, was a "woodpecker," likely a downy but I didn't know its name at the time. The second bird was a tufted titmouse, I learned from my field guide, and using my binoculars I could see the bit of red under its wings and the texture of its feathers.

Seeing these birds prompted me to start studying them in my yard and in the field. After a decade of running around watching and listening I think of myself as an intermediate birder, at least when it comes to the birds I see regularly in my part of New Jersey.

House feeder in better days, with female purple finch (Margo D. Beller)

Like everything else I have kept for many, many years there is fraying around the edges, signs of weathering and a weakening of bonds. I've added other feeders to my collection over the years but I use this one because it does what I want, attract birds. Unfortunately, not all the birds are those I want to attract and this is the only feeder I use that has no protection from squirrels, which I also learned fairly quickly. That is when I put in a feeder pole and a baffle to keep the critters out.

But over time, after many winters in rain, snow and wind, the string has frayed and is now reinforced with Velcro strips and more twine so it doesn't break under the weight of sunflower seeds or the birds that come in ones and twos or more to eat it.

Feeder with curious black-capped chickadee (Margo D. Beller)

Bears have attacked this feeder but have never been able to destroy it, although they have come close. The last such attack, when the bear took down the cast-iron pole's arm as it tried to rip the feeder off, put a hairline crack in the lid. That didn't impede my being able to refill the feeder -- until the freezing rain came a few weeks ago. I tried to open the lid and half of it came off in my hand. But that is why duct tape was invented. The lid is attached again and the feeder can continue to be used.

Those are easy fixes. Fixing the car when parts break down is not so easy and can be expensive. Fixing me when parts broke down over the last couple of years, forcing me to see doctors and go to the hospital, were even harder and more expensive. Just as I do what I can to keep this feeder in one piece - such as taking it in at night when the bears are out of hibernation, as they will be soon - I do what I can to keep MH and me in working order.

But I know we are not young, indestructible or immortal, and that's a hard thing for me to accept. Still, like my feeder we go on, sometimes with duct tape.

Midsummer Musings

Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy.

-- Regina Brett

As the sun rises this midsummer morning, its light is filtered through the backyard trees, throwing patterns on the porch, where I sit on the shady end. At various times the light hits the medallion atop my bird feeder, creating a stained glass effect that is very pretty.

Stained glass effect (Margo D. Beller)

Behind me, through the opened window, I hear robins, catbirds, redbellied woodpecker, titmice and... is that a house wren? I go to the screen. Yes, that is a house wren. Perhaps it will discover the nest box now that the apple tree is done for the year and the attacks by squirrels have ended. As I look, a small chipping sparrow flies to the paving stones to search for insects. It still has its breeding red cap, but when it flies south in a month or so, that cap will have gone brown.

Every so often a hummingbird has come to the feeder but at this moment I see a downy woodpecker has discovered it too, just like last year. I go outside and chase it off, and am rewarded when a hummingbird suddenly returns, causing me to freeze so I don't spook it off. As I stand on the path by the apple tree, a family of house sparrows, several jays, a robin and at least one calling chickadee fly into one of the few trees on my property I can't identify, which is full of hanging seeds. The birds sound agitated. Is there a hawk in the vicinity or am I the cause?

I don't know. There is still a lot about birds I don't know, including why they all suddently appeared and then, just as suddenly, why half of them flew off.

Downy on feeder, Sept. 2016
(Margo D. Beller)

This is about as active as I get early on a summer morning, rising because I don't sleep well nowadays and I want to sit outside while it's cooler and do my birding by ear.

In NJ, where I live, you have to get up early - even on a Sunday - if you want to beat the traffic "down the shore" to the beaches or have a sporting competition (I can hear the crowd noise from the recreation area a mile or so away from my house) or even take a walk. When I look at the state birding list I see a lot of entries from Brigantine, one of New Jersey's premier ocean coast birding sites. But to get to Brig before the summer traffic it would require MH and me to rise much earlier than we'd like.

Years ago, when I was working in the city on a rigid schedule, on weekend mornings I felt compelled to rise before dawn, dress and rush out to a familiar birding spot so I could listen, walk and shake off the week's nonsense. Then I started working at home, still on a rigid schedule, where I could fit in walks and wandering during a long midday break. I wasn't restricted to weekends anymore.

Now, I am still at home but my schedule is far from rigid, and with all the time in the world the best I can do most mornings is creak my way downstairs to my porch chair and listen to the yard birds.

There are many reasons for preferring this. For one, it is summer and, unlike the spring migration season when I want to find the gaily colored warblers as they head north, it is harder to find birds unless you get out ahead of the heat, humidity and the mosquitoes to walk and listen. The birds, when seen, may already be starting to molt into their duller fall coloring. And, to be blunt, I am 99% sure I am not going to find any bird I haven't seen before many, many times over the years.

Once I have made my annual late May/early June trip to the northwestern part of the state, where you drive along a road and can hear hundreds of breeding birds singing their different songs at the same time - a challenge to identify, I can assure you - I can't be bothered.

Also, I am older and perhaps more than a little lazy. I'm not happy about the lack of energy but there were several times during my life when it could've been cut short and I'd have never met MH or bought this house or met many of my friends. So I can live with this alternative.

As I sit and time passes, I see more cars are now rushing about. I am in no rush, even with places to go and things to do. I know where this road leads. You do, too.

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.

Life Happens

There comes a point when one realizes he or she is never going to do it all. That the grand plan is nothing but a grand illusion, that the mind may be willing but the body is weak.

When MH and I moved from the City of New York to the New Jersey suburbs, we didn't realize what a radical move we were making, especially as we've aged.

We knew we wanted more space. We knew we wanted less noise. We knew we needed a place where we could park a car for when we went on vacation - we didn't need a car in NYC thanks to its public transportation system so when we traveled we had to rent one, or depend on the train. 

Even tho' we picked a suburban town with a real downtown, sidewalks and a train that ran regularly into NYC, we still needed a car.

When we got that car, and then moved from a two-family house apartment at one end of town to a Dutch colonial at the other, everything changed.

While I continued to walk - to the train, on my lunch hour - on weekdays, on weekends I was not walking everywhere as I did in the city. The weight started to go up. This coincided with getting older, when the metabolism slows and it takes more energy to burn more calories.

The suburbs brought us to cheap Jersey diners where the portions were big and the food likely laced with all sorts of the wrong fat. Even eating half and saving the rest for the next day meant TWO meals of fatty food. Until we went on the South Beach Diet, Wendy's was our go-to place of choice.

With suburban parking malls I lost my city-honed ability to parallel park the car. I can still do it, but after 20 or so years of head-in parking, being able to park close enough, back up at the right angle and jockey for position is WORK.

The other day I discovered one other change created by suburban living. 

In the suburbs, MH and I get in the car and go birding far afield. We throw into the trunk our boots, our walking sticks, our cameras, binoculars, several books to help us identify birds and plants as well as a backup pair of shoes and socks in case of bad weather. In the backseat is a water canteen, maps, tissues and a book for me to read in case MH wants to go to bookstore later.

After we hike for hours and hours we limp back to our chariot and drive off to the closest diner where we rest, repair and then return home.

Once a spring, we go to Central Park in New York City. It is a large, green rectangle - completely man-made - that goes from 59th St. to the south up to 110th St. in the north, from Fifth Ave. in the east to what would've been 8th Ave. if the numbered streets continued past 59th Street. (Instead, it is Central Park West.)

We go with practically nothing. No water. No boots. No books. I wore a backpack to carry my big binoculars while MH took a smaller pair than his usual so he could put them in his pocket.

Then, we started walking.

There are many areas where one can find birds, but since we live in New Jersey there is no way we could get to these or any other part of Manhattan at dawn or even early morning, when the birds would be feeding and active. By the time we started walking, any interesting migrants were either resting or off elsewhere. We walked and we walked and we walked and craned our necks looking for birds we didn't find. Oh, we found some good birds eventually, but not before fatigue set in. 

At one point we left the park for a restaurant - decidedly not a diner - at Columbus Ave. It was a nice rest, a good (and costly, as usual for Manhattan) meal. But when we started back to the park, my legs felt like lead. We continued to walk up and around the Reservoir over to the east side, because MH wanted to eventually go to a bookstore on Lexington Ave. from the park and then home.

We got to an area of benches at one of the Fifth Ave. openings near the Reservoir and I put my foot down - and my backside. We sat. I tried to get feeling into my legs.

I thought of my car back in the Jersey City parking garage. I thought of how many hours it would be until we could get to that car via public transportation and drive home to my suburban home, bird feeders and a warm shower.

I sat there and felt very old. There was a time when I could walk over the Queensboro Bridge to Central Park, but I was a lot younger then and I wasn't a birder. What could I have found had I been one?

New York, specifically Manhattan, is a city for younger people (and the wealthy, who can afford to be driven around). I once heard someone say that when you feel good, New York makes you feel on top of the world, but when you feel bad it makes you feel like you're dying. It's a very fast-paced life and you have to work hard to keep up.

The Dutch founded New Amsterdam not as a refuge from religious persecution, but as a commercial venture. New York has run on that principle ever since.

Should we have moved to the suburbs? MH would remind me of the gunshots and the blaring music and the sirens of our old Queens neighborhood. Would the fast pace have worn us down? MH would remind me we didn't become birdwatchers until we moved to our home and got a house-shaped feeder as a housewarming present.

The day after our New York trip, I got into the car (stiff legs and all) and went to a flat area in a county park not far from the house and walked along the Whippany River. I saw a lot of birds in a quiet area with few people. 

When I got tired and footsore, I walked back to my car and drove home.

Life is what happens when you're making other plans, John Lennon once sang. He liked New York City. He liked walking around. He wasn't allowed to get older, his life brutally ended in the doorway of his apartment building across the street from Central Park. 

My life is now tied to the suburbs, where I hope to age gracefully and accept it.