Leap Day Thoughts

One year ago, on February 28, 2023, the last day of meteorological winter, my area of New Jersey got significant snow for the first time all season, so much snow that Spruce Bringsgreen got a thick white coat.

First daffodils, Feb. 29, 2024
(Margo D. Beller)

Yesterday, February 28, 2024, the temperature in my area came close to 60 degrees Fahrenheit for the second time this month. February is usually the coldest month of the winter. After the first very warm day a few weeks before, the early flowers - snowdrops and crocus - in my yard came up and the flowers were close to opening. So were the daffodils. The next day we had cold and snow. The daffodils stopped growing but the crocus and snowdrop flowers continued to form, because this is their usual growing time.

Spruce (at right), Feb. 13, 2024 
(Margo D. Beller)

Now that snow is gone and those flowers are open. That is not unusual. What was unusual was the daffodils that had been rising from the cold ground, then forming flowers when the temperature warmed and then, yesterday, those flowers starting to open at least two weeks early.

More unusual: Today is February 29, known as Leap Day. This occurs once every four years. If today had been March 1 the old saying of March coming in like a lion and leaving like a lamb would've been true. Early this Feb. 29 morning the wind was howling, bringing down many dead tree limbs all over my yard. The temperature is not expected above 40 degrees F, a drop of nearly 20 degrees from yesterday.

Snowdrops, February 2024
(Margo D. Beller)

For weeks I have heard territorial birdsong in the early morning. I have heard cardinal, Carolina wren and white-breasted nuthatch. Canada geese in the nearby community garden have been fighting each other for breeding space. Geese and flocks of robins have been feeding on any large area of green, be it house yard, office park or farm field. The days are now noticeably longer and that longer light is triggering the beginning of mating season.

This morning a flock of grackles flew to the trees over my yard soon after I put out feeders. I went out and stood by the feeders. After communication of some sort (I heard nothing, of course) they all flew off. Yesterday they had soft, wet ground to pick at for food. Today the ground is frozen, and sunflower seeds would be better than nothing. But not in my yard today.

Grackles, from February 2020. The flock today was
not nearly this big. (Margo D. Beller)

Back to Leap Day. By coincidence I am reading a book by Rebecca Boyle, "Our Moon." It explains, in highly readable style, how the Moon (and Earth) was created, its influence on tides and crops, and how it was used to create calendars, among many other things. But due to a difference between the calendar we now use thanks to Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory based on the sun, and the lunar calendar, a day is added every four years to February, the shortest month of the year. (Boyle's book has a very clear explanation of why the leap day and the short month happened.)

(Margo D. Beller)

The Moon has been known to do funny things when it comes to weather and the human mind (and not just for "lunatics"). So I guess I should not be surprised that one year after a snowstorm it should be 60 degrees, and one day after it feels like Spring it should feel like Winter again.

At least the sun is shining, and tomorrow the temperature will rebound for the start of meteorological Spring.

Space Invaders

Another gray morning. On my enclosed porch, my chair in the corner faces east to catch the rays of the rising sun. But the day is starting cloudy once again, with a stiff, cold wind out of the north-northwest.

As I stare out, sipping my coffee, the sky turns black. Thousands of dark birds, all heading norttheast, fill the sky, a veritable river of birds, more and then more still. I think of Audubon's description of the now-extinct passenger pigeon blackening the sky: "The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse..."

These birds, however, were common grackles.

You see them in small flocks for most of the year, but in winter these shiny, long-tailed birds mass in flocks of thousands.

Grackle flock, February 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Why certain types of birds do this is not known. Safety in numbers? A need to keep warm? Easier to find food? All of the above?

In my area of the country, the common grackle predominates. The much larger, aptly named great-tailed grackle is a bird of the southwest. I have never seen one, but I have seen the shore-loving boat-tailed grackles when I've been on one of the New Jersey or Delaware beaches. An easy way to tell the boat-tails from the common grackles is by looking for the smaller females. If she is brown, she's a boat-tail. If she's black, she's a common.

What they all have in common, besides their genus, is they can be pests, especially when they arrive in a cornfield, at a yard or mass along a boardwalk in large numbers. 

Female boat-tailed grackle (RE Berg-Andersson)

I've written before about the sudden arrival of literally a thousand common grackles on my lawn back in 2020, a year where we did not get much snow to keep these birds away. (As opposed to 2021, when we got too much snow.) I am fascinated by these extravagantly large flocks that appear out of nowhere, stay for a while and then leave for the next food source.

Grackles breed in northern New England, a healthy swath of Canada and into the U.S. midwest, according to the Cornell Ornithology Lab's range map. But they are found year-round throughout the eastern U.S., and that's where my New Jersey yard fits in.

These invasions in my yard generally take place in late autumn or early spring, before and after snow  covers the lawn. Grackles mass in fields and eat certain crops like corn, but in my area they can mass in parks and will eat just about anything including garbage or, in my case, bird seed. When I look through my open office shade and see one of these flocks showing up in my vicinity, the first thing I do is rush out to pull in my feeders. 

Once the feeders and I are safely back on the enclosed porch, I watch. The birds stalk the ground poking for worms, or fly into the corners (or my compost pile) where they can turn over leaves and search for insect larvae or other food. There is a loud chatter of "chuk chuk chuk" as dozens, hundreds or even thousands of birds call to family members. Then they fly to the next yard or, if I come outside, rise into the trees, continuing their chorus of "chuk" before flying off in small groups until suddenly the rest of the flock leaves.

Robin (Margo D. Beller)

Sometimes, I see fellow travelers. Robins also poke at the ground and turn over leaves for food and so join the grackle flocks, and then hang around after the bigger birds have left to find what is left over. I have seen grackle flocks include cowbirds, starlings or, rare for my yard, rusty blackbirds (named for a call that sounds like a swinging metal gate needing lubrication).

Starlings are interesting. At this time of year they also mass and you will see them flying and moving like a giant organism in the sky, almost like watching synchronized swimmers in the way they undulate as one. (Do a search for "starlings massing" and watch some of the videos to see what I mean.)  How do these individuals know to do that? I don't know.

What I do know is these invasions are another sign of approaching winter, and just as inevitable.

Bird brains

Redbelly in an awkward position. (Margo D. Beller)

Two days after the first nor'easter of the 2020 winter season, I was bundled against the 18 degree (F) cold (14 outside) as I sat on my enclosed porch, waiting for the birds to show up at the three seed and one suet feeders I had put out the morning before as the snow was winding down. With 10 inches of snow on the ground I had left the feeders out overnight, figuring the bears were finally taking a winter nap.

The first birds to arrive were two chickadees. One would fly to the feeder that has a cage surrounding the seed tube. The other would fly over and the first one would fly away until the second fed and left. Obviously, a pecking order at work, but how do they know which is the leader?

A female cardinal came to the open, house-shaped feeder but when a male flew to the other side of the feeder, she flew to a nearby bush. Usually cardinal pairs don't act this way - they share the feeder - but when a second male cardinal flew in and the first one chased him off I wondered which one, if either, was the female's mate.

A white-breasted nuthatch as a house finch waits for it
to fly off. (Margo D. Beller)

Later, a male redbellied woodpecker came to the house feeder. He took a seed, flew to a tree to crack it open to eat, then came back. He completely ignored the suet feeder hanging on the other arm of the pole. After a couple of passes he realized there was a long, perchless feeder encased in "squirrel-proof" metal (squirrels might not get in but I have seen them hang on, if they can jump over the baffle). He flew over, grabbed the metal and was in a more natural position to get seed without having to twist himself around, as he did at the house feeder.

Meanwhile, a smaller male downy woodpecker was enjoying the suet. A female downy (the females don't have the males' red spot on the back of the head), which I had seen on the suet when it was hung on the other feeder pole before the storm, also used the long feeder rather than look for the suet. Was she put off by the male or did she not see the suet?

Finally, a male white-breasted nuthatch came to the house feeder at the same time as a female (whose head has a gray crown rather than a black one). She stayed on the feeder roof and watched the male, waiting for him to leave. Didn't she see the other side was open for her?

I mention all this because at several points I wondered what these birds could be thinking. 

Downy at suet feeder. Woodpeckers don't mind
being upside-down. (Margo D. Beller)

We use the term "bird-brained" to connote a human who is none too smart. But birds have proportionally large brains compared to their overall body and head sizes. With those brains they can remember where they have cached food, where they can find more food (such as my feeders) and how to adapt to situations. 

The first time I used my long feeder, before I realized I needed a pole and a baffle to keep out the squirrels, I hung it in the pear tree in front of my screened porch. I noticed at several points that winter some of the juncos, a black and white relative of the sparrow family, would grab hold of the metal and get a seed. Without a perch, this was not a natural position for a sparrow. But a few of these had figured out they could get the food without competition from the others foraging on the ground. 

Blue jay, like its corvid relatives, is among the 
smartest birds. (Margo D. Beller)

Birds are also smart enough to know how to find the proper roost hole in winter and the materials to create nests in summer. Each Spring robins poke around my ornamental grass garden to take the cut grass I haven't picked up. Other birds have gone into the compost pile if there is suitable material for a nest. Somehow they have learned how to do this from their parents. And, of course, the birds, including the previous year's nestlings, somehow remember how to get to their wintering grounds every Autumn and how to return to their breeding grounds every Spring.

Many have written about the intelligence of certain birds, or try to analyze why they do what they do. Especially now, during the time of coronavirus when people desperate to be out of the house are suddenly discovering the birds around them, this is a popular field.

Among the most intelligent of the birds are the corvids, including ravens, crows, jays and magpies. Corvids are among those that know how to use tools. They have an assortment of vocal sounds that mean different things, a type of language. Naturalist Bernd Heinrich was so fascinated by ravens and crows he wrote a number of books about them.

In researching this blog post I learned scientists turned to grackles to learn how often a bird blinks in flight. It never occurred to me a bird could blink, but I am not surprised grackles were studied. Grackles know how to forage, as I know when there is an invasion of 100 of them in my yard and my neighbors' several times a year. Grackles, like other blackbirds including orioles, are very intelligent. Grackles have learned that after mating season is over there is safety in numbers and more eyes mean a better chance of finding food.  

So are birds smart or silly when they fight over one side of my feeder while the other side has nothing in it, or when they ignore a feeder that might provide them an easier way to eat? My human brain isn't smart enough to provide an answer.

A Plague (of Grackles) on My Lawn

The invasion of my neighborhood began at approximately 3:45 on the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 7.

The day started with a heavy rain, which was predicted to end with snow showers, strong winds and plunging temperature. The change in air pressure was already giving me a massive sinus headache, which was why I was working from home.

As the wind picked up and the snow showers blew in I went out to dump a week's worth of compostable material into the pile before it froze. That's been one of the advantages of a winter short on snow but with lots of rain and, for the most part, temperatures above average - I could dump my compost into the big pile in the corner of my yard rather than start stockpiling pails on the enclosed porch until the snow melted and the pile defrosted.

Grackle invasion, Feb. 7, 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Coming back to the porch, I saw about a dozen robins and maybe half that many grackles on my lawn. Then I saw more grackles on a lawn on the next street. Then they were everywhere, flying from tree to tree over my head, and making a ton of noise.

I expected this and wasn't happy. I don't like grackles. They will attack the feeder, and each other, as they work to get at and devour all the food, keeping the birds that usually visit the feeder away in the process. If you see one grackle, you can be sure you'll soon have more. Grackles stay in very large flocks in winter, as do many other types of birds including the starlings, cowbirds, blackbirds (both red-winged and rusty in this part of the country) and even robins I've seen following grackle flocks. There is safety in numbers, a better chance of finding food with more pairs of eyes and, when hundreds of birds huddle together in a large space like a pasture or field, warmth.

When I've had invasions in my yard they have generally been just before or just after the snowfall of a more typical winter. In autumn the birds kick aside the fallen leaves to see what's underneath. In late February or March, any snow is generally melting, the ground is softening and the rising groundwater forces worms and insects to the surface.

When I speak of "grackles" I am referring to the common, or purple, grackle, so named because when the light shines on its iridescent black feathers they look purple. There are other types of grackles, depending on whether you are near the ocean (boat-tailed grackle) or in the southwestern part of the U.S. (great-tailed).

Friday's invasion came during an unusually (for this area) less-cold period. We have not been (as yet) set upon by the polar vortex and, as I said, we have not had much snow, certainly not the heavy snow topped by ice that had squirrels so desperate for food one year they could jump over the baffles, grab the feeders and try to pry open the protective caging.

Does increasing daylight trigger these invasions? Was the less-cold weather a factor? Is global warming to blame? I don't know.

Another view that can't begin to show the large number of birds.
Margo D. Beller)

Recently, there have been reports of thousands of grackles converging on areas across the country. In New Jersey, birders from Mattawan to Madison have reported thousands on their feeders and lawns. MH told me of a very large number he saw while running errands, less than a mile away from home, in one of our town's parks a day or so before the Friday invasion. Maybe that same group decided to check out my part of town.

Because I was standing in my backyard, those flying in went to the front yard and the yards across the street and beyond to hunt for food, as you can see in my photographs. The pictures can't begin to show the full extent and, of course, you can't hear hundreds of grackles making their usual noises - a kind of rusty-hinge cackle and a sharp "chuck!" - or the thunder of hundreds of birds taking off at once.

Like the starlings you will see in winter swirling around in the sky and looking like a single organism, grackles somehow can communicate to each other it's time to move, and fast. So when I stepped out the front door to take my pictures, several hundred took off from my property to the next yard, which is where I photographed them. The sight was fascinating as well as horrifying. Had I not seen the massing while my feeders were out there would've been dozens of big birds trying to get at the seed and the suet even though, with the exception of the house feeder, the feeders I use are not configured to allow big birds that don't like hanging upside down from feeding. But that doesn't stop them from trying.

As I watched from my front door all I saw were grackles, although other smaller black birds could've been among them. If you're a smaller bird of similar habit, following a large flock of grackles feeds and protects you, too. I do know that around the side of my house was the original group of robins, doing the same picking at the ground as the larger birds while staying well away from them. Did the robins follow the grackles or the other way around?

One last thing about grackles and their cohorts that is an unfortunate truth but a truth nonetheless - if 50 robins showed up on my lawn I'd find that charming, a sign that spring would soon be upon us. If I see 50 black birds, it looks evil. There is a reason Alfred Hitchcock used a "murder" of big, black American crows to attack children in a playground in his film "The Birds." To paraphrase one birder recently on the (private) NJ birder Facebook page, I tried to turn the grackles into cardinals to enjoy the spectacle but it just didn't work. Black is associated with evil and seeing hundreds of grackles covering the lawns and creating a major din was evil.

Groups of robins don't look nearly as evil. This picture was taken on
Long Island in November 2017.
(Margo D. Beller)

This was, without doubt, the biggest invasion with the largest number of black birds on my suburban lawn since our first year as homeowners, when I went to the backyard to investigate a creaking noise and found hundreds of grackles, starlings, cowbirds and perhaps some blackbirds, which took to the trees at my approach and stayed there, making a racket, until they started flying off in small groups for other areas that could accommodate such a large flock. If I'm not around, MH is under standing orders to watch for grackles and bring in all feeders if he sees an invasion underway.

Soon, all these birds - like the other, more colorful types I go out of my way to find in the woods during migration- will pair, mate, nest and create more. Then the large flocks will regroup.

The morning after the invasion, sitting on my porch in the cold sunshine, a group of about 30 grackles flew over my yard. They didn't stop, to my relief, as I watched the cardinals, woodpeckers and titmice at the feeders.

By the way, a flock of grackles is called a "plague." That's as good a way as any to define what I saw Friday.

The Robin

“The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show off. Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off - and they are nearly always doing it.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden 

One afternoon last week, when the temperature was unusually mild for mid-February and allowed me to wear a light coat instead of a parka, I was walking down my street and heard the "chuckle" of a robin overhead. I looked up. First a couple flew over, heading southeast. Then another few, then more. I started counting. I stopped at 25. Altogether it must've been 100 or so flying in small groups from the edge of the Central Park of Morris County.

November 2017 (Margo D. Beller)

Robins are considered a harbinger of spring, even though there are robins that will remain in the snowy, colder north as long as there are fruiting shrubs or the ground has thawed enough for them to pick at worms and insects.

The American robin is a thrush, like the hermit thrush, wood thrush and bluebird. Its cousins are the catbird and the mockingbird. Despite having the same name it is different from the European robin, which is more of a songbird. (The English colonists likely saw one and were reminded of the robins back home.)
  
I continued my walk and turned eastward. As I approached a large white pine girdled with English ivy (not poison ivy) several robins flew in and started thrashing around in what I guess was a feeding frenzy. What could they be finding, I wondered. I took a right and started southward toward my home and more robins, likely from the same flock that had passed over me earlier, were now heading back north, stopping at every holly or cedar they could find. Unlike the pines and spruces, ivy, holly and cedar have softer leaves. So these robins were going after - what? Likely seeds, fruits or insects that came out in the milder weather. 

Why the large flock? Safety in numbers. Grackles form large flocks in winter before pairing off to mate in the spring. Sometimes the large flocks include starlings, redwinged blackbirds and cowbirds. I never know when the flocks will invade my yard but when they come down it is to look under the leaf litter for insects or probe the soft ground or mob the bird feeders. Sometimes there are robins following along. Like the grackles, the robin's bill is more suited to pecking into soft ground than cracking a sunflower seed. Unlike the grackles they stay out of the feeders, which is why I don't mind seeing large flocks of this particular bird.

Robin in fruiting red cedar tree (Margo D. Beller)

Lately I've been seeing robins on my front lawn and those of my neighbors, with some grackles and starlings. On the day before our most recent snowstorm I drove down the driveway and found at least a dozen pecking into the grass.

In his book, "What the Robin Knows," author Jon Young says the robin is a "sentry" that can tell us about the health of our environment -- if we choose to slow down, listen and observe. When a human is respectful, the robin doesn't fly away (even if it does watch warily). So when I see several dozen robins feeding while walking down a street named for our first U.S. president, I stay away a respectful distance and watch and then, when I must move, I move slowly and make no threatening movements.

You can learn a lot watching a robin. Watching these robins I learned which fruiting shrubs I should consider for my yard to draw robins and other birds. I learned that owners of even the most manicured suburban lawn can't kill off all the bugs or poison the grass since otherwise the robins wouldn't be feeding. I've also learned that when you see a large flock of robins eating like there's no tomorrow, they might know more than you do about changing weather. Luckily for the robins there are shrubs where the fruits aren't palatable until after a few frosts.

The most important thing I've learned from the robin is that no matter how bad winter can be, spring is always around the corner.

Long Island, NY, November 2017 (Margo D. Beller)

 

Birds I Don't Like

Every year, after the winter birds have left for their summer homes, catbirds arrive to make nests in my shrubs. My trees are filled with little birds that have found old woodpecker roosts  or other natural crevices to make their nests. The box I put out for the house wren every year gets a tenant.

These are summer visitors I welcome. Others are not.

This year I've discovered common grackles nesting in my large, unshorn juniper hedge that acts as a screen between me and my neighbor. Deer have decimated the bottom of this hedge, which is why I leave the top part alone. Black-capped chickadees and other birds roost there for the winter and I know cardinals nest there during the New Jersey breeding season.

Delmarva female Boat-tailed Grackle (RE Berg-Andersson)

So to have grackles does not please me. They are large birds that, when not paired for breeding, congregate in huge flocks that are frequently augmented by blackbirds, cowbirds and starlings. They descend like a black cloud on my lawn several times each fall and spring. If left out the house feeder would be completely covered. I have also seen grackles attempting to get at seed from my encaged feeders. 

There are people who like grackles. Their black feathers show blue and brown highlights in the sun because of the luminescence. Jack Kerouac's mother, Memere, loved feeding the "black birds" after Jack dragged her down to Florida during one of those times he wanted to get away from the notoriety of writing "On the Road."

It doesn't take much for a grackle pair in a tree to turn into a huge flock in that and surrounding trees, crowding out other nesters. Grackles are opportunists, and like starlings and house sparrows - other birds I do not like for a variety of reasons - they will eat garbage left on the street as well as the worms they can pull out of the ground.

So I am not happy to see the three grackles (a pair and a helper?) walking along my lawn or pulling insects out of the crevices of my trees. 

These grackles, as I said, are common grackles. Along the eastern coast there are boat-tailed grackles, which are bigger and whose tails look like hulls. Unlike the common grackle female, which is the same color as the male but smaller, the boat-tail female is brown, such as the one above. That is usually how I know what kind I am seeing. The third type of grackle is the great-tailed grackle, a bird of the southwestern U.S.

It might seem strange that someone who enjoys walking around and looking at birds would have an antipathy to some species. My husband says all birds are God's creatures and have to feed where they can (although he does run out to grab the house and suet feeders when grackle "invasions" take place). 

I see no contradiction. After all, there are people I dislike but I don't hate the species.

The only bird I dislike more than the grackle is the cowbird. There are three types -- the brown-headed that I see in New Jersey; the bronzed I've seen once, in North Carolina; and the shiny cowbird. My comments pertain to the brown-headed.

Male Brown-headed Cowbirds, Cape May, NJ 2015 (RE Berg-Andersson)

I've written of my dislike of this parasitic bird before (please see my post of June 12, 2011; unfortunately, the link doesn't work). Besides hogging feeders, the female lays her eggs in the nests of other birds, usually one per nest. The cowbird chick usually hatches earlier and is much larger. It usually throws the other eggs out of the nest and dominates the attention of the parents. Then, somehow, it leaves the nest and knows to join up with other cowbirds, starting the cycle anew.

There is nothing sadder than seeing a cardinal being chased around the yard by a screaming, hungry cowbird chick. I usually see this every year. Actually, there is something sadder -- the Carolina wren pair I saw in another backyard one year, feverishly trying to feed the screaming "baby" chasing them that was twice their size.

Like the grackle, starling and blackbirds, the birds don't "sing" so much as croak out strange noises. The male cowbird is black with a brown head, the female a dull brown. They frequently pick at things in large flocks on roadsides, either with other cowbirds or alongside grackles and starlings.

About the only thing grackles and cowbirds are good for is diversifying the species. But these birds are tough and crowd out the smaller and weaker. Like other bullies, they are in no danger of disappearing anytime soon.

Prejudiced? Guilty.