Never Presume

On Saturday, Dec. 13, I went to Great Swamp. Since my retirement I usually don't go to popular birding spots on the weekends, but that day I was restless. A Barred owl had been reported for weeks in the area and I wanted to see it, even tho' I've seen and heard them before so it wasn't a life bird.

At this time of year owls are active. One of the very few things I miss about the days when I'd have to rise before 4 a.m. and catch a train to get me to work by 7 a.m. was hearing the hooting of the owls most commonly found in my area - Great Horned, Screech and Barred.

"Barred Owl" by btrentler is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

I did a lot of walking that day in the cold at the Swamp, and found a lot of birds including two bald eagles and northern harriers. But no owls. I have yet to find an owl unless it was pointed out to me. So when I started back to where I'd parked and saw a group of people up the road with their long lenses pointed in the same direction, I knew the owl had been spotted. I got to them very quickly.

At first I saw nothing, but one of the men literally positioned me in front of him and told me to start looking up a particular tree. Then I saw the bird.

I like Barred owls. Unlike the Great Horned or the Screech, this owl has dark eyes. It is grayish-brown and has streaking on its white breast - the barring - to help it blend into its surroundings. It looked serene as it rested in the tree. It looked at all of us, at times turned its head. I wished I'd brought my own long-lensed camera.

I asked the man, had he found this bird, high in a tree set far back from the road. No, he said. It turned out to have been another man I had briefly spoken to earlier on the road.

I did not ask the name of any of the people assembled there, including the man who pointed me in the owl's direction. Nor did I offer my name. 

I had always thought birders didn't do such things. We are too busy looking for the birds we seek to follow the social niceties. I thought it was some sort of unsaid "code," like never broadcasting the exact position of an owl found during the day. Owls are night creatures and need to rest by day undisturbed.

What birders DO do is help someone see the bird they found. Among other more kindly reasons it allows them to say the sighting could be corroborated. 

I repaid the man by telling him about the two mature bald eagles I'd seen up the road just minutes before. He rushed there to take pictures, which he was still doing when I drove off.

Then I did something I now regret. So happy was I to have seen this owl I went to a Facebook birding-related page I follow to thank the man publicly. I noted the road - not the exact location - of the owl and said we hadn't exchanged names "per protocol" because I thought that's just how things are done.

After the page's administrator published the post I began to get blowback.

My use of the word "protocol" was questioned. I responded that maybe that was too strong a word. Some questioned why I would think birders so impolite as to not be friendly. A few criticized me for, they claimed, giving the location of the owl and urged me or the administrator to take down the post. One such person, a man I've birded with and know by name, said the Barred owl had been a "sacrificial lamb" for years. I don't know what he meant by that but I responded that he knew the road I had been on is a very long road and I had not noted the exact location.

As for the person saying I should take down the post, I responded that I'd said nothing wrong and if the administrator allowed it to be seen, HE knew I'd said nothing wrong.

The last comment I saw was, "What a bizarre thing to choose to post."

As of this morning 35 people "liked" what I had written, so these people understood what I was getting at.

But I am now very sure of several things:

Birders can't be classified as being all the same. While there are things we all do, some will be nice and some will be nasty. Some will give names and some won't.

Never publicly state anything about finding an owl, even in the most general of terms. In fact, don't state anything on Facebook. Keep your thoughts to yourself.

Never think you know everything, because you don't. As I've often said about myself, I'm no expert. This experience reinforces that belief.

Finally, never presume.

Never presume there is anything like a 'birding code" even if in decades of birding you can count on one hand and have fingers left over the number of times you and someone else have given your names. 

Never presume you can be friends with another birder. Just like in high school there are cliques and there are outsiders. I consider myself one of the latter.

Thank you to the man who helped me find the Great Swamp Barred owl.

The Breakup

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

(attributed to Albert Einstein, but maybe not)

Merlin and I are no longer together.

As in any relationship, when it worked things were wonderful. I opened the birding app on my phone, Merlin started, it listened, it identified what we were hearing. It was still good when I would have to restart the birding app six or seven times to get it recording.

Birding without Merlin (RE Berg-Andersson)

Thanks to Merlin I knew to look for the Canada warbler hanging around my property, a first for my backyard. Another day Merlin told me there was a magnolia warbler somewhere, and then I found the bird. 

But Merlin could also be frustrating. It would hear things I didn't, or couldn't. It would also hear things that weren't there. If a police siren sounded Merlin reported a screech owl, thinking it was hearing its whinnying call. If a mockingbird was singing, Merlin would report the various calls the bird was making as actual birds - Carolina wren, cardinal, killdeer, even an osprey. (Sometimes, in the case of the wren, the actual bird would answer.)

Then, for some reason, things came apart. Once I could turn on the app and it would work just fine. Then it started crashing several times before it would work. Did the techs at the Cornell University Birding Lab change something to make it incompatible with my old phone? Whatever the cause I would go out, hear things in the field and Merlin wasn't helping me until I could get it to work. Then everything would be fine.

I knew there was a problem but I didn't want to face it.

The parting became inevitable, however, when the app stopped working completely at Great Swamp the other day. The swamp is a very large piece of property, most of it administered by the federal government. There is a "managed" area and a "wilderness" area. I had gone to the wilderness area, not to hike in the mud but to listen from the parking area. Lots of singing birds including several types of warblers. I knew what they were but put on Merlin to hear if there was anything else. It crashed. I tried several times and it continued crashing. I thought I was in a dead zone so I shut off the app. 

Then I drove to the managed area, where Merlin had worked before. I heard a bird I didn't recognize from the lot. Merlin let me down again, and again, and again. It was taking up a lot of my time, energy and bandwidth to try to get it working so I finally gave up. 

I heard close to 50 birds in my travels, but without Merlin it wasn't the same. Not knowing that one bird ate at me for the rest of my time in the field. (All the people who showed up on a nice weekday didn't help either.)

Goodbye, Merlin (RE Berg-Andersson)

When I got home I uninstalled the program, waited, then reinstalled it. I went into the backyard. Merlin crashed again. So I uninstalled it for good. 

My husband (MH) shrugged at this news. He had given up on Merlin some time ago, depending on me to identify what he was hearing. That made Merlin's failure all the more aggravating for me. "We need new phones," MH said, thinking maybe Merlin needed more than I could provide. Well, we need a lot of things but a phone is not high on the priority list at the moment.

To identify the unfamiliar bird I went back to what I would do pre-Merlin. I noted how the song sounded, then eliminated all the kinds of birds it likely wasn't. I noted the surroundings where I heard it - wet swamp. My best guess: prothonotary warbler, a bird of wet swamps I last heard in Florida in 2010. But was that what it was? It would've been nice for Merlin to confirm this for me but I'm tired of putting up with failure.

If we do get new phones, maybe I'll try Merlin again. Maybe.

UPDATE: My guess was wrong. I did not hear a prothonotary warbler. In a very different habitat recently I heard the same call and saw the bird making the call - an American redstart.  

Once Around the White Oak

Back in November I wrote a post about my dismay at finding another trail at the Great Swamp, the 7800-square-foot national wildlife refuge, was being boardwalked so that more people can walk through a variety of habitats without the danger of slipping on icy or muddy ground.

That was then. (RE Berg-Andersson)

This "managed" part of the Swamp has been slowly but surely planking paths to get more people walking, and perhaps limit where they walk. Too many people have a habit of walking wherever they feel like, with or without dogs and children, thus disturbing wildlife and eroding sensitive areas.

My husband (MH) and I need our exercise and I wanted to get us out of the house. So on the last Saturday of 2023 we decided to check out the finished pathway and compare it to when we last walked the 1-mile White Oak Trail, as it is called, in January 2016. At that time it was cold and the path was icy. We wore boots and carried our walking sticks. 

The path is a loop. You walk a bit and then can either go to the left into the woods, or to the right toward the many old white oaks. At that time there were more things growing in the area of the path, including trees, which is why we were surprised when we suddenly came upon the large trees.

THE White Oak, the one for which the trail is named, is a massive tree reckoned to be several centuries old. The tree was around when the road we drove up had a neighborhood along it. The tree was around when the federal government planned an airport on the property, and it was around when Helen Fenske and other activists got that plan blocked. The trail begins across the road from the education center named for her.  

This is now. THE White Oak is
to the left. (Berg-Andersson)

I have stood at the base of the redwoods in California's Muir Woods north of San Francisco and been impressed by the sheer size and majesty of the trees. I was similarly impressed by the White Oak, though it is not nearly as tall. 

I walked over to the tree and MH took my picture. I look puny, but I like the picture because it reminds me of my - and humankind's - place in the general sphere of things. Stand next to a mighty tree and you will gain some perspective. (At least I hope so.)

We continued on the trail, entered woods, walked through and around and eventually came back to the road and our car.

Fast forward eight years.

View from the boardwalk back towards the
Fenske center. (RE Berg-Andersson)

The boardwalking certainly kept our feet safe from the cold mud of the old trail, which we could see as we walked. I wore sneakers. MH used his cane for his balky knees. It was chilly from a breeze but in the 40s, normal for the time. However, for the previous two weeks temperatures had been above normal and it was very wet for December, so it felt colder by comparison. (Of course, had the temperature been normal all month we would've been walking in several inches of snow.)

We forked right, heading to the oak. Unlike last time we could see it quite clearly because where we were walking had had a controlled burn a few years ago to make a habitat conducive to woodcock. (This was before the boardwalk went in, of course.) The wide openness unnerved me, for some reason.

Another difference: When you stay on the boardwalk you can't get close to the White Oak. Perhaps that was by design. Weeds and other plants have grown in the area where I stood next to the tree. I suppose this was just as well because the old tree was showing signs of damage, either from age or from this autumn's major wind and rain storms. (I have a sizable brush pile at home thanks to those storms.) 

As MH took pictures I wondered how much longer the tree would last. 

We pushed on into the woods, where I felt more comfortable. By now the boardwalk gave over to cinders. Here were the birds, starting with a calling redshouldered hawk. The trees blocked much of the wind and we could see water everywhere from the last major storm less than a week before. This is what a swamp does - it collects water. However, on paved areas water runs off, flooding streets and backing up sewers, damaging the many residential areas now built on former barrier islands or meadowlands. (Ironically, the paved road in the Swamp where there were once houses was closed this day to car traffic because of flooding.)

Vernal pool (RE Berg-Andersson)

We then entered another cleared area I didn't remember being so clear, but this one was smaller and led back to woods that were again boardwalked and featured some benches. One bench was near a vernal pool. Vernal pools fill with spring rains and are essential to the lives of salamanders and wood frogs. What should've been empty was filled to overflowing from all the rain. I wondered if this would have an effect next spring but I leave the explanations to the experts. 

A woman at the Fenske center said that while many areas had been cleared for the boardwalk, the route of the trail had not been changed and it was still a mile long. It had seemed much longer.

We were lucky there had not been many people walking this trail when we were, either because of the cold or because they were doing other things in other places in the week between Christmas and New Year's, when schools are closed. I do not like noise when I am trying to look at a bird. Nor do I like having to get out of the way of a large group of people approaching. But MH, who has become very careful about where he hikes, said he'd be willing to walk this trail again in the spring when the migrating birds pass through. I hope my luck will hold at that time.

So maybe I was too hard on the boardwalking of this trail. However, I still believe my concern to be valid that too many natural areas "opened up" to all are being overrun by people who learned during the Covid pandemic that being outside can be therapeutic for them, if not for the land they walk upon.

When Too Much of a Good Thing Can Be Bad

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

-- Yogi Berra

As more trees are cut down and more buildings are put up in urban and suburban areas, I've noticed it is rare to have a static piece of open space. It has to feature more things for people to do rather than boring stuff like walking, listening to the birds or sitting quietly on a bench.

These pieces of open land have to include soccer fields, playgrounds, areas for "special needs" people, cross-country running tracks and the occasional field hockey rink. This is known as "mixed use."

Boardwalk under construction at Great Swamp
(Margo D. Beller)

I can understand the need for such facilities. As there is less open land and more people living in new developments, those creating a park know residents need a place to run the dogs or get the kids outside to play in a supervised environment. It adds to the "quality of life," and is an attractive incentive to move to that development.

What I don't like is the effect of such thinking at federal "refuge" areas. 

There is a school of thought that if land is opened to more people, they will want to protect it. Or people who approve the construction of a park want to justify the cost because you can't collect property taxes on land where no one lives or works. In a state like New Jersey, where property taxes are the highest in the U.S. because they are used to pay for so many services, the latter is no small thing.

So, for instance, you have the Central Park of Morris County, created out of the old Greystone Hospital that was closed because of horrendous conditions. Empty stone buildings were taken down, including the historic Kirkbride Building, and the fields opened for soccer, cross-country running, even disc golf. The state had sold the land to the county for $1 at a time when people were yelling for affordable housing to be put on this huge piece of property. The park people won out, thankfully for me and my small town abutting the land, and the park is usually filled with people. If I go there birding, it is early in the morning and never on a weekend during school months.

Here's another example of how the law of unintended consequences could come into play.

In the central part of northern New Jersey lies a 12-square-mile piece of open land that is known as the Great Swamp. Most of it is overseen by the U.S. government through the National Park Service, with sections that became county parks run by adjacent Morris and Somerset counties. Private groups, such as the Great Swamp Watershed Association, also have a hand in making sure people are enjoying themselves responsibly, although park rangers do the enforcing.

Great Swamp entrance, not far from a network of boardwalked
trails (Margo D. Beller)

Half of the property is maintained as "wilderness" where the land is left alone for the most part - mud, overgrowth and all. There are no cinders on the trail, no boardwalks, very few signs. There are birds - wonderful birds - in season as well as deer, fox, possum and sometimes bear, among others.

The other half of the swamp is "managed." Fields are periodically burned to get rid of invasive plants or to open an area to a field bird like the woodcock.The main road through this part was once a real residential street. Little by little the federal government bought up the land. As people moved out the houses were knocked down. That empty road has become a tour road, allowing cars to drive through the sanctuary. Half the road's stretch is paved, the rest unpaved. In another part of the managed area trails are boardwalked to allow people to get to blinds or, in one case I'll get to, an "observation" area.  One particular trail in this part of the Swamp tends to get a lot more people who "find nature" while wearing sneakers or other footwear not suited for mud. On weekends and holidays they bring their kids, who usually rush ahead of them shouting.

Overlook, replacing a blind
(Margo D. Beller)

I avoid this particular trail.

The Swamp, located in the midst of suburbia, serves the same function as New York City's Central Park - a large area in the middle of a concrete jungle where migrating birds can rest before pushing on or arrive to spend the winter. Back in the 1960s, no doubt in the name of "progress," there was a serious move to make the Swamp the New York metro area's fourth airport. Protesters, led by Helen Fenske, fought over many years to get that plan blocked. 

When the Friends of Great Swamp decided to leave its old center at one end of the tour road to refurbish a larger property at the other end, the new visitor center was named for Fenske.

It is what is now taking place across the road from the center that sparked this musing on unintended consequences.

The old center was small. It had a bookstore, a bathroom and a kitchen where visitors could get a cookie, coffee or a glass of water. It had a very homey air about it. Outside were bird feeders, which attracted many birds as well as some of their predators, including a redtailed hawk and a kestrel. 

However, as a place where it could draw large numbers of people for lectures and showcase everything the Swamp has to offer, it was considered insufficient. After the Fenske center opened the old house was taken down. 

The larger center does not offer coffee and cookies. It has a larger bookstore, more bathrooms and more meeting areas, but is not particularly homey. There are still feeders, positioned so those inside can look through a plate-glass window without disturbing the feeding birds.

Winter, Great Swamp (Margo D. Beller)

When the Fenske Center opened several small trails were put in. However, another, much longer trail was soon blazed on the other side of the road. It was dubbed the "White Oak Trail" because, as my husband and I discovered when we walked it one winter, it leads to some huge oak trees several hundred years old. That winter the trail was icy, and I'm sure it became muddy in spring.

Now, it is being boardwalked.

The managed part of the Swamp, as I said, has long had boardwalked trails. And, unfortunately, there was precedent for taking a trail and making it more accessible with boardwalks. One trail I walked all the time was boardwalked until you came to the woods. Then you continued on to a blind. This trail is now fully boardwalked. No more trying to get around ankle-deep water after heavy rain. No more tripping over tree roots. 

No more old blind either - it was removed for a large "observation platform" named for a local environmentalist. It has plenty of seating. More people troop over there, climb the steps, look over the tall reeds at the distant waterfowl. When I am up there, which isn't as often anymore, most of those who come up do not stay long because they are not birding, they are only walking to the end of a boardwalked trail.

On the White Oak trail, before it was paved.
(RE Berg-Andersson)

As for the White Oak trail, even tho it is not completely boardwalked people are already on it. Perhaps one day MH, with his balky knees, and I will do it, too, if only to see what birds are still hanging around the area and check in on the old oaks (like the one in the photo above).

But I think something is lost when you open up an area like this in the name of making it "accessible" and getting people "back to nature." More people mean more erosion, more noise, less opportunity to stand in a truly quiet area.

I guess I am being selfish in wanting governments to leave parks alone. During Covid, this part of the Swamp was one of the few areas not closed down by a misguided federal government and thus available to people who needed to get out during a time of great fear. We came, too, and found the tour road crowded with cars, people walking (many with dogs on a leash) and riding bicycles. People fought over parking places. Cars crawled along the road, just like during rush hour.

It is nowhere near that bad now. But it could become that way again, and that is what I dread. 

Dreaming

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.

-- Langston Hughes

It is a sunny Saturday morning, no wind, just a bit of bracing chill. I am walking in one of my favorite birding spots, the gravely tour road at Great Swamp. There are no cars passing through. I am alone except for the birds at this hour, the trees filled with warblers, kinglets, tanagers and cardinals while the nearby ponds and brooks have black ducks, mallards, hooded mergansers and wood ducks. At the overlook, a mature bald eagle flies over, the sun shining on its white head. A red-shouldered hawk is sitting on a branch in the near distance, looking for its breakfast.

This is all a dream.

I am on my porch as a nor'easter passes through, wanting to be elsewhere.

Great Swamp in winter (Margo D. Beller)

In reality, at this time of year the warblers and tanagers are gone and most of the other passerines are too busy looking for food to survive the winter to be sitting in a tree waiting for me to see them. The number of ducks that have come to the Swamp from their northern breeding grounds is increasing, so that part of my dream is true. And there is an eagle nest near the Swamp's overlook. 

Aside from being able to see a large number of birds easily, the biggest part of my fantasy is that I am alone.

In normal times, the Swamp, particularly the tour road area, is very popular with birders, dog walkers, bicyclers and some drivers, even in the early morning. But in these times of the coronavirus, the number of people walking or driving through has spiked, the fast-moving cars kicking up the dust. 

I can understand it. I feel it. People have been told by the Centers for Disease Control via the media that no place indoors is safe to be without a mask except for their homes. The adults are working in their homes five days a week, their children doing their school learning remotely. The urge to escape is strong.

The outdoors is safe, as long as people keep their distance. The drivers feel safe to be in their cars with the kids so they drive without a particular direction or plan. A park tour road, even an unpaved one, is a way to work off the restlessness. As for pedestrians, the CDC now says you don't have to wear a mask when taking a walk. You can take your children out of the house. You can walk in your neighborhood or, increasingly, the parks and natural areas where people like me hope to find interesting or unusual birds. That means if I want to see anything, I must get out there early before the crowds build.

Pileated woodpecker (RE Berg-Andersson)

And they do build. MH and I went to a large county park for the first time last week and found a small parking lot; we were lucky to get a legal spot. When we left the cars were lined up in the road waiting to come in. The easier, paved paths were packed with people trying to keep their distance from each other. The path we chose, deemed "moderate" but unexpectedly difficult for tenderfoot hikers like us (in part because of the wet from a heavy rain the day before), also had people, though not as many, some with dogs and more than a few on mountain bikes. No one noticed the birds MH and I were watching, including a pair of majestic pileated woodpeckers.

When I go to more familiar, unpaved areas I find paths that have been eroded by feet and mountain bike wheels, particularly the bikes. Being on a bicycle is another way to get out, get exercise and keep socially distant. But fast-moving bikes in the areas where I see birds can be dangerous (if they don't warn me they are coming) and irritating (when they ride through and the bird I'm trying to identify flies off), particularly when the path is narrow and I must step aside. Several times people, including those on bicycles, have stopped at a distance and asked me what I am watching. They tell me what birds they have seen. One said he had just bought binoculars and wondered what he could see with them. I am glad to talk to these people because I know they are respectful of nature. But most are not.

So I dream. I sit on my enclosed porch, the wind and rain of this year's first nor'easter hitting the windows. I have not put out bird feeders, to the puzzlement of a couple of winter-colored goldfinches flying to one of the feeder poles. Bad weather may keep me inside but the birds must still find food. When the weather is really bad they will hide in the bushes and ride it out. Then, when the storm has passed, it is my privilege to put out food so they can survive another day. To stave off the restlessness that is rising in me I think of areas where there are birds I've never seen. The "Four Corners" area of the U.S. southwest. The Florida Keys. Point Reyes north of San Francisco. Even northern New Hampshire, where the White Mountains are home to boreal chickadees and gray jays.

(Margo D. Beller)

All are places I can't visit as long as a virus ranges that could kill people like MH and me.

When the sun comes up tomorrow, I'll have put the feeders out and then will go somewhere, perhaps the Swamp, for a walk and some birding. I'll listen for the hikers, bikers and cars that, like the birds, pick up in numbers as the sun rises. If people ask, I'll tell them what I'm watching. 

Once I get home, in my head I'll be elsewhere.

Free as a Bird

I am the first to admit that compared with what is going on in the rest of the world during this coronavirus plague time, I've gotten off easy. I have not lost my job, I continue to earn my pay, my health is good and MH recovered from what was fortunately a mild bout of the illness. Still, we're afraid. The virus is out there and it is very contagious.

And there is the mental effect. I hate to sound like a whiner but I have been generally depressed by the hoops we must now jump through for something as basic as going to the market, and have been afflicted by a restless feeling of isolation.

Tempe Wick Reserve, Mendham, NJ (Margo D. Beller)

Having state and county parks closed has deprived me of places nearby to visit on my lunch break or on the weekend. It has forced restless neighbors and strangers to take to my quiet street if they need to get out,  creating more traffic on sidewalks and noise as I try to work. I stopped walking on my town's roads weeks ago because it is depressing to have people - almost all of whom are not wearing face masks, unlike me - run into the street with their pets or children, or cross it entirely so we don't come too close.

Social distancing has made us all anti-social, or maybe just scared.

So I've been staying home, restlessly working or sitting on my enclosed porch, doing chores in the yard and watching the birds at the feeder. Until this past Saturday.

It is mid-April and I'm seeing reports the birds are starting to make their way north. Early migrants - pine and palm warblers, chipping sparrows, phoebes, redwinged blackbirds - are already here. There will be birds passing through that, for whatever reason, won't be interested in what my yard has to offer. So I must go find them.

Necessity is the mother of invention. While most of my usual birding spots are closed to me, I decided to go to some still open and relatively close to my town, including a new (to me) place I learned about from birder reports.

So off I flew off on a rainy, chilly, gray day when I figured most people would stay indoors and allow me to bird in peace. I was right.

First stop, a local park in a different part of Morris County (not every town closed local parks; mine did). This turned out to be a wide-open space with a flat, grassy path that was, unfortunately, sopping wet and muddy from that morning's rain. The many flickers, cardinals, savannah sparrows (another early migrant) and the great blue heron that flew over did not mind the wet and neither did I.

(Margo D. Beller)

Second stop, a pond on the border between Morris and Somerset counties, where I could park on a side street not far from the entrance to the federally run Great Swamp. There is a lot of fast-moving traffic on the road I must cross from where I parked to the pond but it is a very good area to see birds in all seasons, including ducks and other waterfowl. This time there were five different types of swallows zipping around - large purple martins, forked-tailed barn swallows, white-breasted tree swallows and at least one each of the brown northern roughwing swallow and the smaller, gray bank swallow. Across the road I found palm and yellow-rumped warblers in and around the shrubs. A birder taking pictures of the swallows was eager to talk so we traded information and told stories from a socially approved distance. I realized how much I missed talking to another birder.

Back at the car I drove to the end of the street, where there is a turnaround close to the Great Swamp's entrance road. In a tree near where I parked I found more palm warblers plus a couple of pine warblers and, wonder of wonders, a larger, gray sparrow with white trim on its tail and an eye ring - vesper sparrow! I'd never have seen it driving on the entrance road.

Finally, while many of the swamp trails have been closed, the main tour road is still open. I made several stops, careful when I walked or drove around people. One birder in his car told me of the kestrel in a tree on the edge of a field. I found it. In another area where I once found a barred owl I stopped and found my first-of-season eastern towhee and veery plus a field sparrow, among others. At the overlook, two distant female northern harriers passed over the trees, hunting.

I was having so much fun I hated to go home but cold, fatigue and hunger were taking their toll. I made a few short stops on the way home, mostly to listen from the car, and discovered something odd: Many people seemed to me to be driving the back roads aimlessly, for instance taking a road that ends at a trail head. As I sat by that trail head listening to the Canada geese, I watched a number of cars come in, turn around and leave without stopping. Maybe their GPS told them the road went through, which it hasn't for decades.

Great Swamp tour road (Margo D. Beller)

Or maybe this was a way for people to get away from home and avoid others without worrying about catching the virus, the ultimate in social distancing.

It makes me wonder what life will be like when we return to "normal." For now, at least, my restlessness is gone.

Birding in the Time of Coronavirus

Sitting on my porch, I am glad to hear the robins, cardinals, Carolina wrens and other birds calling at dawn, even if dawn is now an hour later thanks to Daylight Savings Time. The forsythia, daffodils and hyacinth are in bloom, the shrubs are budding and the crocus and snowdrops are fading.

It is a wonderful time of year. But it is also the time of coronavirus.

The wide-open space of Great Swamp (Margo D. Beller)

This virus is not new, but the strain, found in 2019, is - highly contagious, easily spread, first found in the Chinese market city of Wuhan when it passed from animals to people.

So, unfortunately, we have a new word in our vocabulary - COVID-19. 

This plague has been virulent in coastal cities, including New York, because they are hubs for travelers and commuters who have brought the virus in from elsewhere or bring it home. There is no vaccine for it and most who will contract it will have mild, almost flu-like cases. Those who are particularly vulnerable to being deathly ill are older people with pre-existing conditions.

While people in the cities have been freaking out, the suburbs with their office parks have not, at least to me. But with many schools closed and markets selling out of bread, toilet paper and cleaning supplies including hand sanitizer, that may change. MH went to the market for cans of soup, as he did before Hurricane Sandy. But this time he was too late - shelves were depleted (except for two cans of soup he found) and lines at the register were long. He said everyone was calm.

Last Monday, having two risk factors and having to travel to work on public trains where an increasing number of people have been wearing masks (or an equivalent) and gloves, I was getting very worried about my health. I stayed home Tuesday. That day we learned someone in our building tested positive for the virus. My office was ordered to work from home for the foreseeable future.

Start of a boardwalk trail at Great Swamp (Margo D. Beller)

So I've been at home, relieved of my backpack burden. But after the first few days of taking dawn walks or sitting on the porch after putting the feeders out in daylight rather than darkness I started feeling cabin fever and knew that I would have to get out at least one weekend day.

While MH refused to budge, I left Saturday morning for the wide open spaces of Great Swamp in hopes of finding one of the earliest returning migrants, the phoebe. I was not disappointed. I was also cheered by finding bluebirds and a tree swallow. Overall, as far as birding went, it was quiet. But to my surprise I found a lot of people who also felt the need to get out, either to go birding (with binoculars or large-lensed cameras), walk their dogs (on leash in a natural wildlife preserve) or travel with their children.

Normally I don't like being around other people while I seek out birds, but this time I was glad to see others had decided, like me, to put aside their concerns, stay away from their phones and televisions, and just get out for some fresh, cool air and sunshine.

The Passaic River as I listened to frogs from a bench (Margo D. Beller)

My first stop was on a boardwalk trail, which always draws people. A few of them pointed out the phoebe I'd been hearing, giving me a chance to see this welcome visitor. At my next stop, however, I was completely alone except for the chorus of spring peepers, tree frogs, the occasional pickerel and the small turtles known as sliders. I sat on a bench looking at the Passaic River and listened to the sounds of spring.

My last stop was the Great Swamp tour road, which also had many people walking or driving through. On my way home I drove through Jockey Hollow and was amazed by the large number of people, alone and in small groups, hiking the tour road or the trails. These were not birders - no cameras or binoculars - but people who felt the great need to GET OUT on a very nice day. Like Great Swamp, Jockey Hollow is a federally run facility and I was glad both were open. (Other parks, such as Duke Farms, had shut their gates and closed for at least two weeks because of the virus.)

I got home to MH tired, hungry but glad I had been out for a few hours. I would advise others to be careful, wash your hands but go outside and get away from the bad news every so often to save your sanity.

The Meadow and the Swamp

In 1966, when Cornell University's Laboratory of Ornithology published "Enjoying Birds Around New York City," it included only two pages (out of 171) on New Jersey. At the top of the list is Troy Meadows, located in Parsippany-Troy Hills Township, which happens to be just north of my town. 

Boardwalk, Great Swamp management area
(Margo D. Beller)

The short listing calls it "a justly famous freshwater marsh" and that "though gradually losing to development, it is still our most extensive freshwater marsh." However, by the time of the 2004 revised edition of  "A Guide to Bird Finding in New Jersey," William J. Boyle Jr.'s describes the state of Troy Meadows this way, in part:

Because of the proximity of I-80 and I-280, which significantly reduced the size of Troy Meadows, it is now difficult to hear the early-morning calls of distant marsh birds due to the traffic from the highways. Nearby development and consequent siltration have reduced the value of the area to wildlife. Although it is seldom visited by birders anymore, it remains an interesting and worthwhile area to bird, and can still produce many of the expected marsh birds.  

The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge is not mentioned in 1966 because at the time there was not much of it. MH remembers one designated trail at the end of a busy road - a road that is now incorporated into the refuge. There are several such incorporated roads. As time goes by the people whose homes were allowed to stand sold them to the federal govenment and went elsewhere. The homes were taken down and the land left open. By 2004, Boyle was referring to it as a "haven for wildlife in the midst of southern Morris County's ever-expanding suburbia."

Great Swamp in winter (Margo D. Beller)

Why did Troy Meadows contract while Great Swamp expand from one trail to 8,000 acres that include a managed area and a wilderness area?  

Both are threatened by over-development. Part of one area of the Swamp owned by Morris County as a park comes right up against backyards and runs along power lines. The federally owned part of the Swamp - the greater part of those 8,000 acres - provides plenty of room to wander without seeing human habitation. (This can be both good and bad, and it is always a good thing to hike with a companion.)

From my own birding experience, I am comfortable hiking throughout the Swamp, including the area where volunteers come maybe once a year to cut back fallen trees and clear the trails. The managed area has a tour road, boardwalked trails and is very popular with suburbanites who want their kids to experience "nature" in small doses. The wilderness area, as the name implies, tends to be muddier and more of a challenge, tho' I find the birding as good if not better than in the managed area.

I am not comfortable at Troy Meadows, even though at 3,000 acres it is considerably smaller than the Swamp. (That's one reason you won't see any photographs from there. We leave our cameras at home.) There are many access points onto the Meadows property. Some are off well-traveled roads but some are at deadends that are rather secluded and frequently used by people not there to go birdwatching. At least that's been my experience. (One time MH and I were walking an unpaved trail when several cars of area college-age kids drove by to what was once an old rifle range to hang out.) Another entrance, in the middle of a housing development, takes you into wild marsh. You might find roughlegged hawks flying over the power lines in winter or sparrows and warblers in the brush. But you'll also find the walking is difficult, there is no path per se and the grass will need a good mowing in late summer. 

Great Swamp vista, management area (Margo D. Beller)

Both areas were created by a receding glacier to form what was once Lake Passaic. But now the Great Swamp is in a part of Morris County where the people tend to have more money. In the late 1950s there was a plan to put a fourth New York City-area airport in the area. A citizens group led by housewife Helen Fenske rattled enough chains and bent enough ears to get the plan stopped. When a new visitor center was built, it was named for Helen Fenske.

The Meadows' Helen Fenske is Robert L. Perkins, Jr., who died just last year. Keeping "development" at bay in  Parsippany-Troy Hills is a much more difficult matter. (The township is an amalgamation of several smaller towns, the largest two of which became the new name.)

When I was growing up in NY there was the snooty Upper East Side and the wannabes on the Upper West Side. So to me those in Parsippany are those who wanted to show they'd "made it." Being one of the largest townships in the area, development is rampant and the McMansions have sprouted like weeds.

Perkins started agitating around the same time as Helen Fenske. However, as you can see from the timeline of Wildlife Preserves, the group he led, results have been mixed.

Late 1930s— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed Troy Meadows as a national wildlife refuge to serve the greater New York metropolitan region, but the designation was never granted. Since the early 1950s, Troy Meadows has been reduced to half its original size. Troy Meadows continues to be endangered by development all around it.

1952— Wildlife Preserves was founded and incorporated by a group of philanthropic conservationists, including the organization's long-time President and Executive Director- ("Bob") Robert L. Perkins, Jr. of Tenafly, NJ. The fledgling corporation began fundraising from within and outside of New Jersey and started buying farm lots and meadowlands in the Passaic River Basin, including land in Troy Meadows, Hatfield Swamp, and along the Whippany, Rockaway, and Passaic Rivers in East Hanover, Hanover, and Parsippany-Troy Hills.  

Redheaded woodpecker, Colonial Park, NJ
(RE Berg-Andersson)

So Troy Meadows is owned by Wildlife Preserves, a private group, with some property owned by the State of New Jersey. Although considered an important area by the federal government, the feds have no ownership. The Swamp is mainly federally owned and patrolled, with large gates that block roads to vehicle traffic after hours, a large ranger station and lots of patrols in 4-wheel-drive vehicles. Troy Meadows is maintained by individuals who have to repair and replace things on their own through fundraising. As I said, there are no gates to keep area kids out. 

Here's another difference: Nowadays the Swamp is better known. However, those who see reports out of Troy Meadows, such as those compiled by veteran Meadows hiker and naturalist Jonathan Klizas through his mocosocobirds.com website, flock there. There are now breeding redheaded woodpeckers in the meadows (in the Swamp the reports are not as consistent). Recently, a Connecticut warbler - a notoriously difficult bird to find when it passes through New Jersey on its way south, was sighted there, as were Lincoln's sparrows. On the same mid-October day, 43 species of birds were found at the Swamp; 42 were found at Troy Meadows.

You can believe that Troy Meadows was a well-known marsh bird spot visited by famous ornithologists back in the day, including Roger Tory Peterson and Ludlow Griscolm. That's why, as Klizas told me, work continues to be done by Len Fariello, the manager of Wildlife Preserves, to keep the Meadows a meadow. That means putting up deer "exclosures" around the interior of the property to protect it from overbrowsing, planting trees and keeping the runaway phragmites under control.

So while you may have to work harder to shut out the surrounding noise and people watching you from their back decks, birding the Meadows won't waste your time. MH and I will have to try it again soon. 

Don't Take Your Guns to the Swamp (from April 16, 2011)

(This is another old column that got obliterated and I am now republishing. I've since learned how to put in more pictures as well as links.)

It has only been in the last couple of years that I have begun bringing a camera with me when I go birding. Until then I was content to have only my 10x50 Nikon binoculars and use the camera in my brain to record notable images.

With digital cameras suddenly everyone became a nature photographer. That's fine if you are trying to prove you saw something unusual such as this pinkfooted goose my husband, MH, photographed early in March in a private park in Washington Township (Bergen County), NJ.

But a lot of photographers are doing it for profit, either by selling those photographs as stock images to be used in calendars and the like or to put on their personal photography pages and garner the ensuing glowing comments.

If you want to do that, fine. But what I CAN NOT STAND is when someone takes his or her gun-like lens and aims it practically in the face of a bird, creating unnecessary stress and ruining it for other birders when the bird takes off.

There have been many instances of this selfish and cruel behavior on the part of people who want a picture that badly. For instance, a few years ago the birding lists were full of angry birders screaming about a rare boreal owl in Central Park that had been there for a few weeks but finally left after a man set up a camera and used a bright flash (by day, yet) to take a picture practically in the face of the roosting owl.

I have witnessed several such instances, two of them at the Great Swamp in New Jersey.

An aside: Fifty years ago, the plan was to make this 7,500-acre gem straddling Morris and Somerset counties into an airport. Environmentalist Helen Fenske created a grassroots movement to stop that plan. Every time a plane flies over the swamp I shudder. The new visitor center is named for Helen Fenske.

Another birder and I were at the Heronry Overlook parking lot watching a mature bald eagle sitting in a tree close by. Suddenly, we saw a man with a rifle-like camera lens walking in an off-limits area closer and closer to the tree, snapping away, until the eagle flew off.

We started yelling at him and he was completely amazed and confused at our reaction. What was the big deal? He only wanted a picture of an eagle. (The eagle eventually returned after the idiot left, but to a tree much farther away and only identifiable thanks to its white head.)

The second example involved a couple of long-earred owls that decided one winter to roost in a cedar tree very close to Pleasant Plains Road, practically at eye level, not far from the Fenske office.

The swamp is not far from my home so my husband and I drove over and found the owls easily thanks to a couple of birders there. Most birders know to give owls some space during the day since they are resting for the night's hunting. Not the guy there with another gun-like lens, standing real close to the alarmed owls as he took his pictures.

This begs the question, why stand that close if you are using a telephoto lens?

I asked him that question, and told him to get the hell back across the road. MH and the man's wife were afraid we were going to get into a fight, and it was very close. But he moved back. MH and I took our own pictures from across the road. I thought I had gotten through to Mr. Photographer until I looked in the rear-view mirror as we drove off and there he was, up in the owls' faces again. I wasn't surprised to learn not long after that at least one of the two had flown off. I can only hope the second owl, when it left, hadn't been scared off by other inconsiderate birders lusting for that special photograph.

There hasn't been an extended stay by a long-earred owl along that part of Great Swamp since, as far as I know. Owls have long memories, too.