Heat, Humidity and House Wrens

When it is so hot and humid outside I must stay indoors with the air conditioner on for most of the day, I try to imagine what it is like for the house wrens in my yard.

This past week the western half of the United States has been baking under brutal heat, with wildfires sparked. Meanwhile, in my half of the United States, we just got through more than five days where the temperatures were in the 90s and the humidity made the air feel like 105 degrees F.

House wren (Public domain photo)

Weather like that is dangerous. Weather like that keeps people like me inside and extremely uncomfortable unless I have the air conditioner on.

In weather like that I can't even keep a water dish outside because when the sun hits it late in the day the water becomes undrinkable. I can only go out to walk in the very early morning when the air, while still humid, is 20 degrees cooler than what it is forecast to hit for the high. If it is raining in the early morning, as it has for a couple of mornings, I am stuck inside and start to feel caged and anxious, not the best company for my husband.

In weather like that I feel sorry for the First Responders and others who must be outside to do their jobs. I used to travel to work but I would leave in the early morning, sit on a (usually) air conditioned train and then walk into an air conditioned office. The heat would not become an issue until my walk home from the train. But I was younger then and didn't think twice about being in an inferno. Now, I do.

This most recent heat wave wasn't the first this summer. There was a heat wave in June. And there will be a new one starting July 14. And August is weeks away. You can blame El Nino, La Nina, climate change, global warming - whatever you want to call it, it's hot. The Earth won't cool anytime soon without drastic actions.

So I look at the house wrens with amazement and admiration.

I could tell when Mother Wren was sitting on eggs because she would zip into the box and disappear for long periods of time. If it was especially hot, she would sit at the edge of the box and stick her head out of the opening. Then, she'd fly out to get herself a meal while her mate called from nearby, watching the nest.

She sat inside the box because that is what she has to do to protect her young. She keeps cool by panting, sitting by the box opening but also by flying into the shade to hunt for her food. Unlike people, she doesn't have any choice in the matter of how she spends her days. 

Two days ago I could tell the eggs had hatched because she started making more trips into and out of the box. Even Father Wren came to the opening and leaned in, feeding young. More recently he has gone in and out of the box, tho' not as quickly and surely as his mate. They are regurgitating food into the young birds' mouths and taking poop out to keep the nest clean.

Just as I saw with this year's first brood, soon the young will get big enough to move around the inside of the nest and will start jostling each other to get the food when the adults bring it.

Meanwhile, on the other side of my enclosed porch, I've seen only one hummingbird, a male, back in June. It came to the pink coral bell flowers, ignored the feeder I had out and flew off. I've seen none since. Usually I see females in July, when they are also seeking food for their young. Unlike the house wrens, male hummers don't hang around once mating is accomplished.

Where are the hummingbirds?

Toad, 2024 (Margo D. Beller)

So far this month I've seen nothing, and the pink flowers that had been blooming have faded and are mostly done thanks to an unusually hot summer that prompted many of my flowers to bloom at the same time instead of one after the other. The apple tree that provided me with enough fruit to make eight cups of sauce had its last apple plucked by a squirrel on July 5, about a week earlier than usual. Over the years the last apple day has been getting earlier and earlier as the weather has gotten hotter and hotter.

Luckily, the hot weather has also brought out another important source of food for young birds - insects, as well as insect eaters such as dragonflies. And toads.

Last week, a day after several weeks' worth of grass growth was finally cut, I went on the patio and pushed at the cover on my charcoal grill to tuck it in. Something jumped. It was an American toad, common in the east. It was dark and blended into the black cover's folds in the shade where I had put the grill. When I moved the grill it jumped out to the paving stones. 

I am guessing the combination of losing the long grass and the high heat and humidity forced it to find shelter where it could. It hung around for long enough to determine I wasn't going to bother it (I was watching from inside) and then it was gone.

This is not the first time we've had a toad visit our patio in July. 

(RE Berg-Anderson)

In fact, this American toad showed up on the fourth of July 10 years ago, tho not in the folds of the grill cover. It had somehow gotten into the bottom section of the composter I keep on the patio. When I moved the composter to sweep out leaves that had gotten behind it, out jumped the toad.

I can't imagine how this 2014 toad, bigger than the one I discovered last week, managed to get inside the composter. But out in the wild, I guess any port in a storm will do. I expect Mr. Slither to show up any day now, basking in the heat of the paving stones.

Sunday on the Porch, With Junior

It is quiet on the porch this Sunday morning. Despite the rain I have windows open and it is cool enough to not need the fan to air things out. It is quiet except for the sound of the rain, the occasional call of a jay or cardinal or a car driving on the next street.

I am sitting with my coffee and trying to wake up after a long Saturday visiting with friends in the City. I turn my head and there is the immature ruby-throated hummingbird that has been visiting the feeder for the last couple of days. It is grayish green on the back with white on the front. Since this could be either a male or a female (and even be more than one bird) I have been calling this visitor Junior.

Juvenile ruby-throated hummingbird
(photo courtesy Birds of North America Online) 

This has been the wettest summer I can remember. Some of my plants have thrived - the tropical cannas, the peppers in their pots, the basil, the coleuses - while others have struggled. The joe-pye weed I grow near the hummingbird feeder has not produced many flowers or grown very tall, likely because of the nearly continual deluge of rain off the garage roof above it. The pink flowers of the coral bells and the perennial geranium are long gone. In a sea of green shrubs, the red feeder and the red ant moat above it stand out like a beacon.

And yet hummingbirds have been few in the backyard. Junior has only been coming the past few days. During the usual peak (for my yard) period of July I saw one. That might've been because of the heat. I can't sit long on the porch, even with the fan, when it feels like close to 100 degrees. Also, while the feeder is in the shade, the sugar water can still go bad if not changed after a week, and there were times I did not do that. (When a hummingbird hovered and then flew off, I knew it was time to clean the feeder.)

In July, the males, having mated and created the next generation, are gone or ready to leave. By August, the females have raised the young and shown them how to fend for themselves. Then the female adults leave. So by this time of the month the juveniles are what come to feed before instinct tells them it's time to head south for the winter. (When I say I have "peak" visitors in July it is females who need to fuel up as they seek protein food - insects - for their young.)

Canna flowers (Margo D. Beller)

What I need is a better garden of flowers attractive to hummingbirds and not attractive to deer. Right now the small yellow-orange flowers of jewelweed are blooming near streams, offering hummers a meal. Gardens with varieties of red - joe-pye, phlox, purple coneflowers, cardinal flower and zinnias -  I have visited in the last month have drawn anywhere from one to four hummingbirds at a time, fighting each other over the same flower despite all the food around them.

I do have more flowers that attract hummingbirds in the front yard. I just bought a purple coneflower, the light pink flowers of the Rose of Sharon are finally opening, the sedum are not yet ready to bloom but are close, there are the purple flowers of the butterfly bush and the bee balm and there are the red flowers of the cannas. Cannas are usually grown for their foliage but I like the flowers. One year I opened the front door and there, through the storm door, I could see a hummer at one of the flowers. It saw me, flew to the storm door, looked at me and then flew off. But I'm not always looking and most hummers are skittish and fly off at the slightest movement.

Soon summer will finally be over. I've already taken in my wooden wren house so it doesn't rot in the rain, and the house wren brood at the birdhouse next door are gone. (What I have seen is a lot of squirrel activity in the trees, gathering nuts. When one squirrel knocked the birdhouse, I knew the wrens must be gone because the parents would never have allowed a squirrel to get that close.) School resumes in a little over two weeks, and the daylight is noticeably shorter.

The leaves will fall, the flowers will be done and the hummers will be gone until next spring, when I hope for better weather conditions and more a more favorable environment to bring them to my feeder.

Hot Enough For Ya?

I have lost count of the number of extremely hot and humid days we have had in my part of northern New Jersey, part of the New York City metropolitan area, this week. Four? Five? Does it matter when the prediction is for more of the same?

I suppose temperatures 10 degrees above the normal for this time of August and humidity more likely in a tropical rain forest than the former temperate zone that is New Jersey is a good thing - compared with killing floods once again striking Louisiana a few short years after Hurricane Katrina.

How bad has it been? So bad that finally, after four years of working at home in an office that faces southwest, MH and I bought curtains and rods and he spotted and assisted me as I installed them all. Yes, I used a power drill. Yes, I stood atop a step ladder hoping I would not topple over. Yes, I used a level to make sure everything was straight.

Office curtains Aug. 2016 (Margo D. Beller)

It was only this morning I realized the patterns don't exactly match. However, the room is dark and helping the AC and fan make it cooler.

The heat and humidity have not stopped the goldfinches and chickadees from visiting the dwindling thistle seed in the sock feeder. I have not been able to stand on the enclosed porch for very long, even with a fan on, to see if the refreshed hummingbird feeder is drawing anything, although I notice the joe-pye weed is flowering and that has brought the bees.

Meanwhile, the same heat and humidity that makes me feel like the walking dead until I put the house AC on is doing wonderful things to the plants I have outside in the sun and on that enclosed porch.

The cannas, which are tropical plants, have grown large and their foliage is bigger than dinner plates. They are also sending up flower shoots, red trumpets that will be attractive to hummingbirds and others. The orchid I keep on the back porch has been loving the humidity and showing me its three white flowers all summer, and the Chinese evergreen is sprouting new leaves, something it doesn't do much when it is inside for the winter in a heat-dried house.

But it is the peppers that have really thrived.

I have one plant I planned to keep alive over the winter inside until I discovered it was infested with white flies. It got moved to the one sunny spot on the enclosed porch until it became too cold, at which point the worst foliage was removed and it was brought back inside and kept in a dim corner apart from the other plants until I could finally put it back in its usual sunny outside spot - at which point the temperature dropped. So this plant has been through a lot and I finally cut off the top of it and hoped for the best.

Italia peppers, Aug. 2016 (Margo D. Beller)

Well, below are two of the three fruits I have picked from this plant once the peppers turned red. (This is a sweet pepper and gets sweeter when redder.) The top pepper is what I usually get, most summers. The bottom is a monster that is the biggest I've ever grown.

Peppers, even sweet peppers like these, like it hot. I'm not sure if the humidity is helping them directly but the nightly thunderstorms we've been having during this period have kept down the white flies and the aphids that usually bother my other plants.

At the farm markets, the tomatoes have started coming in and I have several on the window sill to ripen. The zucchinis are huge and somehow, despite the heat, there is still lettuce and cucumbers and even rainbow chard to be had.

The people who don't believe in global warming say, "It's summer. Get over it." Those who see this tropical weather as unnatural hope it doesn't foretell a return of the polar vortex and above-average snow this winter, as some predict.

As usual, there is good and bad with everything. So as the plants thrive, I wilt.

Random Thoughts

It is too hot and humid to go outside. If I don't see a bird from my kitchen window or porch, I don't care.

There are house wrens feeding chittering young in the nest box I hung in the apple tree. The babies must be pretty big because the adults can't get inside unless they make a determined effort to get to one being pushed aside by its stronger siblings.

Before Saturday's expected 100 degree heat, I went out just after dawn to water the garden plots. Behind the andromeda, where the house shields the area from strong winds and the sun is only there early, the catbird was not sitting on the nest I'd discovered by accident when watering another time. I looked inside and saw at least two newborn nestlings.

Catbird, Duke Farms, June 2012

Once in the house I stay there. If I see a hummingbird at the feeder during the short, early time I am on the porch, I consider myself lucky.

I am lethargic today. The house windows have been closed for days. The only "fresh" air that has come in has been air-conditioned. It makes it cooler upstairs to keep the windows closed, but the upstairs is still far warmer than the downstairs. We work downstairs in summer, but now that I am working at a job from my home office, the AC must be put on by mid-afternoon.

The mulch I put down has cut back the weed population severely except in two areas. I have no inclination to deal with it. I wish my nephew and his girlfriend, who when not in college run a landscaping business in NH, lived closer. I could use their strong, young backs. His father, my husband's younger brother, works for a group protecting forests but he complains he almost never gets the time to go outside because of the administrative burdens. He spends off-time in a cover band, singing in a Bruce Springsteen style. As his children have grown and left the house it, the motorcycle and the tattoos help him forget he is aging, too.

The compost pile is out of control, and MH and I will be looking at composters today. He promises to help me dig out the finished stuff and shuttle what's left (minus the worms) from the far corner of the yard where the fence is falling over to the place near the back door where I will now keep everything. It will be a back-breaking job for both of us and I don't look forward to it. I wonder what I will use all that finished compost on anyway. I will have to pull down the deer netting to set it around the plants.

The neighborhood's lawns are brown and there have been few lawn services here this week. Even they know when to quit. The plants I water are hanging on but those at the edges are wilting in the heat. Most people have stayed indoors, and it is unfortunate I don't feel up to going outside unless I have to (as I did Saturday morning) so I can enjoy the quiet and desolation. But I, too, stay inside and when the weather inevitably cools and I can open windows I will hear the noise of others and their dogs.

I feel quite old. A friend cancelled coming out this weekend after hearing the weather forecast. When I told her we'd be cooking out anyway she warned me we have to be careful "at our age." I do not want to think about that. Three weeks ago I pulled muscles in my lower back that created constant pain, so bad that when I put a heating pad on too high I did not feel the first-degree burn until too late. I could not stand without pain, and now I had a burn that MH had bandage nightly.

Thoughts of Job were constant, particularly a week later when my husband and I went on a long hike in the Pine Barrens and we were bitten all over our legs. The back pain had been less that day but I was quite tired by the time we got back to the car and the next day I could barely move. Just being able to put on my socks in the morning was a triumph.

I got an unpleasant foretaste of what it will be like when I am truly old and need help from others for basic things. Three weeks ago my independence was threatened. MH was a great help, but in the end the only one who could help me was me, and I have worked myself back to 99%.

But at "our age" healing is slow and there is still stiffness. Heat and humidity are bad enough, but this restlessness caused by taking it slow with my back remains even as the burn has healed, the bites have faded and I can now rise from bed in the morning without using a cane.

I have friends at "our age" who are still looking for a job after a year. The longer that joblessness lasts, the easier it is for potential employers to believe there is something wrong with them and hire someone else, particularly someone younger who will work for sub-minimum wage.

Redtailed hawk, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 2012

I am lucky to have the freelance, nonunion job I have now, editing from home. But while the morning and evening commutes are extremely easy - back permitting - I find myself missing the train rides past the Meadowlands, seeing what's in the falling water levels. Bitterns, coots, gulls, perhaps a mallard with the Canada geese. Great egrets and great blue herons. I miss the Hoboken pier with the dozens of double-crested cormorants in summer, the ruddy ducks in winter.

I do not miss driving to and from Englewood Cliffs except for the birds I would find at Flat Rock Brook park or in the area around my office building, including the hawks that would fly south in autumn. By now Harold and Maud, the redtails I found near the end of my last job, would be feeding young, perhaps teaching them to fly and hunt for themselves.

At some point, the weather will get cooler and dry out. At some point the scars from the bug bites will disappear. The birding lists will have much more interesting reports of southbound migrants than they do now. At some point I will be walking again, not fearing a spasm that will make me immobile blocks or miles from my house and MH.

At some point I may even stop feeling the strain in my hip and lower back and I can pretend I am not in physical decline. I will once again be able to rise from my bed in the pre-dawn and drive miles to a good birding spot and explore, maybe find something I've never seen before.

I no longer liken myself to Job. This, too, shall pass. But at the moment, I have no interest in a world that has no interest in me.