The Upside-Down Bird and the Creeper

Another winter, another brown creeper (Margo D. Beller)

I see here to-day one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course. This has no black cockade, like the nuthatch.

-- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, Nov. 26, 1859

It is almost the same day 159 years later and the brown creeper I am watching is doing the exact same thing Thoreau saw in his woods, living up to its name by creeping deliberately up a stout tree.

I am in a small park in my town, carefully walking in the frozen slush, and I have stopped to watch some robins. Then I see movement against the brown-gray of the tree and there is the creeper, almost perfectly camouflaged, the movement of its head showing the white below and thus giving it away.

I stand and watch it a long time as it carefully climbs the tree, sticking its long, decurved bill into every crevice. It makes a faint sound that, because I only seem to find these birds in late autumn into winter, is not as familiar to me as that of the nearby white-breasted nuthatch, whose call sounds like hank. 

Creepers, according to the bird people at Cornell, build their nests behind peeling tree bark. Is this bird looking for food or a nest site? The range map shows this bird is a year-round resident of northern New Jersey. They mainly eat insects but will also come to suet feeders. I've never had one there.

That is not the case with the white-breasted nuthatch, which I see at my sunflower seed feeders every day they are out. This bird is not quiet, shy or easily missed like the creeper, it is a pugnacious little bird that stands out. It will fly to the house feeder, cling to the roof, dip its head down and grab a seed even as a larger bird such as a cardinal is sitting inside and eating. When a nuthatch flies in, the house finches scatter, as do most of the smaller birds.

I went to the oaks. Heard there a nuthatch's faint vibrating tut-tut, somewhat even like croaking of frogs, as it made its way up the oak bark and turned head down to peck. Anon it answered its mate with a gnah, gnah.
-- Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1856

White-breasted nuthatch (Margo D. Beller)

Watching the creeper now, I see the nearby white-breasted nuthatch uses an entirely different technique. It does not start at the bottom and work its way up, it flies high and goes up the tree or turns its head around and goes down. For that reason it is called by some the "upside-down bird" because few birds will travel a tree with head down. Even the woodpeckers, climbing trees with their tails bracing them, will go backwards but will not go down head first.

The white-breasted nuthatch, despite having a whole tree at its disposal, now flies at the creeper to force it away so it can examine that spot. The creeper flies to the other side of the trunk, where I can no longer see it. Another nuthatch, on a nearby tree, calls and this one answers.

Unlike the creeper, the only one of its type, there are three types of eastern nuthatches, the white-breasted, the red-breasted and the brown-headed. (I have seen all three.) The brown-headed is found as far north as Delaware, although occasionally one hitches a ride on the Cape May-Lewes ferry and shows up to thrill birders in New Jersey. Its call is high-pitched and squeaky, more like a mouse than a bird.

The red-breasted is a bird of northern, piney woods but in some years, such as this one, it can't find enough food and so moves south. This phenomenon is called irruption, and we have them most winters although the birds flying south may vary. (One year it was snowy owls.)

Besides the red breast, this bird is easily identified by the black line that runs through the eye. Its call is another pitch entirely from the white-breasted nuthatch and usually faster. This year I saw several in the larches on the outskirts of a dog park near me for one bright morning, but it was only that one day.

If I am lucky, a red-breasted nuthatch will come to my feeder, too, but usually it is quickly chased off by the slightly larger white-breasted. That has been the case so far this season - a blink-and-you'll-miss-it visit by a red-breasted nuthatch that was just figuring out how to take a seed when it was chased off by the white-breasted. I hope it got a chance to come back and get a seed or two before heading for a pine forest.

White-breasted nuthatch about to force off a titmouse.
(Margo D. Beller)

I Am Thoreau

"Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of 500 or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation."

-- from the journal of Henry David Thoreau

There are two times when I am especially glad to be at home, working at irregular hours if at all -- when the day is gray, rainy and cold (keeping me inside anyway) and when the day is glorious (and I want nothing more than to be outside).

Autumn color, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

In October, the weather went from September warm to November cold before settling on "normal" - whatever that is anymore. The continued rain had kept most of the trees leaves green but in the last week, with the return of "normal," the trees that hadn't lost all their leaves have suddenly popped with color. 

For the longest time in my backyard the white oak, normally the last tree to color, was the first. But now the elm is glowing gold, the red oak leaves are scarlet, the Norway maple went crimson and the small sugar maple in the corner by the compost pile is a brilliant yellow. Of course, now the wind has started howling and the trees are dropping leaves quickly.

During this week, I went out to the local park to enjoy some of this foliage while it lasted, on a clear and cold day where the blue of the sky made the colors so grand I was even more glad to be alive than usual.

"The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” -- Thoreau

Walking along the cobblestoned memorial path took me past the crab apple trees filled with berries, which were being scarfed down by robins. I don't get robins in my yard much unless they show up in the dogwood or the viburnun and other hedges before the squirrels can get to the fruit. But here they were in their glory. There were also starlings gathered at the tops of trees and on telephone wires. 

Maple in the park (Margo D. Beller)

Then they suddenly flew off and when I studied them closely I saw why - a sharp-shinned hawk was in their midst. The starlings veered one way, the small accipiter another. It wasn't interested in a starling meal.

Thoreau, in his books and journals, writes about the restorative qualities of being in nature, and the importance of slowing down and paying attention to what you see and hear. When I go into the woods now I tend to walk slowly although when I am with MH and his balky knees I tend to walk on ahead and then stop to look and listen while he catches up. Here in this park, next to my town's library, I can see the brook has risen almost to the top of its banks because of the recent rain. I can hear the soft notes of the white-throated sparrow. I can enjoy the turkey vultures sailing around in the wind.

And then one lands in a treetop before my approach prompts it to fly to the top of a telephone pole, where it spreads its wings and hangs out. I stop to watch it and take a picture to show MH. Around me are cars driving too fast in the road, people power-walking, joggers, dog walkers. None are aware of this big, black bird sitting over their heads. They are more disturbed by my standing there, presuming they notice me at all (which most do not).

Turkey vulture (Margo D. Beller)

This is the moment when I do not miss having a "regular" job that takes me away from my home for 12 hours a day and keeps me in a state of stress between my obligations and my commute. (I've done train and car; it makes no difference.) Yes, I don't make the money I once did and I don't get the benefits. Thoreau had the same problem. If he had his way he'd always be in the woods, measuring the depth of Walden Pond, watching the birds, talking to the neighbors about the animals or fish they hunted. 

But even Thoreau had to make a living once in a while to help out his family besides his writing. He ran a school in Concord. He taught the children of Ralph Waldo Emerson's brother in Staten Island, NY. He taught Emerson's own children. He lectured. He surveyed. He sold pencils made in his father's factory. "Work" was a necessary evil and he did it as little as possible.

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” --Thoreau

When I can't take hours out of my day to go outside, I feel terrible. Having read Laura Dassow Wells' 2017 biography "Thoreau: A Life," I know Thoreau never felt he wasted time walking the Concord roads during a full moon or traveling to a much wilder Cape Cod than you'd find now. He felt the wasted time was the time he spent working at a job. 

Crab apples (Margo D. Beller)

I am almost 20 years older than Thoreau was when he died in 1861. On my worst days, I can walk outside and feel better, almost as though I did not have any health problems. Of course, I feel it later. But seeing a bird I've never seen before, or seeing one I haven't seen for years is wonderful. When my city friends wonder at what I know of birds, I tell them I was not born with this knowledge, I had to seek it out in the field and then my reference books. Just as Thoreau did.

I am lucky there are so many parks within walking or driving distance of my home, and that I have the strength and stamina (and companion) to enjoy them. I am lucky I have enough money and no debt to afford this current state of my life. I allow myself to be surprised by what I find rather than tick birds off a list. 

I would never compare my powers of observation to Thoreau's. I have the advantage of strong binoculars, detailed field guides and land set aside for hiking that is not someone's private property. But Thoreau had the advantage of a (then) small town where he was known, indulged and allowed to wander. He did not have paved highways and fast cars and industrial noise and lights polluting the sky. He could see more, even if he was not always correct about what he was seeing. It informed his writing, which is why "Walden" and his other books are still read generations after his death.

You can decide for yourself if wandering has made me, like him, a better writer. But I do feel like a better person.

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”  -- Thoreau

My Walden Pond - Reservoir, Central Park of Morris County
(Margo D. Beller)

Faith in a Tree

I write this on the first day of spring, according to the calendar. To meteorologists, "spring" started March 1. Today, March 20, at 7:45pm, will be the vernal equinox, when the sun is over the equator. After this, the Earth will tilt in such a way that the northern hemisphere will get more light and move into summer.

But as I write it is cold and cloudy and snow - a lot of snow - is expected. In fact, at this very moment it IS snowing.

It is a depressing thing. The early flowers - snowdrops and crocus - are open, the daffodils and iris are showing signs of life and I was able to unearth my brush pile when the last of the old snow melted. Even tho we got far less snow than last year, it was colder this winter and it made the snow hard and dreary to look at. I was glad to see it melt away. Now it is back.

MH and last year's snow (Margo D. Beller)

The birds, spurred by the increasing daylight, have been singing. A song sparrow nearby is particularly persistent, as are cardinals, titmice, chickadees and house finches. Woodpeckers have been drumming and calling. In a month, the winter birds - juncos and white-throated sparrows - will be leaving and the summer dwellers and migrants will be passing through New Jersey. I've already seen early birds including brown creeper and gold-crowned kinglet, and skeins of Canada geese have been flying north, sometimes in very stiff March winds.

Spring will come, but right now it is dreary and it is snowing.

I try to find things to lift my spirits. One was on a small hill along one of the roads heading into the Central Park of Morris County, which I still call by its old name, Greystone, from its time as state land surrounding a mental hospital.

The snow was piled heavy on this hillside and it was very cold. But the sun was rising and I saw this little conifer above the snow. Somehow, despite all the deer tracks up and down the hill, this conifer - I can't get close enough to determine what type - wasn't eaten to death. It struck me as a hopeful sign, that despite the long, cold winter, spring would come again and things would grow.

Conifer emerging (2015) Cellphone picture by Margo D. Beller

A few days ago I was walking the same road and now all the snow is gone. The tree is still there, still growing, still untouched by deer. It blended into the hillside so well it really doesn't show up in my cellphone picture, as the winter scene does. I hope the tree survives and becomes very tall, somehow elbowing the oaks and maples aside to get enough lift to reach its full height.

Henry David Thoreau wrote about seeds in a book compiled and published after his death called "Faith in a Seed." In the case of this small tree, something - a squirrel, chipmunk or bird, most likely - picked a seed out of a cone and either planted it or excreted it on this spot, which just happened to have favorable conditions for growing.

What makes this tree so interesting is there are no conifers anywhere around that area. The closest ones - hemlocks, a couple of white pines and larches - are farther along the street. Or perhaps a seed was blown in from the wooded areas on the other side of the road, beyond the brook? Somehow, that seed made it to the right spot and is fighting to stay alive.

So am I. At least, I hope this is the right spot and I hope to survive. It isn't easy in this life.

The Passaic River at Scherman Hoffman (2014), some distance from where David Bird was found. 

(Margo D. Beller)

Fourteen months ago, a man about my age and with whom I had a tangential connection through work, went out for a walk and didn't come back. He lived near the Great Swamp, and by a strange coincidence I was hiking through there the day after he went missing. A woman drove up and handed me a flyer about him. It was later I realized why the name - David Bird - seemed so familiar. How ironic, considering I was out birding.

His jacket was sighted by two men in canoes on the Passaic River, the same Passaic that separates Morris and Somerset counties and runs through another of my favorite birding locales, New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. Bird's remains were found later and identified through dental records.

A long time ago, in Boston, I interviewed a man from what used to be the Metropolitan District Commission, which, among other things, policed the Charles River. The Charles has been known to freeze hard in winter, and people walk across it. But ice is hard to judge and when it thins people drown. The man told me that every spring his people would go out to find "floaters" - drowned bodies that float to the surface after the ice melts and they lose weight through decomposition.

It took 14 months for Bird's body to float to the surface, more time than usual. If not for his red jacket he might never have been found.

MH worries something like that will happen to me when I go birding alone. I reassure him that when I go alone I go to familiar places and stay on the trail.

But really, how safe are we nowadays in this world? We are all like that little tree, placed by chance upon this Earth, our existence dependent on outside factors beyond our control.

Faith in a Seed

Friends who used to own boats tell me the best days of a boater’s life is the day he buys it and the day he sells it.

I feel that way about my garden.

Female purple finch. Note the distinctive eyebrow.

Today I put cut down the last of the foliage that turned brown and tattered after this week’s extremely cold nights. The potted plants I took to my enclosed back porch. Moving the pots to the back porch and then inside the house is the last part of a long process that began when I got excited by the sight of the first daffodil and crocus poking their noses through the cold soil in spring.

It was a long, strange growing year - no winter snow, a spring too cold and wet, then a summer too hot and dry before the rains returned and the temperature turned seasonable. I try to keep plants I don’t have to fuss over but inevitably something has to be cut back.

Now, with satisfaction and some relief, I am seeing a light at the end of a long tunnel as I get the garden - and myself - ready for a long winter's rest. As I reset the fence posts I thought of the Robert Frost poem that talked about good fences making good neighbors. I don’t know about my neighbors but I need the fences to keep out the deer. In the back garden, dominated by yew plants, the deer netting will be augmented by burlap once November comes around. The netting makes gardening harder but at least I can enjoy my flowers and shrubs.

Pine siskin (top) and white-breasted nuthatch.

Meanwhile, the feeders are visited by the usual assortment of birds and I can hear others that prefer to stay in the bushes: Carolina wren, white-throated sparrows. Now that winter is coming on I am having some unusual visitors from the north, driven south when the drought hit the trees in Canada -- purple finch and pine siskins.

After the last cutting in my back garden I stood to admire my handiwork.

That's when I saw the weed coming from the seam in the vinyl siding overhead.

Wait. Not a weed. A seedling.

I have found seedlings before, usually oak or elm seedlings that grow when a chipmunk or squirrel buries the nut and then forgets it. I usually pull them up and sometimes plant them elsewhere.

But those are on the ground. Besides coming from an unexpected and inaccessible place, this one was not a tree. It took me a while to realize it was a sunflower, likely from a seed put there by a titmouse or chickadee as part of its winter cache. Who knows when this was “planted?” The week’s recent, excessive rain and milder temperatures sparked the growth.

I admit, my first thought was to pull it out. But I have decided to leave it alone.

This seedling has found a way to thrive despite the odds - winter is coming on, after all - and I figure if it can work so hard to live, the least I can do is leave it alone.

It is inspiring to see such perseverance.

The writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed and I am prepared to expect wonders.”

Whether it survives or not, this little guy is a reminder that life is too short, and we need all the wonders we can get.