Chatting With the Apple Tree

Apple tree (Margo D. Beller)

We have passed the point on the calendar marked "First day of summer" although from a meteorological standpoint, summer began on June 1. There are two hummingbirds at the feeder. I know this because frequently they show up at the same time and one chases the other off. Because they look alike, I can't tell which is the Alpha and which is the Beta. However, one does tend to squeek when it flies off or is disturbed. I heard it from the tree this morning as I was picking apples.

Most apples grow in late summer into autumn. I have one tree that blooms in late April or early May and puts out fruit a few weeks later. Some years, such as last year, drought conditions prompted few flowers and thus fewer apples for me to pick. This year, with all the rain, there was an overabundance of flowers and now you can see the apples growing.

Last year I brought one to a farmer I know and he identified the apple as a sort of Mcintosh, although these are usually ready to be picked in the fall, too. But my apples are usually ready in late June into July. I know this when I see squirrels climbing up, grabbing one and running off with it.

Thus begins an annual routine. I go out with a bucket, pick up whatever the squirrel has dropped and then pick whatever apples look big enough to cook - ideally I'd like them redder but I am in a race against time here - before the deer can come and eat them. The other morning I had just done that when a big doe arrived and started browsing. I chased her off but she did not go willingly.

House wren in apple tree. (Margo D. Beller)

This is suburban life now. At one time deer were afraid of people. No longer.

I do this picking (or picking up) twice a day, in the early morning and at dusk. But judging by all the deer excrement under the tree, I can't get everything.

When we bought the house over 20 years ago, it had been standing at that point 30 years or so. The previous owner must've fancied himself a gardener because he put in five apple trees, a pear and a cherry. He also built up a small, terraced garden with railroad ties. However, he stopped taking care of it, then moved out ahead of a divorce and the ties rotted. Chipmunks nested beneath it. When we had work done on the house and surrounding property, the ties were removed.

However, the trees stayed. The cherry eventually rotted and I had three of the five apples taken down because the fruit was not usable to me but made a big mess in the yard thanks to the squirrels and deer. The fourth, a small tree and the same type as the one that remains, was killed by too much rubbing of antlers against it by young bucks.

Where one tree was removed is now a garden of ornamental grasses and other plants deer tend to leave alone. Where two others were are now planted a dogwood tree and my friend Spruce Bringsgreen. But I kept the last tree because the apples make good sauce or pies. It holds up the house wren box, where the adults are now shuttling back and forth to feed peeping young. It provides some shade. It is a place for birds to perch such as the hummingbird. During the flowering season, I discovered 14 cedar waxwings going after the bugs, or perhaps eating the petals.

But those apples do draw the squirrels and the deer.

Recently I sat outside on my patio, admiring this tree with its growing fruits. I had it trimmed a few years ago but now it is bushier than ever.

I am an old tree, she told me. I have to do much to protect myself and to protect my young. When I have too many, as this year, I must abort many of them while they are still small and hard. It can't be helped. I have to be able to bear more fruit next year and beyond. As you can see I have a gall on my trunk and an opening big enough for a chipmunk to sit in, but I keep going.

I had noticed all those little apples underfoot, I said. I guess a lot of trees do that. I notice the elm over there has dropped a lot of green seeds. I hope the squirrels and chipmunks will get to them later, when they have to be stored for winter.

I do not mind the birds in my upper branches, she continued. I do not mind the nest box you hang on my lower branch so you can watch the birds. I did not mind the yellow-bellied sapsucker that drilled little holes in a ring around my trunk for the sap last spring, the one you kept chasing off. It was trying to survive, too. I have withstood all that. 

I survived a hurricane, the one called Sandy. I have stood in deep snow and in fog and in heavy rain and in such heat that my leaves have turned brown and fallen before their time. I do what I must to survive.

I can understand that, I said. So do I.

What I do not like is you whacking me with a big stick every year, breaking off my branches and making the apples rain down before their time, she said.

I am sorry, I told her, but I am now past the age where I can climb trees or even stand on the upper part of a ladder to gently pick the ripe fruit. The squirrels are not so choosy, especially in those years where we have had high heat for days on end. The squirrels want a sweet drink and will ignore my water dishes for your apples.

I will remove the core and rot before using (Margo D. Beller)

And when they drop partially eaten apples, the chipmunks grab them, which is fine, but then the deer come, which is not. One deer is bad enough but the time I came out to find five of them was a horror. I once used an umbrella to hook your branches and pull them closer. Now, I admit, ever since I got the extension pole for another project, it has come in handy to bring down as many apples as possible at once.

But it is not as if your fruit goes to waste. I put the partially eaten ones into the corner of the yard, where I prefer the deer to poop than in the lawn under you. I throw out the really small or bad ones. I put the rest in the cellar and then, when I have the time, energy and inclination, I make pints and quarts of sauce I can freeze and use for months. I would love to compost the parts I don't use but I don't want a forest of apple trees to grow there.

You took down my child, she said.

Your child was small and destroyed by deer, I said. I would've loved to have had two of you for the apples and the shade, but what else could I do? I am trying to balance having something natural and pretty in my backyard with the new realities of suburban life, where wildlife I never would've imagined are showing up in the yard.

You know a bear was once in the neighboring tree, the one you took down, she said.

Yes, I do. That was the first time a bear visited, to my knowledge, many years before the visit that destroyed my bird feeder pole. I came out and found a large indentation in the ground, a lot of scat and broken branches. It is one of the reasons I later had that tree removed and put in my ornamental grass garden. You saw what a bear did to the pear tree over there.

Damaged pear tree (Margo D. Beller)

Yes, she said, I did, and I appreciated all the work you did to save it. It looks very healthy now. I hope a bear does not decide to climb me for my fruit. A 200-pound bear does a lot of damage to apple tree branches. But if it does, there is nothing much I can do about it. I am a tree. If I am struck down, I can only hope one of my seeds grows to keep my line going.

Do not worry, old tree, I said. As long as I can still get up in the morning and bend down to pick up dropped fruit and pull off apples before anything else can get to them, no bear will destroy you.

But we both know that in this life there are no guarantees, to anything.

No, she replied. There aren't.

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.

The Adventures of Alpha and Beta

When John J. Audubon referred to the ruby-throated hummingbird as "the glittering fragment of the rainbow," he was referring to the male. The male's back and head are bright green, his throat a deep red that can look black in some lights and the breast and belly are white.

Audubon was not referring to the duller females. As with most other birds, the females are not as bright or colorful as the males so as to be inconspicuous on her nest, or getting food for her young.

Attempt at a hummingbird picture (Margo D. Beller)

In late May my New Hampshire brother-in-law hung two feeders and, as usual, two males battled over one of the feeders, leaving the other alone. Hummingbirds will do that - they don't play well with others.

However, one of the males already had a mate and every so often the shier female would come feed, also at the same feeder. She, too, is green but a duller shade and there is no ruby throat.

My brother-in-law, as well as a friend of mine who lives in a hillier part of New Jersey, draw hummingbirds almost from the moment they put a feeder out. I always know the first batch of liquid I make will likely be wasted as I watch for the bird - more insect than bird, wings moving over 50 times a second, able to back up (which no other bird can do) and take off at great speed.

Admittedly, I make it hard on myself. I have the feeder hanging in a shady part of the garden (so as to keep the liquid from going bad quickly in the sun) that I can't see unless I step out on the enclosed porch. I have flowers hummingbirds like in different parts of the garden - azaleas and rhodedendron in the front, for instance, and geraniums and columbine in the back - so the birds are not always where I can see them, unlike the winter where the seed feeders can be seen from the kitchen.

This year I saw a male on June 3, the earliest ever for my yard, and then another one 15 days later. Then nothing.

Until June 30 when the first female showed up.

For some reason, what draws the birds to the feeder are the sprays of tiny pink trumpets thrown up by the coral bells. As I sat on my porch having breakfast, I was aware of movements at the bells and saw the green back. Eventually it flew up and saw the red-topped feeder. It flew over and took a sip. It was very tentative. Its head was so dark I was sure it was a male, but getting my binoculars I saw the white breast and throat.

She came several times that day and has continued coming. This is the typical pattern. At this time of year - June into July - the male hummers have done their genetic duty and go off on their own, sometimes heading south as early as late July into August. That leaves the female with the task of creating a nest, laying eggs, brooding them and then feeding the young, all the while needing food to give her the energy for all that fast flying.

So once she found a reliable food source, she wasn't going to let it alone.

Hummingbird, Higbee Beach, Cape May, NJ (Margo D. Beller)

This is typical. What wasn't typical was when the second hummingbird showed up a couple of days later.

I didn't realize it at first. When the first one - I'll call her Alpha - would stop by, she would feed, then back up and take off to the north, toward a high hedge I keep as privacy from the neighbors. Then I noticed she would fly up to the nearby apple tree, or head east, past my yard and to the next street.

The other morning I took my folding chair outside to drink my coffee and watch the feeder. In came the hummer - and then in came a second one to chase her off. The chaser was Alpha, with the dark head. The one chased off came back about five minutes later. I noticed her head was much lighter green and when she flew off, it was to the apple tree. This one is Beta.

Several times now I have seen Alpha at the feeder and Beta feeding from the coral bells, or Beta at the feeder and Alpha chasing her off, then coming back to feed.

All of this is fun to watch but there are some serious issues under all the feeding and chasing.

These females are making the constant trip to the feeder so they have the energy to sit on their nest or catch food for their young. In my part of suburbia, homeowners leave it to the landscapers to put in their plants and they are usually dull shrubs that do not flower and are cheap to replace. If they have flowers, it is a hanging basket and the flowers are generally not the orange or red trumpets hummingbirds prefer. They don't even have scent, most of the time.

I do have flowers hummingbirds like - bee balm, butterfly bush, salvia, coral bells, columbine - but the deer eat most of them too, and these plants are behind netting as a result. That is the reason for the dull shrubs - easy to replace when eaten by deer and not so lovely as to be missed and thus easily replaced.

My feeder is hanging on that pole in the shade behind netting, too.

When overdevelopment tears up fields of wildflowers and suburban sprawl doesn't replace the lost plants, you don't give a hummingbird a lot of choices. It doesn't have unlimited time and energy to look around.

Hummer drawn by my friend's zinnias (Margo D. Beller)

A feeder, however, is another matter. You buy one at any store. It is usually red either in whole or in part. You boil one-quarter cup of sugar for every cup of water until the sugar is dissolved, wait for it to cool and put it in the feeder. Hang it outside.

There! You've just helped out a hummingbird.

I see many yards with hummingbird feeders, even those with dull shrubs. People like watching hummingbirds. They are fascinating creatures. One second there's a feeder and the next there is a tiny bird sitting and taking long drinks with her very long, thin tongue. Then she rises up and is gone.

They fly backwards. Their wings beat so fast you can hear the blur. Several times I have come face to face with a hummingbird. When it doesn't feel threatened, it wants to check you out. We look at each other, it gives me a small "chip" and takes off. Working in the garden, I've heard an angry squeak and knew I was working in an area where the hummingbird, easily annoyed, was going to check out the nearby plants.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds are not considered to be endangered. More people are putting out feeders and, if global warming continues, hummers might be hanging around beyond late summer when they generally head south to Central America.

I enjoy watching the antics of Alpha and Beta, and if global warming keeps them around longer it might even be worth it. I have lots of sugar.

Feeder Location, Location, Location

Backyard hummingbird from years ago. (Margo D. Beller)

One afternoon at dusk, after a long day trying to stay alive, the little bird perched on the edge of the red feeder, dipped her long, delicate bill into the liquid and had a long drink. She might have a nest nearby and young to feed, or she could be a juvenile, in which case she could be a he.

Suddenly, another little bird appeared. Despite the many portals allowing access to the sweet liquid within, the bird - an adult male - came at the female, who flew backwards and took off. The male then sat where she had been sitting, took his own long drink and then sat there, shaded, until he took off for the night.

The whole episode took a few minutes and I witnessed it by chance through my kitchen window.

The birds were ruby-throated hummingbirds, the ones you are 99% likely to see in the eastern U.S. (The rufous hummingbird, a western species, has been known to fly along the east coast as it heads south for the winter from its breeding ground in the far north. And there are always "accidentals" that get caught up in the wrong air current.)

John J. Audubon referred to ruby-throated hummingbirds as the "glittering fragment of a rainbow" because of the male's deep red throat, white belly and green head and back (the female lacks the red). These little birds weighing less than an ounce - more like a large insect than a bird - seem to just appear out of nowhere, making my encounters with them quite special.

First attempt to evade ants. (Margo D. Beller)

My feeder was in a shady place in my backyard (see above), an area surrounded by the pink flowers of perennial geranium, astilbe, hosta, columbine and joe-pye weed. The male bird I mentioned above had been coming to the feeder every day for months, although because of the feeder's location I would only be able to see it if I walked onto my enclosed porch.

Then we had a heat wave.

No rain for a very long time, and then weeks of rain in a single day. The lawn went brown, the water dishes I have out were empty each night. I looked at the hummer feeder - filled with one-quarter cup sugar per one cup water - one afternoon and saw something crawling on it. It turned out to be a large ant. I came out the next day and saw ants all over it and inside.

This was the first time my feeder had been so afflicted. Bees, yes, but not a thick cloud of ants. And it has continued hot and dry.

I wrote recently about the feeder pole I bought to replace one destroyed by a bear. I moved the hummingbird feeder there in the afternoon. The good news was I could see the feeder from my kitchen. The bad news was for most of the day it would be hanging in the sun, where the liquid would quickly go bad.

I left it there a day and then moved it back to its usual place in the evening. It was covered with ants the next morning.

So I cleaned it out, refilled it and moved it back to the sunny area. Then I thought of a way to mitigate the problem - an old umbrella stashed in my closet from a Thai restaurant, whose unfortunate logo showed what can only be described as a highly aroused mermaid that was unavoidable when the umbrella was open.

But duct-taped to the pole with the naughty bits covered, it worked just fine for the feeder. My only concern was whether a hummingbird would find it. That concern was answered within 10 minutes when the male showed up to investigate. Later that day, a female did the same.

This was the pair that had their encounter that night.

Back in the shade, with moat. (Margo D. Beller)

Male and female hummingbirds only get along for the short time when the male displays (in extravagant aerial loops), the female accepts and they mate. Once done, the male isn't involved in the building of nests or raising of young. In fact, males are usually gone by July, making the continuation of this male into August rather extraordinary. Hummingbirds will spend more time and energy chasing each other away, even with a surfeit of food, than actually feeding.
 
I could've let things be with my makeshift cover but I hadn't accounted for wind pulling the umbrella, in turn pulling the feeder pole and shaking the feeder. So I went to my closest New Jersey Audubon store to see if there was some way to either shade the feeder or block the ants. Turned out there was both.

So now, the feeder is back in its original location in the shade, the ants blocked by a moat, and the male has been coming to feed.

Sadly, the female came to the sunny feeder pole, found nothing and flew off. I can only hope she will find the feeder in the shade and manage to take another long drink before being chased off yet again.

What do we learn from all this? We learn that necessity is the mother of invention, and if there is a problem there are always ways to solve it (including finding a product at an affordable price).

Most important, you learn that when you put out food for birds, even tiny birds like hummingbirds, you will get a large thrill when they come to feed, and you will do whatever it takes to help them do so.

Postscript: The morning after writing the above I went out to get the feeder. It had seemed the hummingbird was struggling to get enough liquid that evening and I wanted to top off the water level. I looked at the feeder and the moat - no ants. I took a small leaf out of the water (many leaves are falling in this heat), unhooked the feeder and brought it in.

I took off the lid and found an ant flailing about in the water! How could this have happened?

I fished the ant out, threw it back outside, topped the water level and was putting the lid back on when two things occurred to me.

First, the ant was probably on the underside of the lid, above the water (since, according to the makers of the moat, ants can't swim) and I had dislodged it either when I took the feeder in or took off the lid.

Second, and most important, the ant had crawled down to the leaf, used it as a bridge to the edge of the moat, crawled up over the side and resumed its quest for nirvana.

Once again proving that necessity is the mother of invention, even for an ant.

Summer Visitors

Summer is a time of heat, humidity and, if you have the time and money for it, travel. Unless you are a bird. If you are a migrating bird, you don't plan -- you just go north from April to early June to your specific breeding area to create the next generation. It is an automatic response keyed to the seasons.

Many birds breed in New Jersey. Along Old Mine Rd., the last exit off Route 80 west before you cross the Delaware River into Pennsylvania, you will find a vast tract of state and federal forest providing breeding space for many birds, including the cerulean warbler. 

House wren box (Margo D. Beller)

According to the Conserve Wildlife Federation of New Jersey, this sky-blue bird's status is of "special concern" because "of some evidence of decline, inherent vulnerability to environmental deterioration, or habitat modification that would result in their becoming a Threatened species." This bird breeds in forests with tall deciduous trees and wet bottomlands and dry slopes.

Just the kind of land "developers" like to build McMansions and other homes.

But today I am not writing about warblers and the other birds that visit my backyard briefly and move on. I am writing about three birds in particular that visit for the summer before heading south in Autumn.

House wren (Margo D. Beller)

Unlike other years, I've kept my house feeder going this summer with only a minimum amount of seed. It has drawn cardinals, white-breasted nuthatches and titmice as well as birds I'm not crazy about but tolerate.

I also put up a bird house every year designed for a house wren, and every year a male house wren investigates it, brings by a female and, if she approves, they set up housekeeping and brood young.

This year was a little different. After a winter of seemingly endless snow and torrential rains, migration was delayed. It seemed to take forever for the birds to show up, and then many that would've come over weeks came all at once -- which made for some exciting birdwatching.

I put up the box in mid-April, as usual, but this time it did not draw house wrens, it drew one of the few birds small enough to get through the opening - a blackcapped chickadee. 'Dees are among my favorite birds so I wasn't that upset about this development.

However, although a pair had been busy in and out of the box, at one point I came home and saw a long plume of nesting material coming out of the nest. House wrens, I know from cleaning out the box every winter, tend to favor twigs for their nests, while 'dees use softer material such as animal hair, and this was what I was seeing. I left it alone. The next day it was gone.

Did the 'dee nest fail?  Was there a brood? I do not know. When I get summer visitors I leave them alone. What I do know is it wasn't long before I heard the familiar singing of a house wren, and now there is a pair using the box. I've yet to hear cheeping young when one of them flies to the nest, but I hope I do.

Catbird (R.E. Berg-Andersson)

Another reliable summer visitor is the catbird. This year these gray cousins of the robin were also delayed. Usually they show up after our winter visitor, the white-throated sparrow, departs. But we had white-throats for a much longer time than usual this year, no doubt delayed heading north by this spring's storms.

But the catbirds came. They are so named because of the cat-like mewing of their call. They don't have a song per se but warble bits of other birds' songs. They are all gray except for a black cap and some red under the tail. When I put out a water dish, these birds will drink and bathe. They will fly to a branch as I work in the garden and watch what I do, so they can swoop in when I leave and find any bugs or worms I've exposed.

When dawn light breaks around 5 am, I can be sure that, along with the robins and cardinals, one of the first songs I'll hear will be warbling of the catbird, followed by the house wren -- all guarding their breeding territories.

One last summer visitor, however, will not be singing, and is a less reliable visitor than the others -- the rubythroated hummingbird.

I have a friend in Bernardsville, up in the hills of Somerset County, who gets hummers every year almost from the moment she puts out her red-topped feeder. These birds are drawn to red, and will use their long bills and longer tongues to draw liquid from trumpet-like flowers. Feeders contain 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. 

Hummingbird at backyard feeder (Margo D. Beller)

I am not as lucky as she is, but for the past few years I've been seeing visitors at my hummer feeder in July. Usually these are females. In the hummingbird world, the males mate and then they head south as early as July, leaving the females to build a nest, lay the eggs and then feed herself and the young. That's when I start seeing visitors. (It doesn't hurt that I have coral bells blooming at that time.)

But once again, things are different this year. When the deluge of migrating birds passed through, I spooked a hummingbird visiting my azaleas in May, prompting me to get the feeder out immediately. A hummer came to it the next day. There have since been sporadic visits but because I don't keep the feeder in an area where I can easily see it (I must come out on my enclosed porch) I don't know how successful the feeder has been.

My pink flowers have all bloomed at once, and my next-door neighbor has two hummer feeders out, so any visitors won't go hungry. I change the liquid every week and hope for the best.

A bird has a hard, short life. They were not put here for our amusement, although I've certainly been amused and entertained by birds for over a decade. But their lives are made harder by man-made factors that could've been avoided.

Like the cerulean warbler and other birds, their lives are put at risk by suburban sprawl -- too many farms sold for housing developments and golf courses, too many mountains denuded for housing or, in the case of New Jersey, huge power lines put up to take the every-increasing load people put on the electric grid with their computers, phones and appliances.

Snowpile, winter of 2013-2014 (Margo D. Beller)

There is also global warming. When the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency under Republican presidents say there is global warming, it shows there is a major problem. Global warming was responsible for New Jersey's above-normal snowfall last winter, just as it was responsible for its below-normal snowfall in previous years. We have had fewer but more intense rainstorms that, when there's wind, looks like a hurricane.

And there was Hurricane Sandy. We have had former hurricanes pass through our area, dumping rain and causing much damage. But Sandy was the first hurricane that passed through my part of northern New Jersey at hurricane strength, toppling trees and leaving people without power for over a week. Sandy was the first full hurricane I have lived through and it was a terrifying experience that, I fear, will likely repeat at some point.

One doesn't want to think about such things when on the back porch on a calm summer day, watching the flitting house wren, listening to the catbird or watching the feeder for a hummingbird.  

But how much longer will we have the birds and the calm?            

The law of unintended consequences

I have a friend who lives in Somerset County up a steep hill. Her property slopes and her deck is above the yard. Every summer she gets hummingbirds at her feeder.

I don't know if it's the altitude or the red monarda or zinnias she keeps in a pot near the feeder but when I visit in summer a rubythroat will almost always stop by while we're on the deck. They are very fast, as you can see from my attempt to photograph one.

I envy her because I rarely get hummers. I finally saw my first of the season this very morning, although it could've been coming while I was at work. My town is built on a plateau 400 feet above sea level but my yard is flat.

The feeder is hanging on a pole behind deer netting because I have put plants around it that bloom pink or red flowers to draw the hummers and I don't want deer to destroy the plants. The netting doesn't impede a hummer getting to the sugar water.

Also this very morning a male goldfinch came to feed. This may be the one that has been coming for a while with its mate, or one I have heard doing his swooping mating flight. The same friend with the hummers is envious of ME because I get many more goldfinches in winter, such as those below, than she does. It might be the very flatness of my property, or being located close to the Greystone woods or not having neighbors close by that have cats roaming the yards, as she does.

We always want what we can't have. I always envied those people who live within close walking distance of Central Park in Manhattan when MH and I lived in Queens. When we moved to New Jersey, I envied those who live in or near Cape May, one of the state's premier birding sites. How nice to get up at dawn, walk 10 minutes and see all sorts of birds!

Then my new eye doctor told me he grew up down there and was very happy he was now in Morris County because he had always wanted to bird Great Swamp, 20 minutes by car from my house when there is no traffic at dawn.

Yes, it would be nice to live near one of the Somerset County grasslands so I could go over and hear grasshopper sparrows or dickcissels, both life birds for me, singing at dawn. But then they wouldn't be life birds. They'd be common.

So I enjoy the singing cardinals and the carolina wren and watch the thistle feeder that I've discovered not only draws a pair of goldfinch but chickadees and titmice.

This was not planned but I should've realized chickadees and titmice have no qualms about hanging upside down if it gets them a meal, and are far less skittish about being exposed to predators in an upside-down position than the goldfinch I intended to help during breeding season.

I do not mind them coming because I like chickadees and titmice. Seeing the occasional house sparrow that has learned to hang upside down for a meal pleases me much less.

This is where the law of unintended consequences comes into play. Most people don't realize that changing one thing in the yard can have a profound behavioral effect.

Take my friend with the hummer feeder. She had her yard guys "clean things up" early in the growing season. Not only did they cut back shrubs and kill assorted weeds, they cut down a blackberry bush that had grown to tree size. We used to sit on the deck and watch the birds and the squirrels eat the berries.

The birds can still come to the seed feeders she keeps going all year. But when it got hot and the squirrels couldn't get berries, one of them discovered a sweet substitute - the hummer feeder.

Unfortunately, my kindhearted friend puts out corn for the squirrels in winter and they have gotten used to coming to her deck and finding food. So one must've come up a few weeks ago looking for a snack and was drawn to the red saucer-type feeder. It then pulled off the lid and drank the sugar water!

The experts say this just does not happen. But in this case the experts are wrong.

My friend bought a more vertical type of feeder and came home to discover the squirrels had pulled off the yellow decorative flowers and drank from the open ports. She is now using her saucer feeder again, taped shut. To refill she must use a screwdriver to rip the tape open.

On this I don't envy her at all.