Bearing With It

“Always respect Mother Nature. Especially when she weighs 400 pounds and is guarding her baby.” 
― James Rollins, "Ice Hunt"

Here in the suburbs we have our neat lawns, our "park-like" and fenceless backyards, our bird feeders to attract cardinals, chickadees and titmice.

You don't expect black bear out here.

But after years of warnings I believe I had an unwelcome visitor sometime the other night and I believe it was a bear.

I opened the shades in the morning and saw only one of two feeder poles and only one of three feeders. Cursing, in disbelief, I grabbed a parka against the dawn chill and ran outside to find one pole bent nearly to the ground (the feeder, where the seed tube is enclosed in a squirrel-proof cage, was still secured to the pole and in one piece). The house feeder - mentioned many a time in these posts - had been ripped from the other feeder pole, which had been bent back from the force of being pulled.

Female cardinal atop house feeder, pre-bear. (Margo D. Beller)

That feeder lay on the ground, empty. I was relieved to find it had not been smashed to bits.

Only the suet feeder - with its plain, unscented suet - was untouched.

My first thought was, WHO would do such a malicious thing. MH had no such thoughts - he immediately cursed and said the bears had finally gotten to our little town.

That wasn't quite true. Years ago, when we had more apple trees, I came out one morning to find a hunk of one tree on the ground and a large indentation (not to mention a lot of scat) and we conjectured a young bear went up in the tree for a snack and the branch gave way, bringing both down. We laughed about it and hadn't thought of bear since.

No more laughing.

This has been another strange winter. No, we weren't buried under the feet of snow seen last winter but it has been very cold for most of the last six weeks and even now, in late March, any warmish weather (which has caused the early flowers to bloom) has been countered by cold, very windy and wintry times.

Still, there comes a point when hibernating animals need to wake up and start eating. I was not surprised to find a chipmunk running around the backyard recently, the bane of my garden's existence because of its damned digging.

Black bear, June 2014, Old Mine Rd., Sussex County, N.J. (RE Berg-Andersson)

Bears are another matter. Bears have been found in most of wooded northern New Jersey for decades. As the population has increased, bears have spread south and east so that there are more bear encounters in urban areas and in parts of the state where a bear had never been seen. Bears have long been part of Morris County, but not my part of the county. Or so I thought.

The other year the mayor of our town had notices put in every mailbox warning people bears were waking up and would be active and hungry, and to take in feeders and keep your garbage secured and watch your pets. In researching this post I found that in 2010, for instance, a bear was seen in broad daylight on our train tracks. The bear problem has gotten so bad the state has reinstated a bear hunt, which has been popular with the deer hunting crowd but not so popular with the animal lovers.

One such animal lover accused me of causing the deer and bear problem by moving to my suburban development. I told the man my house had been built in the 1960s when the populations of both creatures were much lower and, besides, it wasn't my fault. I told him I supported the hunt and if looks could kill my head would be hanging over his mantel.

So now I take the feeders in at night and I have to either straighten the pole - it was bent at a 45 degree angle - or replace it. Since we are coming into spring I have cut back the number of feeders I put out to two, the house (which I repaired) and the suet. But I miss that second pole, not just for putting out more seed but for hanging flower baskets during the summer.

I guess I got off easy. In other areas property has been destroyed, pets and livestock killed and, in one gruesome case, a college student was mauled to death by a bear while hiking in northern New Jersey. As the human population moves into housing developments built where they have no business being (in the 1960s people didn't wonder about such things when my house was built on what had been meadows), there will be more interactions with wildlife.

There are already many reports of coyotes. I've seen foxes and racoons running down my street, as well as skunk and the occasional possum. Deer have been a nemesis almost from the day we moved into this house over 20 years ago.

But bear is different. Bear is big, strong, fast and dangerous. A bear that can bend a metal feeder pole to the ground can snap my spine. If I get between a sow and her cub, I'm dead. Bears have learned to appreciate fine dining from garbage pails and dumpsters as their natural habitat is destroyed.

Like the deer, they have lost their fear of people. It doesn't help when people are stupid enough to try to entice bear into pictures with their children, as one NJ idiot did using a bagel.

Years ago one of my nieces casually told me of the bear she'd seen just that morning at the end of the driveway during my visit to that very house. In rural New Hampshire bear are no big deal. They are respected but they are also hunted. Balance is maintained. Not in the suburbs where I live. Any threat to small children and pets or a genteel way of life where interaction with the natural world is unnatural if it can't be completely controlled must be eradicated, the faster the better.

The bear problem in NJ reminds us you can't let things get out of balance. Our ancestors hunted bear - over-hunted them, in fact. That wasn't right either. Now that the population has been allowed to come back, it is time to start the hunt again, to get the numbers to a manageable point.

Yes, it would be fine to stop people from ripping up woods, damming streams and building mega-houses on multi-acre lots, forcing the clear-cutting of trees and the digging up of land to accommodate sewage, gas and power lines.

But it is unrealistic to think 2/3 of the population of New Jersey, myself included, is going to just go away, just as it's a fantasy to think allowing bears to spread out and breed unmolested is a good thing. At the same time, if you are going to put people in bear country, interactions are going to happen and someone - bear or human - is going to get hurt.

I got my warning. I'm heeding it.

A Reunion I Can Enjoy

This Saturday my old high school will hold its annual reunion. I will not be attending.

I have nothing against the old school. Being a private school I send a contribution every year. I learned a lot of good things there, including that there was life beyond my little enclave of southern Brooklyn. I learned how to make my way across the borough via subway, and how to get around the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood when I didn't have a class to attend.

That was 40 years ago.

I look forward to seeing this year's Baltimore orioles.
(Margo D. Beller)

Looking at the school website I saw that only 5 members of my class would be attending, and these are people I didn't particularly like, for the most part. Did I want them to see me, graying hair, even grayer husband, and then, in answer to the inevitable "What are you doing now?" and "Do you have children?" say "nothing of importance" and "no," respectively?

No.

I have gone to some of the reunions a few times, the last time to see all the physical changes to the place both inside and out. But do I want to be reminded I am 40 years older than the time I graduated from there and went on to a different city for college life and where I met MH? Not really.

So I gave my regrets, which were not sincere.

I'm ready to start hiking now. (Margo D. Beller)

Instead, I will be having a different kind of reunion.

MH and I will be going to a park in another state and look for returning migrants. We've had wacky weather this year, and the cold and wind that returned after unusual warmth this April are gone now - for good, I hope. Birds that have been trying to get to their northern breeding grounds, including New Jersey where I live, have been delayed. But I think they are now on the way, if the reports I read are right.

The phoebe returned to the bridge over the brook, as usual. J.J. Audubon tied a string around the leg of a phoebe he found as a young bird and the next year the bird returned, one of the first instances of banding to track the migratory path.

And the chipping sparrow has returned, not long after its cousin the junco departed. For a little bird it has a big song and it will sit and sing it for hours. So will the house wren, another spring visitor. I am looking forward to hearing one in my yard again. Same with the Baltimore oriole and wood thrush. Goldfinches have been coming to the seed feeder.

The warblers are returning. These little bits of sunshine don't really warble much in their song and they are a challenge to find and identify since they tend to arrive just as the trees start leafing out. But that's the fun of them. We've already had a reunion with three of the earliest returnees - the pine, the palm and the myrtle (or yellow-rump, as some call it). We've even made the acquaintance of a usually southern warbler, the yellow-throated warbler.

Soon will come more -- the northern parulas, black-throated greens and the American redstart, and perhaps a yellow warbler or a common yellow-throat will grace our backyard again.

In my element. (RE Berg-Andersson)

We've already been greeted by the ruby-crowned and the gold-crowned kinglets, the field sparrows and the green heron in our travels. The other week we sat on Scott's Mountain with Henry Kielblock and his group and watched ospreys and broadwinged hawks head north.

These are the reunions I enjoy.

I'm not against family reunions. I've had some wonderful times with my maternal relatives, not with my father's side, unfortunately. MH and I have plenty of reunions with his family and our far-flung friends, either at their houses or at ours, as well.

But in this case, given the choice between sitting with people I haven't seen for 40 years and wandering the fields and parks with MH to once again see winged wonders, I'll take the wandering every time.

Geese on the Grass (Alas)

To paraphrase Paul Simon, the other day it was my birthday and I hung one more year on the line.

I got up that morning and went outside before getting ready for work. Two cardinals were battling it out musically. The songs signify “this is my territory” to other males and “I can sing louder and longer and be a better provider” to females. These songs should not be sung in mid-February but with this year’s unusual weather all bets are off.

Just before going inside I heard the honking of Canada geese. A small flock was taking off from the small stream behind my neighbors across the street on the county Greystone property.

How most people see Canada geese.

These were local geese, and they were heading someplace close such as one of the town ponds or the elementary school ballfield. They'd be back at dusk, like commuters.

We've all seen the long Vs of migratory geese heading north in spring and south before winter. Many times geese will fly south from the tundra to a lake in upstate New York or New Jersey, only to have to move on after that water freezes. You can tell they are migrants because the flock is very large and very high in the sky.

The local geese, despite being in New Jersey for generations, also get restless, that instinct that says “we must move” during migration times and “we must find more food” during the winter not quite extinguished.

All Canada geese look the same so when huge flocks gather in parks or office lawns, one can’t shoot them because they are protected by federal law. Some companies use dogs to scare the geese away, pushing the problem to another office park, or silhouettes of men or dogs on the lawns, the suburban equivalent of a scarecrow that works about as well when the geese realize nothing is moving.

Geese like short grass so they can see predators coming, making manicured lawns or decorative ponds perfect habitats.

There was a lot of screaming in New York City when scores of Canada geese were captured on a pond in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and killed. As they do with the rampant deer herds, these people seem to have a romantic notion of "nature" and prefer blaming mankind and leaving the creatures alone or controlling their numbers with “birth control.” For geese, that means finding a nest, somehow getting the parents away from it (no easy task - a well-aimed swat of a wing can break your arm and geese also bite) and shaking the eggs to keep them from forming chicks (thus the parents sit on eggs that never hatch).

There aren’t enough people in the world to do this, and that doesn’t get rid of the geese already around, eating the grass and leaving behind long, green, cigarette-shaped souvenirs. And then there's always next year.

I am for balance, and more than agree it was man  - with his unchecked expansion into hundreds of acres of woods to create suburban sprawl - who created this problem. But  leaving hundreds of Canada geese to flock on - and mess up - hiking trails, business “campuses” and “office parks” is extremely unbalanced, not to mention a health hazard.

In the Bergen County, N.J., town where I work the neighboring company did nothing to discourage the four geese hanging around its fake pond, cropping the lawn and leaving their droppings on the grass. Geese mate for life and have large families.The population grew and the lawn service worked around them. When summer ended and the lawn service put its mowers away for the season, the undisturbed geese had no reason to leave. In fact, others joined them. Sometimes they wander onto my employer's property. It hasn't helped there's been no snow for force them to leave.

 

There are more geese behind me and to the left that you can't see in my picture.

I enjoyed walking the paths between that office and mine, but the picture shows why that has ended. When the geese finished cropping the grass near the pond they moved on. They crossed the footpaths and driveways, leaving their many calling cards. What used to be a long, pleasurable hike became an obstacle course. If I wasn’t shooing 35 geese out of my way I was stepping carefully around droppings everywhere, including bordering public sidewalks. I now stick to the concrete parking lots.

I do not understand why this company and others that go to a lot of expensive trouble to keep the lawns mowed, fed and watered in summer allow geese to literally make a big mess everywhere when the weather gets cold. Maybe it's because no executives walk on the paths, or those employees who do figure the crap literally comes with the territory. Maybe no one wants to be known as anti-goose.

Maybe they shouldn't have sought a perfectly manicured lawn in the first place.

Geese are out of control in recreational parks and fields, too, which means a lot of people are walking or playing in goose droppings. Worse, some people believe it is their civic duty to feed the geese, which only encourages them to stay and make more of a mess.

Canada geese are not the only pests, of course. The populations of a lot of creatures have exploded thanks to man's incursion into what had been untouched lands, usually at the detriment of other species. The deer herd is huge in my area, for instance. In other areas of the country alligators are showing up in people's pools or coyotes snatch little dogs out of backyards. Bears are killing chickens or breaking into homes and bird feeders or feeding from Dumpsters. Skunks and racoons have also discovered people are rather sloppy when it comes their garbage.

Don’t get me wrong, I do like Canada geese. Seeing wave after wave fly in at dusk over the only unfrozen water of Schwartzwood Lake one winter a few years ago was thrilling. Watching a very long skein of geese way up and calling as they fly in migration always stops me in my tracks.

But those are migrants and the others are local pests. As my husband likes to say, in the suburbs we call our rats deer and our pigeons Canada geese.

We created this situation. There aren't enough natural predators to make a dent in this population. We must do something to put nature back in balance, even if that means rounding the geese up and “harvesting“ (oh, the euphemisms!) the meat for homeless shelters. Alot of people are as emotionally - sometimes dangerously - against hunting geese, as they are against hunting deer or bear. But I see no other way around the issue.

In the meantime, watch where you walk.