Catching Up

Spring is usually a very busy period for me because birds are heading north to breed and I want to see and hear as many as I can. Now that I am on a much more flexible schedule, I was looking forward to having the time to do that.

However, this spring was not the usual spring in my part of the world.

After having a warm February we had a cold, wet March followed by a roller coaster of weather in April. Plants that had started growing too soon in the heat were stopped in their tracks by the cold. In March we had several nor'easters within a two-week period. The first brought down trees with hurricane-like winds. The second brought down 20 inches or so of wet snow that buried the early flowers and took down my protective fencing in one area.

Apple tree after the storm, March 10, 2018. (Margo D. Beller)

Even after the snow melted in March, it was too cold for me to consider being outdoors and repairing the winter damage to the garden. So I rigged the fences as best as I could to protect my shrubs from hungry deer. I hoped for the best.

In early April I'd finally had enough and went outside to survey and do some repairs. There was a lot to repair besides the fencing. Luckily, the early bloomers were still very much alive and were soon followed by the vast array of daffodils. Slowly, very slowly, the other plants started growing or, in a couple of places, not growing. Was it winter kill or did the squirrel do damage where it could get into the area? I'll have to wait and see next year.

Meanwhile, where were the migrant birds? Reports were few in April. The lack was understandable. After all, if you are a bird that weighs less than an ounce and you meet a 35 mph headwind, you're not traveling very far, no matter what your instincts tell you.

So I concentrated on putting in new fence posts and new netting to protect the three garden areas where, in my ignorance as a new homeowner long ago, I had put some flowers and shrubs that deer find delicious, particularly when they are in bloom. I had not planned to do all three beds - one of them had been done in October and had to be redone because of the snow - and it was a long, tiring job to do that once I had weeded the beds and pulled out leaves, twigs and other debris.

Once that was done, and I recovered the use of my limbs and back, I could concentrate on the birds. Thus it was in early April and not the more normal mid-March when I saw one of the earliest migrants, a phoebe. The bird made it easy on me by appearing in my apple tree early one foggy morning while I sat on my porch.

Same apple tree, now with flowers and wren box. May 7, 2018
(Margo D. Beller)

Now it is May and the floodgates have opened. The maples, oaks, apple and dogwood trees have flowered and leafed out. Even my peppers, potted and put outside, are flowering and showing signs of production.

The birds, like the tree pollen, flooded the area at once. For instance, the day after I read a report of a house wren in a nearby area I put up the wren box. The day after that, a bird appeared to claim it. He's been singing ever since and a female is in the nest. There'll be young soon.

This has been the same with other birds. They are making up for lost time, quickly nesting and mating.

Nowadays I have the time to listen to the dawn chorus and get an idea what birds are around. I can go walking in nearby parks and find all sorts of visitors and sometimes find multiples of the same type of bird. By the rivers, there are yellow warblers hunting and calling "sweet, sweet, I'm so sweet." In the woods are red-eyed vireos with their monotonous "here I am, look at me, up here, in a tree" call. One day this week I found three male scarlet tanagers and one female in adjacent treetops (for good measure I found a male cardinal and could compare the shades of red on the feathers).

It's truly the most wonderful time of the year, when it's finally allowed to come around.

A Walk in the Woods

Let's take a walk together, Reader. It is humid but cool and still cloudy after the rain. MH doesn't want to leave the house and test his balky knees, so let us be traveling companions this time. We will go to a local county park called Patriots Path, and because I don't want to muddy my sneakers we'll walk along one of its paved areas.

Patriots Path (Margo D. Beller)

There are paved paths and unpaved paths, deep woods and hills to climb over if we walked the whole thing. We will only walk one relatively small area. We'll see trees and a host of plants, some of which are now blooming. There are even bears, although I've only come upon one once, in a different area, and this one was more scared of me than the other way around and just kept going.

You and I will keep an eye out for bear and an ear out for birds.

This place is not far from my home. When I have a tremendous need to get out of the house, as I usually do during the northbound bird migration time, I come here to walk, relax and test my memory when the birds call. Like a great blue heron seeking a meal, we can stand very still for a while or walk slowly and find out if that slight movement in the tree over there is something common, like a catbird, or more unusual, such as a blue-gray gnatcatcher.

Let us begin.

We are in luck. Besides being cool and cloudy today there is no one else parked in the lot except mine and one other car. That means there should not be many joggers, dog walkers or mountain bikers passing through while we are on the path.

Notice all the water. It rained heavily last night and this area is prone to flooding. There are even mosquitoes to annoy us.

Marsh marigold (Margo D. Beller)

Everything is so green and lush from all the rain, more like mid-summer than late May. There are all the weeds growing. Lamb's quarter, a form of spinach that is rather tasty when eaten when it is small. There are ones to avoid including garlic mustard, swamp cabbage, Virginia creeper and, yech, poison ivy. We have other colors, too. There are yellow dandelion and marsh marigold. These pink flowers look like a form of geranium. These small whitish flowers are hepatica, I believe, a buttercup.

Lots of robins and catbirds flying everywhere, and a calling great-crested flycatcher (FWEEP!) and what's that reddish-brown bird that has flown to that tree up the path? A veery, cousin to the robins and other thrushes. They skulk on the ground but have a lovely, electronic-sounding song.

Stop and listen a minute. I can make out singing yellow warbler, song sparrow, American redstart and - there! - the sweet, fast song of a rose-breasted grosbeak! They came through our yard earlier this month to use the feeder. We had at least two males and two females but they nest elsewhere, not suburban yards like ours. And what is that in the distance? Sounds like the "tea kettle, tea kettle, tea kettle" of a Carolina wren, one of my favorites.

Mosquito breeding ground (Margo D. Beller)

So many birds, it's hard to separate one call from another sometimes. And there are likely many more birds around here that aren't calling and so I can't see them because of the foliage.

Some people think the state bird of NJ is the mosquito (it's really the American goldfinch) and the one that just got into my face and made me miss the bird calling from the branch overhead seemed about as big as a bird. That's the problem with birding at this time of year. I know there are birds around but the tree foliage makes it hard to see them and once there is rain the mosquitos, gnats and other insects hatch and only make things worse.

So let us return to the car.

Hold on. Did you see that branch move? That is another problem. Unless a bird is singing, it is hard to know what's around until you see a bit of movement. Was that the breeze or a bird? And which bird would be moving on the ground between the bushes? Stand here quietly with me. It is moving along...slowly...slowly. Ah, good, it has come to a place where I can see it and turned its head - a male common yellowthroat warbler. See the mask? He acts like a wren but sings "witchety, witchety, witchety."

Now there are more dog walkers and here at the lot there are more cars. School will be letting out soon and the rush hour traffic will pick up. It's already getting noisy. Time to put the binoculars away and head home. But wait, did I just see a mallard male quietly swimming? Yes I did, somehow.

Always something. Always.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

May weather has not been good. There have been hot days but they have been intermittent. Mostly the days have been cooler and wetter.

What has been good has been the birding. May is prime migration month in my part of the country, the time when the birds that have been wintering in South America, Central America and even the southern U.S. start heading north to their summer breeding grounds.

En route they stop to eat. When they do their internal systems tell them to sing loudly to proclaim their feeding territory and perhaps look for a mate. They are at their most colorful, but when they pass through, it is usually when the trees have finally begun to leaf out, making the search for these birds a pleasure and a challenge.

Yesterday morning, I got out later than I intended but still before 7 am to travel not very far from my home. My town is on the plains of a nearby mountain. Traveling a few minutes up the road takes you up the mountain. You pass through McMansions I remember going up 20 years ago, some for sale for the third or fourth time. At the top of the ridge is a playground and a parking lot, off which are several hiking trails.

However, I prefer to leave the lot, walk along the road to a power line cut, listening all the way.

Sometimes you get lucky. When I got out of the car I heard a ton of birds, most of them warblers, there in the parking lot. Now I had to use my memory because seeing the birds high up in the trees was not easy. Which bird sounds like this? Which bird sounds like that? I am not one of those birders who knows every single call for every single bird, although I wish I did at times like these.

Baltimore oriole (Margo D. Beller)

After noting what I thought I heard, I moved on to the cut, where the birding was easier. Yes, there was the prairie warbler I expected -- no wait, there are two singing at each other! Prairie warblers like shrubby, second-growth areas such as power line cuts, and I've heard at least one singing for years up here. It's call, once heard, is easily remember.

Now up pops a brown thrasher long enough for me to identify it before it dives into a shrub. What's this moving stealthily along? Why, it's the little yellow bandit known as the common yellow-throated warbler that acts more like a wren than the warblers I was hearing in the parking lot.

What's that flying into that treetop? An indigo bunting, shining deep blue in the green tree. It is doing an unintentional duet with the Baltimore oriole that flew across the road, allowing me to find this black and orange bird in the seeding oak.

Black-throated green warbler (Margo D. Beller)

Time flies fast when you are looking at and for birds. After what I realized was 30 minutes, I walked back to the lot. With the exception of the one bird I wanted to see because I see it is infrequently - a Nashville warbler - I was lucky enough to discover the birds I'd been hearing were now in closer trees. So there was the black and white warbler clinging to a tree branch. There was the American redstart flycatching in the treetop. There was the chestnut-sided warbler saying it was "pleased ta meet cha" with its song. There was the northern parula, a little bird with a very loud song.

And there, softly, from within the woods, I managed to hear the other bird I expected, the black-throated green warbler, singing its alternate song "zoo zee zoo zoo zee." 

A lot of birds in 60 minutes in an area hard by a residential area five minutes from my home. Only in May, the most wonderful time of the year.

Dazed and Confused

In my part of the U.S., it was 70 degrees F at Christmas 2015. Everyone loved it, except people like me who knew that being warmer in New Jersey than it was in Daytona, Fla., was not normal.

snow from another year (Margo D. Beller)

Today, on the first day of Spring 2016, I write as it is 35 degrees outside, cloudy, snow and a nor'easter off the coast and the house heat on. I wear fingerless gloves as I type.

 I could go on about this abnormal weather and global warming and such, but right now I am wondering about the birds.

When we had warmer than usual temperatures last week, I saw many reports of first migrants arriving - phoebes, pine warblers, redwinged blackbirds. (I have seen two out of three; no pine warblers.) There were lots of bugs and the flowers were opening. Forsythia, daffodils. The iris is starting to grow, the crocus and snowdrops are finished. Magnolias and cherry trees have started flowering. The garden stores have started selling fruit trees and pansies for the color deprived and early vegetables for those itching to start their plots.

I would hope these store plants have been covered because the cold must be a shock to the system.

pine warbler (Margo D. Beller)

Same with the birds. They came up on southwestern winds and found a feast of bugs (aside from my feeders - I rarely get migrants at the feeders for some reason). Now they have come face to face with a cold front. What do they do? Turn around and head south again? Head north and hope for the best? Die?

I don't know the answers. I do know the yardbirds have been visiting the feeders a lot, and they've been singing territorial songs. With the clock now set ahead an hour, it is just light when I rise. Outside I can hear singing song sparrows, titmice, cardinals and American and fish crows. But these are not the migrants.

We birders can only hope that when the warm weather returns, so will the migratory birds.