Scenes From the Drought

Today, Labor Day, is the 60th day of temperatures of 80 degrees or higher, and while a drought has not been officially declared by my home state (thanks to a very wet June), we are at the point where you can tell who has been using a sprinkler (built in or otherwise) and who has not.

What had been lawn is now baked hay. My husband has not mowed the lawn since mid-July -- which, coincidentally is when we last had a day below 80 degrees. "Pop-up" storms have been few and far between.

Lawn - Sept. 7, 2015 (Margo D. Beller)

No one cared one to two months ago. Most people - not me - apparently prefer heat and humidity to cold and snow and have really enjoyed having sunny, dry days for going to the beach, the lake or the mountains, the ballpark or just for doing nothing around the house.

But now that summer is supposedly over and school is in session, these same people are ready to do their usual suburban fall activities - mow and fertilize the lawn, buy mums and corn threshes to decorate for autumn - and they suddenly realize, hey, what happened to my lawn? Why doesn't it feel like autumn?

Whether it is hot and dry or hot and humid, without rain you have plants drying up. Even plants that are "drought-tolerant" or have deep roots need water once in a while, which I provide early in the morning as needed. Many people don't, and their dried-out, dead plants show the results.

Despite my best efforts, burnt joe-pye weed. (Margo D. Beller)

Just as the birds fled the Indonesian coast before the Christmas 2004 tsunami, my backyard bird behavior is telling me how dangerous this situation has become.

Scene 1: I have had a hummingbird feeder out all summer. I've written before that recently I had to buy a cup to fill with water and keep out the ants - itself a sign of drought - and create a moat. A few days ago I came on the porch, looked at the feeder and instead of a hummingbird a downy woodpecker was attempting to get its long tongue through the portal as the smaller hummer does. Just today, a tufted titmouse grabbed hold of the rim, leaned forward and dipped its bill into the moat. I've never seen such activity from either bird.

Scene 2: I do not put seed feeders out during the summer because birds usually can eat insects (more protein). However, with this drought, there is a dearth of flowering plants. Even where there are flowers - such as the rose of sharon - I have seen very few bees or other insects partaking of the pollen. That isn't normal.

MH knows I put out feeders around Labor Day, but last week he kept asking when they'd be going out. Ever since the bear destroyed my feeder pole, requiring me to buy a new one, I've been reluctant to put them back out, knowing I'd have to take them in every night.

But I put them out, figuring it would take a few days for the birds to find them. I was wrong.

Titmouse at water cooler. (Margo D. Beller)

Within an hour I had titmice, chickadees and many, many house sparrows at the two feeders containing sunflower seeds. It took a couple of days before the thistle sock drew the attention of any goldfinches - six at one point. Until I  put the feeders out I didn't see very much backyard activity at all.

I am glad to see birds, lord knows, but it took me some time to realize that I am providing an easier way to get food than hunting long and hard for food that could be quite some distance away. That is why the female downy woodpecker has learned another unusual behavior - how to get between the bars of the caged feeder to get some seed.

I also provide water - a water cooler for smaller birds, a water dish for larger birds. In summers, even those with plentiful rain, these are invaluable. Both smaller and larger birds have come to the water cooler, the larger birds contorting themselves from a nearby branch while the smaller ones are on an attached perch. The water dish has also brought an assortment of birds as well as squirrels and chipmunks.

Scene 3: Just as there are birds crowding into and atop the feeders - particularly the huge family of house sparrows, which blocks other birds from getting food unless I chase them off - there is a large flock of birds feeding on the leavings because it is easier than fighting the crowd above. These include mourning doves, cardinals, other sparrows and even titmice and chickadees, along with squirrels and chipmunks.

With so many birds pecking at what the goldfinches and other birds have dropped, it is surprising to me that no sharp-shinned or Cooper's hawks have swooped in to catch a meal. Maybe they are sticking to the shady forest, where some areas are still green. I know I would.

Chickadee with seed. (Margo D. Beller)

There is no water, there are no flowers, there are no insects. There is only drought and what water and food I (and, I hope, others) provide. It is wrong to waste my time, energy, water and money using sprinklers in a battle to make the lawn green and long, which would mean going out (or hiring someone) to mow it and cause further heat damage to the grass, which is - after all - a plant, too.

Is this global warming, this strange dipping of the Jet Stream that has us in a high-pressure system that keeps the rain north or south of the New York metropolitan area? Is this the "new normal?" I fear it is.

I know, California has been suffering years of drought. But take a look at this list of record temperatures.

Nuthatch at caged feeder behind thistle sock. (Margo D. Beller)

According to weather.com, the record hottest summers are:

• Eugene, Oregon: Average temperature 69.5 degrees (old record 68.5 degrees in 1967)
• Lewiston, Idaho: Average temperature 76.9 degrees (old record 76.3 degrees in 1940)
• Phoenix, Arizona (tie): Average temperature 95.1 degrees (ties 95.1 degrees in 2014)
• Portland, Oregon: Average temperature 72.2 degrees (old record 69.8 degrees in 2009)
• Medford, Oregon: Average temperature 76.4 degrees (old record 74.9 degrees in 2014)
• Salem, Oregon: Average temperature 71.3 degrees (old record 69.4 degrees in 2014)
• Seattle, Washington: Average temperature 69.2 degrees (old record 67.4 degrees in 2013)
• Spokane, Washington: Average temperature 72.7 degrees (old record 71.7 degrees in 1922)
• Wenatchee, Washington: Average temperature 76.9 degrees (old record 75.6 degrees in 1958)

Pear tree showing effect of drought. (Margo D. Beller)

Other Notables: Anchorage, Alaska (3rd hottest); Boise, Idaho (2nd hottest); Tucson, Arizona (2nd hottest); Columbia, South Carolina (3rd hottest); New Orleans (5th hottest); Baton Rouge, Louisiana (4th hottest)

Even Canada's Edmonton, Alberta went through its second-hottest August in 20 years.

Of course, not everyone is so affected. For every yin there's a yang. Again according to weather.com:

• Fort Wayne, Indiana: 21.52 inches of rain (old record 18.70 inches in 1986)
• Rapid City, South Dakota (airport): 14.54 inches of rain (old record 11.90 inches in 1968)

Nuthatch, goldfinch, titmouse at feeder (Margo D. Beller)

Other Notables: St. Louis (2nd wettest), Indianapolis (2nd wettest), San Diego (2nd wettest), Tampa (5th wettest)

And as bad as August has been, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July was worse - the hottest month since records have been kept.

President Obama recently traveled to Alaska, to focus on climate change and its effects in the short term on the indigenous population and in the long term on the rest of the world. He is the first U.S. president to travel north of the Arctic Circle.

We've seen some lovely pictures - melting glaciers and the like - but he could've made the point just as well had he come to my backyard, watched the grass and trees and plants dry up and the birds fighting each other desperately for what food and water I provide.

You Can Go Home Again

Osprey pair, Marine Park, Brooklyn (RE Berg-Andersson)

When I was growing up along the southern coast of Brooklyn, I knew Sheepshead Bay, which gave my neighborhood its name, but did not know my junior high school was named for Shell Bank Creek, which flows to the north of Plumb Island and east into where Gerritsen and Mill creeks merge, in turn flowing into Plumb Beach Channel and on to Rockaway Inlet and, eventually, to the Atlantic Ocean.

I knew there was a neighborhood called Mill Basin and one called Gerritsen Beach and the little beach off the Belt Parkway I could walk to from my house was Plumb Beach. But the waterways for which they are named meant nothing to me. My family didn't boat and didn't fish.

When we went to Plumb Beach or occasionally Gerritsen Beach, we had to watch for trash (or worse) in the sand and in the water when we walked to the edge. We never swam and no one ever kept the fish they caught in Sheepshead Bay.

Fast-forward over 40 years. The federal government took over the waterways and beaches stretching from New Jersey's Sandy Hook through Staten Island, hooking east to Brooklyn (including the former military base, Floyd Bennett Field), Queens' Jamaica Bay and the western-most parts of the Rockaway Peninsula to create the Gateway National Recreation Area in 1972. Gateway, according to its website, is a "complex urban park, preserving 27,000 acres of land and sea across two states and three New York City boroughs."

This is when the cleanup began as well as recognition that these inlets, bays and creeks are what make this area of New York City unique. The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of environmental activism, when people worried about the effects of polluted air and water on their children, their communities and themselves.

The federal government stepped in it because it was expected to -- a far cry from today when the idea of any federal government program enacted for the public good draws outcry from some areas and is considered a foreign and dangerous concept akin to socialism.

I left Brooklyn for college in the early 1970s, and did not spend much time visiting the beaches when I would return for visits. It has only been in the last 15 years, when my husband and I, while living in New Jersey, became interested in watching birds, did we start visiting some of these areas, which had become prime birding sites thanks to cleaner beaches and water.

Marine Park salt marsh (RE Berg-Andersson)

For instance, I had been reading about a Marine Park Salt Marsh area and some of the interesting birds found there, but I was having a hard time visualizing it. I knew Marine Park - I would ride there, alone, no mobile phone or pager, no child-safety helmet - on my bike, go around the paved, circular drive a few times and then either come home or visit my grandmother in nearby Flatlands. The area across the road was dark, dense with trees and covered in garbage. You didn't go in there. How could this be a salt marsh?

Well, the area was opened up and there was the marsh, where it had been all along. An educational center was built to explain the marsh's importance. Best of all, a paved path takes you along the marsh itself, which is the end of Gerritsen Creek. At one point, we could see where the end of Mill Creek starts (at the back of the Marine Park golf course on Flatbush Ave.). In the distance one way is the  Gil Hodges Bridge to the Rockaway Peninsula. The other way stands the reminder of 9/11 known variously as the Freedom Tower, One World Trade Center or That Ugly Building Over There.

Thanks to federal spending on Gateway, I have learned about the forts that defended New York harbor, seen hundreds of different types of  birds and visited an airfield that is now a wildlife habitat.

Had I been a birder as a child, I would not have seen the osprey, green herons, black-crowned night-heron, great and snowy egrets and other marsh and shore birds I witnessed at the Marine Park Salt Marsh.

Great egret and smaller snowy egrets (RE Berg-Andersson)

It's too bad my parents weren't inclined to have a boat and ply the waters so near our home to such exotically named places as Dead Horse Bay, Island Channel and the Raunt. Then again, what would I have seen in those dark, unenlightened times?

We didn't know what we had back then. We do now.

At a time when the Obama administration wants to broaden environmental protection and cut back on the forces that promote global warming, opposition in Congress and some states wants to bring things back to the way things were, when water was polluted, the air was brown and bins of coal dust were out for the garbage men to dump. (I saw these bins because coal was used to heat my public school, across the street from my home.)

Those people who think any rules that impinge on their ability to deplete the land of birds, animals and fish or pollute the air we all breathe or do whatever the hell they want without "government on our backs" don't know what we have either.