Dawn Chorus, With Junco

It is a cold dawn with slight fog as I stand on my back patio, listening. There are many robins singing, the occasional high peal of a cardinal. They are greeting the day in their own ways, proclaiming "I am here, this is my territory, stay away unless you are a potential mate."

Singing cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

Robins are the early birds that catch the worms, but there are others in this dawn chorus that join in as more daylight comes. More cardinals, the "here, here" of a titmouse, the "oh Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody" of a white-throated sparrow now in breeding colors (his throat and "eyebrows" are a very bright white and you can see the yellow close to the eyes, an area known as the lores).

In the old days, when I walked early in the morning to the train to take me to work, I would listen to the birdsong. Some birds I could easily recognize, others I would come to learn over the course of a decade. The chatter of goldfinches, the "tea kettle, tea kettle" of a Carolina wren and the cascading warble of its smaller relative, the house wren. The "hey sweetie" of a black-capped chickadee or the raucaus "thief!" of the blue jay. It took years of searching trees and walking through the woods to learn which calls were made by which bird.

White-throated sparrow in nonbreeding coloring
(Margo D. Beller)

Now, standing still in the growing light, I hear Canada geese, the high-pitched squeal of a red-bellied woodpecker, the three-note "tzee-tzee-tzee" of a golden-crowned kinglet, the drumming against four different trees by woodpeckers proclaiming their territories. Here are the mourning dove, the fish crow, the larger American crow and the rattle of cowbirds. The slight differences in call between a downy woodpecker and the larger, nearly identical hairy woodpecker.

Once in a while there is something unusual -- a sharp-shinned hawk flap-flap-soaring overhead, a raven's guttural croak, the high-pitched "hank" of a white-breasted nuthatch. The longer I stand outside, the longer I hear another soloist come to the foreground of this chorus. For me it ends as I am going inside to warm up and get some coffee and a flicker does its long laughing call.

Spring is my favorite time of the year. The birds are noisier as they start looking for a suitable nest site and a mate. The migrants are passing through my area, heading north from their wintering grounds. Ruby-throated hummingbirds have been reported as far north as New Jersey, despite our unusually cold March and April weather. When the instinct says go, you go.

Depending on where you are located, you will hear different birds calling in the dawn or at dusk. My patch is a suburban town in New Jersey. In a few weeks, if I'm lucky, I might hear the softer songs, clicks and buzzes of the warblers and other migrant birds foraging in the treetops as the first rays of the rising sun hit that area. There are many songs I still can't identify, even after all these years.

House finch in feeder, junco at top right, female
cardinal at top left (Margo D. Beller)

One of the interesting "problems" I have is telling the difference between four different birds whose songs are very similar. What I heard the other morning as part of the dawn chorus was a small black and white sparrow with a pink bill called a junco or, to give it its formal name, a dark-eyed junco. This is a winter visitor, and in my part of the country it is only the male birds hanging around. The browner females stay farther to the south. The idea, I think, is the males can get north and find the best territories faster if they stay farther north. So they and the white-throats come to the feeders in winter and are soon replaced by summer visitors including the catbird and the chipping sparrow.

The junco's call is soft, high in pitch and musical. The chipping sparrow will call more loudly, longer and the call is not as musical. Some refer to it as "dry." To me, and this dates me, it sounds like a person using two fingers to tap tap tap on a manual typewriter keyboard, kind of mechanical. As noted, the chippy arrives around the time the junco is making ready to leave and you'll often hear their calls during that time.

Chipping sparrow in nonbreeding coloring (Margo D. Beller)

There are two other summer visitors with similar musical calls, so I have to work my memory a little harder to remember them. I don't have many pines growing around my area and I don't live near a swamp, so I have to travel elsewhere to hear pine warblers or swamp sparrows. Pine warbler song is high in pitch and very sweetly musical. The ornithologists at Cornell describe the swamp sparrow call as "a slow trill consisting of two or more pitches repeatedly sung essentially at the same time." To me it sounds like a chippy or a junco.

As problems go, trying to remember the different songs of four birds is a minor but enjoyable challenge.

My Cathedral of the Pines

I wish I could make you hear the quiet I heard the other Saturday when I was standing in the middle of this pine grove at Rancocas Nature Center. I wish you could smell the fresh piney air.

The only thing that would've made this grove better would have been a few pine warblers calling their sweet trills, as there were the first time we came to Rancocas and stood in this grove six years before.

Pine grove, Rancocas, NJ (R.E.Berg-Andersson)

Rancocas is in Westhampton, N.J., abutting the much larger Rancocas State Forest. The nature center was once part of New Jersey Audubon but NJ Audubon went through one of its frequent financial shudders and closed down or gave up several of its nature centers, claiming not enough people were visiting. Rancocas is in central Jersey, so compared with the north Jersey location of NJ Audubon headquarters, it must've seemed on the other side of the Earth.

(Another center NJ Audubon shut down - the one on Sandy Hook, one of the best areas for birding in the state but rather elongated, so perhaps not as many folk got to the northern part where the office was located.)

This pine grove is interesting because the trees were planted in straight rows. However, the saplings were never thinned and so all the trees grew straight and tall, competing with each other for the light. "Forestry management" is what the pros call thinning out the trees. So if you look at the trees at eye level you can walk from one end to the other and not run into a tree. (You can't see it as well in this picture looking up at the sky.)

MH and I drove here one other time before Saturday, years ago, and found the placed gated shut. It was after NJ Audubon left. However, it didn't sit shut long - the site is now run by Burlington County and several groups, including the Friends of Rancocas Nature Center, which runs the visitor/education center.

Owls are here, and warblers and robins and woodpeckers of various types. There are trails through woods, marshes and uplands. But what I like about Rancocas is what made NJ Audubon give it up -- not many people were around. Hence the quiet.

In our travels MH and I were once driving in NH, near Rindge to be exact, and there was a sign for "Cathedral of the Pines." I made him take the exit to investigate. It turned out to be an actual, ecumenical church, open to the skies in some areas, enclosed buildings elsewhere.  

We did not stop but I remember being disappointed that it wasn't just a large grove for silent contemplation.

I am glad to say that many years later I found my Cathedral of the Pines in central New Jersey, at Rancocas.

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.

Tick, Tick, Tick

I was probably the only person in the greater New York City area who was not happy to have May in March. I look all around me and see more evidence of a world out of ecological balance, and I wonder what will be coming.

While all the dry heat has kept the grass short, it went brown. That didn’t stop the lawn services from getting in, blowing out the debris and filling the air with their gas fumes. My crocuses bloomed and busted in what seemed like a day and a half, and now my daffodils have opened at once, weeks early for some, instead of at the more usual, gradual pace.

Forsythia was one of the many shrubs flowering early.

The trees and shrubs have started to flower, leaving my husband and me with watery, itchy eyes from the pollen. Allergists are saying this will be a long, bad allergy season and I feel sorry for those who have even worse problems than MH and I have.

What is this obsession people of all ages seem to have with endless summer? Why do they want to wear tank tops, shorts and flip-flops at any slight rise in temperature?

While they are lying on the grass working on their tans the water table beneath is going down. Without a significant rain, and soon, there will be drought restrictions before summer. I’ve been to several marshes recently that are bone dry, and that has a profound effect on the flora and fauna.

What a relief it wasn’t like last winter, someone told me recently. Well, all that snow, while a pain in the back to shovel, was providing a nice blanket for the lawn and, more important, was melting and keeping it watered. We had no water restrictions last year and many of my neighbors took advantage to run their sprinklers at all times of the day - including in the midday sun - in their lust for a green lawn that they encouraged to grow so they could have it cut every week, then water again to keep it green.

What are they going to do this year?

Even I got caught up in it. When the daffodils started coming up I had to fight through the netting and remove the winter debris I’d left when we had the Halloween snowstorm. After a winter of indolence suddenly I had the urge to put seeds into pots. Now I have five lettuce seedlings I have to put someplace outside behind netting. Luckily, lettuce likes cold weather. Not so the tomato and pepper seedlings slowly coming up that I can‘t put outside yet so they are crowding the window sill. The potted annuals I brought in to keep growing over the winter are now overgrowing. My canna started growing in its pot during the winter - when it should have been resting - despite not getting a bit of water from me. My rosemary is practically begging me to put it outside.

I’m not ready for this yet!

Delicate magnolia blossoms are already falling on the lawns.

Here’s another problem I have with this unnatural warming: By the time the tropical migrants get up here from Central and South America, all the trees will have leafed out and it will be nearly impossible to see the birds. Worse, how will the early summer affect their ability to find food? Many of the flowers and fruits may already be gone when they come north.

And some of the migrants coming from the U.S. south are already passing into this area even as the winter birds - the juncos and white-throated sparrows - continue to hang around the feeders.

I was at Great Swamp the other day, looking for early migrants. I was lucky enough to find some of them: pine warbler, field sparrow, phoebe. I also, despite my best efforts to prevent this, found a tick as I was getting ready to shower that night. (If I was a better journalist I’d have taken a picture to show you but the impulse to throw it in the sink and wash it down the drain was more immediate. So this picture will have to do.)

A birder I met at the Swamp said with all the warmth and dryness this will be a long, bad year for ticks, and he has already gone places elsewhere in New Jersey where he’s found 30 on his leg after hiking on a trail (rather than crashing into the woods as, unfortunately, a lot of birders do). Ticks are one of the many reasons I get the deer off my property as quickly as possible. But now I must worry that I could get one or more from any of the places where I go birding thanks to the mild winter and warm spring.

Sigh.

Well, to paraphrase Mark Twain, if you don’t like the weather in New Jersey, wait a few minutes.

Instead of coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb, March came in like May and is, according to the forecast, going out like February - windy and cold.

In the long run it may not mean much, but for now I can’t wait.