At Midsummer

If you consider summer to start on June 1 rather than May's Memorial Day weekend, we are currently in midsummer. Today, a rare not-so-humid day, I took a walk around my yard to see how things are doing.

The early spring flowers are a distant memory. The azaleas, irises and rhododendron have bloomed and busted, the lily flowers gone while the stems remain.

I put seeds from three different types of plants into a pot, and only the zinnias are growing. I had collected the seeds from a friend's plant last fall, and will do it again this fall with these flowers once they are done.

Hummingbird-attracting canna flower (Margo D. Beller)

The purple coneflowers have finally started to open. The midseason goldenrod is in flower. Rose of sharon shrubs are blooming purple in neighbor yards but the pale pink flowering type I have are just starting to bud, as are the succulent sedums protected by the deer fencing. Some of the potted cannas have put up long spikes of red flowers that, witnessed at least once by my husband, attracted a female ruby-throated hummingbird. (I hope she gets to the backyard where the feeder hangs waiting for her.)

The house wren young are now so noisy when a parent comes to feed them that I can hear their begging through the closed windows of the porch, even with the fan on. They are so big the parents feed them from outside the box, except when they squeeze in to remove poop. I expect that, like the brood earlier this summer, there are three birds in the box and they will soon be enticed to leave and follow their parents, learning to feed themselves. If they survive they'll head south and the box will come down for the year.

The humidity has affected me more than usual this year, starting with the heavy spring rains. I used to wonder how those living in New Orleans could survive the humidity. Now I know - you close the windows, put on the air conditioner, close the curtains against the sun and stay inside as the air dries along with my skin, just as it does in the winter when the furnace is continually running. And don't look at the electric bill until absolutely necessary.

But at least the gnats are gone from my porch. Unlike last year when I didn't start noticing them until August and found they had infested the open bag of bird seed, they have nothing to breed on. The seed is in a locked container. Old plastic pots are gone. Soil is off the porch. What ceramic pots I've kept are covered with plastic. If a gnat was desperate enough it would visit the yellow sticky strip, where there are already a number of corpses. My hope is the wrens and other baby birds are eating the overflow.

This month the cicadas started calling during the day, the fireflies have been out in the evenings and soon there will be night choruses of katydids and crickets.

In the cooler early morning I have been hearing a number of different types of birds, besides the resident house wrens. I hear families of titmice and chickadees. Mockingbirds harried a pair of fish crows that seemed interested in nesting in my trees. (They left.) A catbird sang for the longest time atop my yew hedge in the mornings, but now its young are gone and the bird has moved on. It is not yet August but already some birds are heading south for the winter feeding grounds, such as the shorebirds that stop off at some of New Jersey's shore empoundments (along with the nasty, biting, greenhead flies). 

From 2020, a house wren feeding young from outside the box.
(Margo D. Beller)

Warblers are starting to move south. They won't be as colorful as in spring and won't be singing their territorial songs. They will be harder to find.

Leaves are already falling from some of the trees, but not the apple tree. Cutting off that rotted limb seems to have done it some good. The dogwood I saved two years ago is showing green fruits that will eventually redden and, I hope, draw robins and cedar waxwings before the squirrels can get at them.

Back-to-school ads on TV tell me it will soon be time for the kids currently on vacation to hit the books (and their after-school activities) again. It is already darker in the early morning. Soon enough it will be dark in the early evening, too.

I'll put the garden to bed and the seed feeders out for the cardinals and other birds hanging around my yard during the winter. Then another year will end, as it inevitably does.

 

An Exercise in Futility

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.

--Simone de Beauvoir

The author of "The Second Sex" was not a gardener. If she was she would've said "weeding" instead of housework.

I, however, am a gardener. With a three-day holiday weekend all but assuring me of lots of people on the trails I walk to listen for birds, I took one of those days to bring my pail, bench and spade to the ornamental grass garden to get at the weeds that have run rampant thanks to heat, rain and lack of attention from me.

An assortment of weeds including milkweed, wild strawberry, 
ground ivy, oxalis and others I can't identify.
(Margo D. Beller)

Weeding is the last thing I want to do on a hot summer morning, but this holiday weekend was blessedly less humid and a tad cooler, allowing me to gird myself for battle. And battle I did.

I can identify many, but far from all, of the weeds I was pulling. There are strawberry vines, a clover-like plant called oxalis, my old nemesis the ground ivy, wild violets, dandelions. There is also lawn grass that has gone feral and moved into the plant area. 

On another cool morning I had spent several hours pulling oxalis that had grown so tall it was obscuring the plants in the sunny front plots. This time, however, the oxalis was more spread out, in some areas almost like a vine, somehow growing behind the tall ornamental grasses in much less sun.

Milkweed has shown up in this area, but because it doesn't get much sun it hasn't grown the flowers that benefit monarch butterflies. But the plant spreads through underground runners, so pulling up what is above the ground doesn't stop what is below.

The sharp blades of ornamental grass.
(Margo D. Beller)

I have to tip my hat to weeds and their methods of survival. Oxalis and the other weeds I was pulling from behind and beneath the ornamental grasses get only a small bit of sun, usually in the early morning and late afternoon, but it is enough for them. With a spade oxalis comes up easily but it is also fragile and will break. You grab a handful, pull it out, then see you left some behind. Even if you get these there may be more under the soil surface.

Some of the weeds I pulled were growing next to stones, which makes the plants hard to get with the spade. They also grow next to plants I don't want to uproot, which means I have to be careful with the spade not to take out a lily of the valley, for instance.

If the weed has a taproot, like the dandelion, I can dig down but rarely pull up the entire root. Usually some is left behind, assuring more to come later. One of the weeds I can't identify could grow into a small tree if left alone, so I try to pull it out or at least take off the foliage to slow the growth.

Ornamental grass (right) and prickly yew (Margo D. Beller)

In this particular plot, there is no netting. That is because I put in plants deer don't tend to browse, in this case three large ornamental grasses that grow after the daffodils are finished and shelter some smaller plants including a bleeding heart. So the weeds grow among the grasses and get wonderful protection. I have to be careful not to get cut by the knife-like blades as I move next to and beneath the grasses.

Also, there is a yew - taxonomy unknown - that sprang up from someplace else, filling a space when several scotch broom shrubs died from the effects of too much snow and too much cold wind one winter. Deer don't eat this yew, unlike the yew hedge nearby, because the leaves of this particular yew are prickly and have a strong scent. I can tell you these leaves scratch as much as the grasses.

Perhaps the greatest protection the weeds have is their sheer number. Eventually, they wear me down. I fill two loads in my large pink pail for the compost pile, and then I look at what is left and feel despair. 

I try to comfort myself by thinking, well, I heard lots of nice birds - house wren, catbird, chipping sparrow - and spent time outdoors in nice weather. I tell myself that at least I made a dent in the weeds - though deep down I know that by disturbing the soil I have created space for more of them to later take root.

And in the end, it's all compost. (Margo D. Beller)

It is only later I feel the mental and physical exhaustion and find the bites from insects that didn't like having their homes uprooted.

Summer Doldrums

This seems like more of a hellish summer than usual, which is what I think every year. Summer is always a time when I stay indoors with the air conditioner on if the heat and humidity get to extremely uncomfortable levels. Even when it is cool in the very early morning I have to dress in long sleeves and head covering, my pants tucked into my socks, to protect myself from the many insects that would otherwise bite any uncovered area.

Summer flowers - coneflower, zinnias, daisies,
coreopsis (Margo D. Beller)

This year's weather has produced enough rain to make me glad I did not call for the sprinkler to be turned on, and to produce mushrooms in the lawn. It has kept my half-dead dogwood tree alive and given my yard guy gainful employment.

The rain has been good for my cannas and my flowers, including the zinnia and marigold seeds I planted. With the daisies, coreopsis and conflowers blooming now I can finally cut my own bouquet instead of paying to make one at the farmstand I frequent for summer vegetables. The rain also prompted enough weeds to force me to pull them from all over the garden over the course of three early mornings, before the sun, humidity and my sore body drove me inside.

I gave up on what I had thought were pepper seedlings. They were weeds, so I'll be buying my peppers this year.

Not a pepper after all. (Margo D. Beller)

And then there is the continual prospect of smoke from Canadian wildfires mixing with the usual high levels of ozone each time the wind comes out of an otherwise pleasant northwesterly direction. Will the fires continue into the fall when the migrants start heading south?

It has been hard to get myself walking in this weather, even harder to go listen for birds. At this time of year it's rare I find a bird that I couldn't find in my backyard, so I don't usually bother. In the backyard the robins are going after ripe fruit in the black cherry tree, the catbird family members chase each other around the yard, and chipping and song sparrows call from the trees. I hear the cardinals in the morning and have a brief temptation to put out seed for them. But then I remember these birds eat the insects that plague me and don't need my seed now.

I could follow the usual flock of birders down the coast and look for the shorebirds that spend the summer in New Jersey. But the one time we went shorebirding in summer we were attacked by greenhead flies, which meant staying in the car with the windows up as we drove the tour road. 

So I sit on my porch in the early morning with the fan on, sipping my coffee as my neighbors go off to work or get their kids ready for camp. That is how I see the cardinals, robins, catbirds and occasional others in my yard. (The hummingbird feeder has yet to draw a single bird, unfortunately, even with the pink flowers in bloom near it.)

Wren nest box (Margo D. Beller)

Then there is the house wren box. A few weeks ago, long after the first pair of wrens and their young departed, another pair actively investigated the box and seemed ready to use the old nest inside. Then, once again, something happened. 

After a few days when I wasn't on the porch I came out one morning to find a male singing loud and long but no activity at the box. In fact, over the next few days if a female showed up he chased her away. We went away for a few days but as of yesterday he was still around, tho' not singing as loudly or as often. I am no expert on house wren behavior despite all the writing I do about them, so I have no idea what is going on. 

In a few weeks the male will be gone and the box will be brought down and emptied. The summer heat will be a distant memory, I hope.

Summertime

 In summer, the song sings itself.

-- William Carlos Williams

Since I last wrote, we've had a roller-coaster month of May. There were days of rain so heavy it flooded my favorite walking trail. There were days that were much colder than usual, including one when I needed to protect my plants from possible frost. Then it turned hot and very, very dry. My husband and I did some traveling. I was downsized out of a job. Many of my early plants bloomed and faded, only to be replaced by others including the rhododendron, the irises and the peony. I accomplished several big garden projects - including weeding, creating a border trench, and removing and replacing deer netting and fencing - to my physical detriment. The lawn grass became very long but it was cut before any pregnant deer would want to drop a fawn on the lawn, which has happened in the past around now.

Rhododendron (Margo D. Beller)

And spring migration came to an end.

It is always with sadness that I acknowledge it's over. I think of what birds I found and what I didn't find. In my part of New Jersey the northerly winds in late April into early May seemed to have kept down the number of migrants passing through. The radar I looked at showed the birds flying north, bypassing most of my state, taking the path of least resistance. When we visited family in New Hampshire and stayed at a motel by Lake Sunapee it was a pleasure to sit on the screened deck at dawn and listen to the birds I had missed in my area. Except for our annual trip to Old Mine Road to listen for the birds that breed in the high terrain of the northwestern part of New Jersey, the only birds I have found lately are local breeders.

When it finally became warm enough I planted my pepper seedlings and moved the house plants to the enclosed back porch. In the backyard I went from two seed feeders and one suet feeder to one seed feeder and the hummingbird feeder. But there were nights it got cold and one when it got very cold, and that night I covered the pots and the peony, which had flower buds about to open. 

Peony, when the buds opened (Margo D. Beller)

Now, on Memorial Day, the so-called start of summer, it is hot. Yesterday I took in the last seed feeder and washed it out. Until then it had been drawing pairs of white-breasted nuthatch, cardinal, jay, goldfinch, house finch and song sparrow, the last one an unusual feeder bird for my yard. Now, the yard is quiet except for resident birds including the catbird. The birds should be either sitting on eggs or ready to do so.

That brings me to the annual saga of the yard house wren.

Every year the story is different. This year I hung the nest box in a different area of the dogwood tree than last year. In the past it only took a few days for a bird to come. But with this year's winds it took several weeks for a house wren to even show up in the yard, much less investigate the box. Early in May, just before we went on vacation, I saw a wren with a stick in its mouth go into the box. If it was a male, it was "dressing" the potential nest site to show its mate. Its mate would decide if she liked the location. If she did, she would bring in more sticks to create the nest. So I don't know if the wren was a male or female because they look alike.

My favorite walking path under water after
two days of very heavy rain. It has
since dried. (Margo D. Beller)

Fast-forward 10 days. I returned to work only to learn I and a number of others were out of a job. I spent time on the porch. What I saw from there were two house wrens actively shuttling back and forth with food to the box. According to the Cornell Ornithology Lab, incubation is nine to 16 days and the nesting period is 15 to 17 days. Maybe I had misjudged when the nesting period began?

Then, something happened.

We had a few cold mornings, including that very cold morning I mentioned when I had to protect my plants. The shuttling stopped. I didn't see much of the wrens. Recently, as I listened to the male singing from a nearby bush, the female came out of the nest box. But there was no active shuttling. She would return with food and go back inside. She would not come out again for a long time. 

I have no camera in the box so I can only guess at what is happening. 

Scenario 1: The young they had been actively feeding got big enough to fly, left the nest and the pair started a second brood.

Scenario 2: Something killed the young - the cold, a predator - and the pair immediately started a new brood.

Scenario 3: This is an entirely different pair of house wrens.

Wren box in its 2023 location
(Margo D. Beller)

In all the time I've put out a nest box I have never had a pair of wrens have one brood, raise the young, get them to leave the nest and hunt for themselves, and then the pair start a second brood. There would not have been enough time for that process, or for an entirely new pair of wrens to have found the box and lay eggs.

I lean toward scenario 2. Most likely the young had grown too big for the female to get inside the box and sit on them when the temperature dropped to the low 30s and so they died of the cold. Less likely is a predator getting to the young. One of the advantages the nest box provides is the small opening - too small for a cowbird to drop in an egg or admit a predator any larger than an extremely small snake. 

However, it would not have deterred disease from entering and sickening the young birds fatally. That's another possiblity.

At present I go outside in the morning when it is cool. I hear the male wren singing his territorial song. The female appears with food and goes into the box. After a while, when the male sings, perhaps telling her it is safe to do so because he is nearby, she will leave the box to hunt and then fly back and enter the box. The male stays in the area.

Perhaps in a week the pair will be shuttling to and from the box to feed young. This summer I'll have more time to watch for it. 

Backyard Nursery

The day after my last post, the house wrens fledged. I was working in my office and through the open window I heard one of the wren parents doing its scolding call from the tall arborvitae by the front door. I went downstairs, out the back door and around the house. I could see the bird moving around as it called. When I headed to the back door I could hear the young calling from the box or the shrubs across the way. 

Now-empty nest (Margo D. Beller)

I'm no expert but I am thinking the parent was telling the young if they wanted to get fed they'd better fly out and follow him or her. And they did. Later that day I went out the front door and heard the wrens in the border hedge between my neighbor and me. One day after that, silence. They had left.

As usual, I was saddened by the silence. However, the adult house wrens had done what they were supposed to do: find a mate, find a nest site, build the nest, mate, lay eggs, sit on eggs and then feed the young when they hatch. When the young get big enough, encourage them to start flying and hunting on their own. Then, when the time is right, leave for the winter grounds until next spring.

My yard is not completely silent, however, There have been noisy bird families flying around for weeks now.

Robins, Suffolk County, NY (Margo D. Beller)

The young robins are as big as their parents, their red breasts speckled for camouflage. They are hunting insects in the lawns, every so often running over to Mom or Dad for a quick worm. Families of grackles and starlings dig into the lawn, too. Raucous titmice young are calling as they follow their parents in the treetops. Families of blue jays are scouring the apple tree for insects, a little harder for them with the apples gone. A family of cardinals, the young looking like their mother for now but with black bills, hunt in the trees, as does a family of flickers.

In the hot July air, male goldfinches are doing their swooping flight to impress the females. Goldfinches nest later than other birds because they depend on seeds to feed their young, and it takes a while for plants to go to seed.

Fawn on the lawn, from several years ago.
(Margo D. Beller)

And there are other young. I did not have a repeat of what happened in 2013 but the other day a doe ran through my yard followed by her two speckled fawns prancing like colts. They are lovely to watch, as long as they are leaving my property so they can't nibble on my plants. (A doe with young is a lot more skittish and ready to run if I confront them than when a doe is alone.)

And to bring the story full circle, a few days ago I was on the porch when a house wren appeared at the water dish, dipped its bill and then flew to the dogwood tree. As I watched it checked out the nest box inside and out. Then it flew to a shrub.

You'll recall it was a house wren that came to the water dish back in June that spurred me to put up the nest box, and then I waited for what seemed like years for a pair to come and use it, the pair whose young just fledged.

Was this recent bird one of those wrens coming back to the old homestead? One of the young? Or was it a completely different wren looking for a suitable place to start a second brood? I don't know. It has not returned but the box will remain out for the rest of the summer, just in case.  

A Hot Time in the Garden

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”

-- William Shakespeare

I went looking for a summer quote to start this blog post, and this one of the Bard's was the closest to what I feel about summer. It is all too short ... but not short enough.

Spider mites (Margo D. Beller)

Most people love summer for the heat, being out of school, time down the shore. Not me. The overabundance of heat, humidity and insects tends to keep me indoors if I can help it. 

I don't need to look for birds now. The birds can get along without me quite well, and there are plenty I can hear in the early morning cool from my porch - robins, catbirds, cardinals, mockingbird, the occasional house finch, flicker or goldfinch. (The house wrens are silent, however, making frequent trips to the box to feed their young.)

Overgrown apple tree
(Margo D. Beller)

But with summer comes too many garden chores, and if I don't work in the garden on a regular basis - heat or no - I have big problems.

The flowers are lovely, yes, but the weeds are also growing - everywhere, including behind the deer netting. Last year, when I was sick, I could do nothing in the garden. As a result, there were so many weeds everywhere, including growing between the paving stones on the front walkway so you couldn't see the bricks. This year I've been out frequently with a spray bottle of vinegar and salt to keep that from happening again.

Overgrown cedar (Margo D. Beller)

There are, as usual, too many insects. They feed the birds but they also attack garden plants and sometimes me. The red spider mites showed up earlier than usual to attack the yellow daisies. For these pests I use a spray bottle of water and, wearing rubber gloves, carefully run my fingers up the stem and crush as many of these pests as I can (and then rinse the red residue off the gloves).

In some areas of the yard, my pulling weeds angers the resident no-see-ums, which bite me so fiercely the affected areas feel like they are on fire. This is despite my wearing coverings from head to toe and going out early to work when it is cooler and shady.

And don't get me started on mosquitoes.

Overgrown pear tree (Margo D. Beller)

The ground ivy grows everywhere, no matter how much I pull up. Its more noxious cousin, poison ivy, has been coming up in nearly inaccessible places, such as under the hedge. I can yank up handfuls of ground ivy but for poison ivy I need to cover each hand with a plastic bag to pull the stuff out without giving myself a rash, and even then I make sure to wash my hands and lower arms with cold water and soap as soon as possible.

The blue spruce is tall and stately, but it is in an area of the yard where it does not affect the house. The dogwood that was planted nearby at the same time as the spruce has reached its full height, but it is a runt compared with the tall oak trees overhead. But other trees should've been pruned years ago. The arborvitae (white cedar) planted near the front door is now so tall I could reach it from my second-floor office window. The pear tree grew so tall its fruit-laden upper branches were resting on the porch roof. The apple tree is in dire need of a haircut, too.

Ground ivy on the wrong side of the fence
(Margo D. Beller)

Yesterday, an unusually cool and windy day, I took my 14-foot extension lopper and cut down as many of the pear branches as I could reach. But the other pear branches plus those of the other too-tall trees will need professional help this year. As will the house, which needs washing and gutter clearing. And there's that deer fencing I must re-do when it gets cooler so I can get at the weeds, put down mulch and dig a new border to minimize the mess next year (I hope).

Summer can't end soon enough.

 

Family Time Anew

It is a damp but cool morning in the backyard, the summer heat and humidity temporarily bearable. The house wren is sitting on her nest in the box, her head visible in the opening. It must be very warm in that little wooden box, most of it taken up by the nest and, I am guessing, the eggs she protects.

(Margo D. Beller)

This is not the first time we've watched each other. Many early mornings I step out on my patio and she watches me as her mate sings from a nearby tree, either warning her of my presence or warning me to stay away. I am not going to bother her, I'm not even going to take her picture. I've waited a longer time than usual this season for a wren pair to use the box.

But she may come to trust me because I've been chasing squirrels out of the apple tree where the nest box hangs. The apples are getting bigger and I've already had to clean up after the squirrels before the deer come by to finish eating the dropped apples. The squirrels shake the branches so violently the wren flees the box. But she returns once the squirrels are gone and I go back to the porch to watch her through the door.

It's family time again in my yard.

In the next yard a family of robins follow a parent, calling loudly as he or she feeds each one. In the bushes in one corner of the yard, the catbird brood is following their parents. In the early morning I can still hear birds singing or calling - chipping sparrow, cardinal, several types of woodpecker, fish crow - but the calls are shorter because they don't want to give away where their nests are located.

Great egret from another year's a shore visit.
(RE Berg-Anderson)

These babies will grow up fast, so fast the adults might create another brood this season, either with each other or other mates depending on the type of bird.

Land birds are what I know best, but I've also seen the reports from down the shore where herons, egrets and other water birds are raising their young. Because they are more visible I would love to travel and see them, as I do every year, but this year we are still in the coronavirus pandemic even though conditions are slowly easing so we could travel and perhaps find an open rest area.

But not just yet.

A weed I can live with - wild strawberries
in the backyard, a summer treat. (Margo D. Beller)

So unless I can get myself out of the house early on a summer morning (for the coolness, the birdsong and to get back before I must go to work), I depend on the yard birds to keep me connected to nature. With the foliage out, most of the time I have to bird by ear anyway when I am in the woods. That's another reason shore birding - despite the green flies and other annoying insects - would be a fine alternative.

In the meantime, I watch the house wrens. They don't know today is Father's Day. I have sent messages to several fathers I know, one of them a first-time father, and think of my own father and father-in-law who are no longer with us.

Pepper Update

The heat sometimes numbs my brain, or perhaps it's aging, but now I am down to four pepper seedlings from nine. How did that happen?

First, I put out the pots and forgot to put down mulch to keep the soil moist and cool so the plants wouldn't dry out. I lost four of the five that way. Then I overcompensated with the watering, which killed off one more.

Had I put mulch down earlier, this pepper
would have survived. (Margo D. Beller)

So now I have one growing pepper in one pot and three in the large pot. All have soil covered with old leaves and grass clippings from my compost pile and wood chips bought for a long-ago orchid. We finally had rain last night so the remaining plants are standing up and growing, so I am optimistic once again.

The two now-pepperless pots are back on the porch, waiting for me to put something in each. At some point I'll figure out what that will be, and this time I'll remember the mulch.

Catching the Waves

Memorial Day, what many like to think of as the unofficial start of summer, will soon be here. In this age of the coronavirus it is taking on even more meaning as state officials, eager to keep their stir-crazy and/or unemployed constituents from rising up in rebellion more than they already have, are slowly reopening beaches to give the people some release and perhaps a reason to pretend everything is normal again. If only.

In my state of NJ alone, the governor has said beaches will be reopened by Memorial Day, subject to social distancing restrictions. Based on the reports I've seen, these aren't being followed much and I wish the police luck in helping the "knuckleheads" keep from infecting themselves and others.

Mexico Beach, Florida, April 2010 (RE Berg-Andersson)

I am not one to just sit on the beach. I'd rather be looking for birds there. That's why this year, at this time of year, it is particularly painful to me to be kept to my home because of the contagion that could kill me. I do not walk the streets of my town because it depresses me to have people jump out of my way, sometimes into the street with traffic, to give me distance, even though I wear a mask. MH runs the errands, masked and with the car, while I work from home.

When I have gone out this month, it has been at dawn's early light to catch a different type of wave - bird migration.

The first wave, in late April, are the earliest migrants including phoebes, ruby-crowned kinglets, pine warblers, Louisiana waterthrush and redwinged blackbirds. Ospreys are reported. Waves of sea birds including northern gannets head north along the coast.

Then come the first two weeks of May when things get interesting. The bulk of the other types of warblers pass through plus tanagers, the rose-breasted grosbeak and some of the shorebirds. This would normally be the time when MH and I would travel to some of our favorite birding locations - Old Mine Road in New Jersey, Sapsucker Woods on the campus of the Cornell Ornithology Lab in upstate New York, my brother-in-law's woodlot in rural New Hampshire. Migration will continue for another couple of weeks but by June the birds should be sitting on eggs and won't be as easy to find.

Cattus Island ospreys, Toms River, NJ, April 2019 (RE Berg-Andersson)

Things are different this year, of course. There are no facilities open for eating in or going to the bathroom, something MH and I need to do when making our long trips. So even though I have taken a week off in June, we really have nowhere to go short of day trips to areas no more than 20 miles from us.

Luckily, there are quite a few of these.

This year has been wacky not just for the pandemic but because of the weather. Two days ago it hit 84 degrees F. On May 13 and 14, at the time I left the house for different parts of Patriots Path, the temperature was in the mid-30s, The first morning I chilled myself as I ignored my discomfort to concentrate on the many, many birds I was hearing. The next morning I had more layers on, including two on my hands because holding a wooden stick in the cold can be uncomfortable after a while.

The reward was worth the discomfort. The birds I found (mostly by ear) included, of the warblers, northern parula, chestnut-sided, yellow, common yellowthroat, myrtle, black-throated blue, black-throated green, ovenbird, northern waterthrush, Blackburnian, worm-eating and hooded. Besides the robins, cardinals and catbirds I can also find in my backyard were Swainson's thrush, wood thrush and hermit thrush, which are in the wave following the warblers. So are the sparrows - swamp, vesper, savannah, chipping, Lincoln's and their relative the towhee. (The white-throated sparrows and juncos that spent the winter in my yard have moved on.) The rose-breasted grosbeak sang sweetly. Goldfinches and indigo buntings flew over the road. The Carolina wrens were joined in song by house wrens. A green heron flew along the Whippany River and was soon followed by a great blue heron. The list goes on.

Birding Old Mine Road, May 2017 (RE Berg-Andersson)

For a birder it is important to be out as the sun is rising for two reasons: First, the birds that have arrived after a night of flying are actively foraging, so there is movement, particularly important when you are looking at trees that have begun to leaf out. The birds are also singing territorial songs as the sun rises, warning others to keep out of their area. If the bird breeds in NJ, it is looking for a mate and a nest site, not necessarily in that order. Once the sun rises high enough, I've found the bird song stops. I don't know why.

The second reason to be out early if you're a birder is to keep the human traffic at a minimum. On the paved path I walked on May 13, the number of people increased as the sun rose and temperature warmed somewhat. On the unpaved path I traveled on May 14, there were only two joggers and four men on mountain bikes who might've been the park police making their rounds.

Because I can't get out as much as I did last year (when I did not have a regular job), it has taken me longer to find the warblers I used to hear in my travels. The weather had not helped. Until the strong northwest winds finally died down on the night of May 12, there had been little bird movement to my part of the country - it is harder to fly with a headwind - but, according to the radar I consult, there was a lot of traffic into the midwestern U.S.

That situation changed the night of May 14 when the winds shifted to blowing out of the southwest, bringing rain, warmer temperatures and plenty of birds to the northeast.

There are even waves within waves. The males precede the females so they can rush to the breeding territories and find just the right nesting spot. So when I was out I had a close look at a female scarlet tanager, for instance, and a female black-throated blue warbler, which are duller in color than the males so they can blend in. It took knowing their characteristics - the thicker tanager bill, the small white patch on the warbler's wing - so I could identify them.

Black-throated green warbler, Sapsucker Woods, May 2019
(RE Berg-Andersson)

That's part of the challenge and the fun and why early May is my favorite time of year as a birder. That I can't go to the places I KNOW have the birds I have yet to find is frustrating and more than a little depressing.

However, despite the exhaustion of rising early and then putting in a full day of work, thanks to the two midweek trips I took and another MH and I took Saturday I think I have caught up with the birds I can see in my area, for the most part. It's not the higher breeding terrain of Old Mine Road or Cornell or New Hampshire where there are other birds I can't find around here, but it will have to do.

It is unfortunate the enforced isolation has made me more wary of people than ever, and now the noise adults and their children and dogs make bothers me even more. I understand their need to be outside in good weather, particularly when it is warm. I feel it, too. I just don't want our times outside to coincide.

They can have the beach. For now I'm sticking closer to home.

Sunday on the Porch, With Junior

It is quiet on the porch this Sunday morning. Despite the rain I have windows open and it is cool enough to not need the fan to air things out. It is quiet except for the sound of the rain, the occasional call of a jay or cardinal or a car driving on the next street.

I am sitting with my coffee and trying to wake up after a long Saturday visiting with friends in the City. I turn my head and there is the immature ruby-throated hummingbird that has been visiting the feeder for the last couple of days. It is grayish green on the back with white on the front. Since this could be either a male or a female (and even be more than one bird) I have been calling this visitor Junior.

Juvenile ruby-throated hummingbird
(photo courtesy Birds of North America Online) 

This has been the wettest summer I can remember. Some of my plants have thrived - the tropical cannas, the peppers in their pots, the basil, the coleuses - while others have struggled. The joe-pye weed I grow near the hummingbird feeder has not produced many flowers or grown very tall, likely because of the nearly continual deluge of rain off the garage roof above it. The pink flowers of the coral bells and the perennial geranium are long gone. In a sea of green shrubs, the red feeder and the red ant moat above it stand out like a beacon.

And yet hummingbirds have been few in the backyard. Junior has only been coming the past few days. During the usual peak (for my yard) period of July I saw one. That might've been because of the heat. I can't sit long on the porch, even with the fan, when it feels like close to 100 degrees. Also, while the feeder is in the shade, the sugar water can still go bad if not changed after a week, and there were times I did not do that. (When a hummingbird hovered and then flew off, I knew it was time to clean the feeder.)

In July, the males, having mated and created the next generation, are gone or ready to leave. By August, the females have raised the young and shown them how to fend for themselves. Then the female adults leave. So by this time of the month the juveniles are what come to feed before instinct tells them it's time to head south for the winter. (When I say I have "peak" visitors in July it is females who need to fuel up as they seek protein food - insects - for their young.)

Canna flowers (Margo D. Beller)

What I need is a better garden of flowers attractive to hummingbirds and not attractive to deer. Right now the small yellow-orange flowers of jewelweed are blooming near streams, offering hummers a meal. Gardens with varieties of red - joe-pye, phlox, purple coneflowers, cardinal flower and zinnias -  I have visited in the last month have drawn anywhere from one to four hummingbirds at a time, fighting each other over the same flower despite all the food around them.

I do have more flowers that attract hummingbirds in the front yard. I just bought a purple coneflower, the light pink flowers of the Rose of Sharon are finally opening, the sedum are not yet ready to bloom but are close, there are the purple flowers of the butterfly bush and the bee balm and there are the red flowers of the cannas. Cannas are usually grown for their foliage but I like the flowers. One year I opened the front door and there, through the storm door, I could see a hummer at one of the flowers. It saw me, flew to the storm door, looked at me and then flew off. But I'm not always looking and most hummers are skittish and fly off at the slightest movement.

Soon summer will finally be over. I've already taken in my wooden wren house so it doesn't rot in the rain, and the house wren brood at the birdhouse next door are gone. (What I have seen is a lot of squirrel activity in the trees, gathering nuts. When one squirrel knocked the birdhouse, I knew the wrens must be gone because the parents would never have allowed a squirrel to get that close.) School resumes in a little over two weeks, and the daylight is noticeably shorter.

The leaves will fall, the flowers will be done and the hummers will be gone until next spring, when I hope for better weather conditions and more a more favorable environment to bring them to my feeder.

Watching the Neighbors

On Thursday, June 28, we had an intense thunderstorm. I was up early and sitting on the porch before going to work. The house wren young were chattering, calling for food. They were big enough that I could see a bill or two coming out of the nest box opening. A parent would fly there, the chattering would intensify, the parent would fly off.

That afternoon, hours after the rain ended and the sun came out, they were gone.

It took a while to realize this because I was working, but later in the afternoon I came out and did not hear chattering. I stood under the apple tree, next to the box. No chattering. No scolding parent. Gone.

A week after this picture, the birds were gone. Note the tell-tale
twig showing the box is occupied. (Margo D. Beller)

I had expected this. The birds were not happy with all the squirrels and birds going after the apples in the tree. They were not happy with me picking them either. It had been over a week since the little peeps became an almost constant dry rattle, and I admit the sound was getting annoying. Any day they were going to fly from the box.

Once I realized these birds had flown, and knowing a heatwave was coming in the next day or so, I got my extension pole and knocked down close to 30 apples, adding them to my bucket filled with close to 100 more. There may have been one or two left in the highest part of the tree then but I can tell you that now all the apples are gone. Even the apples I had dumped around the yard were gone. (I used what I picked for sauce and a couple of cobblers.)

A couple of days later, as I was sitting on the porch in the early morning with my coffee, a house wren flew to the top of my feeder pole and sang. And sang. It sang all over that part of the yard. From my vantage point I saw it fly to the birdhouse in my neighbor's dogwood tree. Last year, when it looked like chickadees got to my nest box first, a house wren had gone to that birdhouse. (Another one later came to my nest box and evicted the chickadees.) This year a house wren took over my box just a day after I put it up. Now I saw the tell-tale sign of occupancy at my neighbor's - a plastic strip waving in the breeze from the box opening. 

Now there is wren song at dawn again, but from elsewhere as the bird stays relatively close to the nest. 

It made me wonder, why not my nest box? House wrens can have two broods in one summer but I've never had two broods in the box. Are these new wrens next door or the ones I hosted that decided they didn't like having all those creatures around the nest? In past years the brood would fledge and the apples would need to be picked a few weeks later. Not this year when we had sudden heat and the squirrels didn't wait for the apples to fully ripen.

Were these new wrens put off by the twig sticking out of the box, thinking the box is occupied? I pulled out the twig but no wren has come. Meanwhile, the two wrens next door are shuttling to and from the birdhouse. Soon there will be eggs, then young, then fledglings. By then summer will just about be over and the wrens will fly south.

Here in the suburbs we watch our neighbors' yards to make sure there is nothing illicit going on. I mean more than Neighborhood Watch groups. I'm talking about the garden variety sort of looking at what's going on nearby. When I hear the sounds of mowing or drilling or sawing, I make it a point to see where this noise is coming from, to make sure my property won't be affected. I admit, I am rather territorial and sometimes my watchfulness isn't appreciated. Had my neighbor come out and seen me on my porch with my binoculars pointed at his house, he might have become concerned. He has small children to protect. 

Well, he also has a family of young house wrens as neighbors that he may or may not be aware are in his birdhouse. So in my own watchful way I am trying to protect them, too, from afar. 

Depriving the Deer

(Margo D. Beller)

"Ouch! You're hurting me!" That's what I imagine the apple tree is telling me this morning. I am using my lopper to take off its low-hanging branches. This morning the house wrens were practically screaming in their alarm. When I turned from my seat on the porch to see why there was a doe, likely the one who has been doing the nibbling I've found around the yard, looking at me. 

I had not heard the doe approach as I tried to shake the early-rising fog from my head. But I sure heard the wrens.

I knew what I had to do next: put on lightweight and light colored clothes because of the expected summer heat, get the lopper and bring out two large baskets - one for the branches, one for the apples I'd be stripping off. But it is not a matter of just whacking away haphazardly. Like the woman who no doubt will be cutting back my long hair this week to make it short for the hot summer weather we're finally getting, you have to do things with style and make what's left look pretty, as though it had always been that way.

House wren (Margo D. Beller)

I had another consideration - the wrens. When MH had mowed the lawn last week Papa Wren actually went after him, his wings fluttering practically next to MH's ear when he mowed close to the tree, he said. He added that he had seen a doe - a pregnant doe - in the next yard. She was as perturbed by the noisy thing he was pushing as the wrens and so was taking a detour around my yard. I don't know if this was the same doe I have shooed out of the hedges over the last few weeks or the one I found this morning at the apple tree but I do know that unlike in some previous years, no fawns were dropped on my property.

The branches I cut were dumped from the basket into my fenced compost pile until the leaves turn brown and unappetizing, which should be in time for me to put them at the curb with other brush to be picked up.

Some may think me cruel for wanting to deprive the deer. It is not their fault my yard or those of the other houses in the sprawling New Jersey suburbs are set up perfectly in small patches with a variety of bite-size plants to try, or that the deer's nonhuman predators, such as the eastern coyote, are not encouraged to hang around. I have a friend who, unlike me, leaves feeders out for the birds all year long, and she goes all dewy-eyed when she sees a doe feeding on someone else's shrubs. Of course, she keeps the plants she cares about in pots on her deck, high above where any deer can get to them.

I've often said that had I known back in the mid-1990s what I know now, most of the plants I currently grow would never have been put in. I have become an expert on "deer-resistant" plants - a real growth industry - and deer fencing to protect the plants I now know deer will destroy.

One of last year's apples (Margo D. Beller)

Besides, there will be more than enough apples for the deer and me and even the squirrels that have already started going into the tree for a sweet, wet treat on a hot summer day. These critters climb much higher than I can get without an extension pole, and they drop lots of whole or partially eaten fruit. The apples I picked today are not quite big or ripe enough for pie and will need a lot of sugar (or mixing with other fruit) for anything else I make with them. I had hoped for more time before the morning "rush hour" ritual of grabbing apples before the deer get to them. But this year has been a wacky one in terms of climate and so this is par for the course. 

Meanwhile, there are cheeping young in the wren box, so small that both parents went in to feed them at the same time at one point while I worked. The adults weren't pleased by my being so close to the nest but they seem to be used to me and when I cut branches near the box it was only after they had fed the young and flown off for more food. I doubt wrens know the concept of "trust" but they somehow know I will not injure the next.

And as an added benefit or removing the lower branches, I have a better view of this year's wren show. It never gets old.