Survival of the Smallest

When I went outside at 8 a.m. today it was 1 degree F, minus 17 windchill. I went outside to hang two bird feeders.

We in my part of the U.S. have been suffering through a long, dangerous cold period. The snow that fell heavily at the end of last month, and which had melted to about six inches thanks to several days of temperatures above freezing, is still blanketing the yard. Deer and other creatures had started crossing the snow in their search for food.

Black-capped chickadee (Margo D. Beller)

Despite my best efforts, a squirrel had managed to leap high enough to grab the end of the long feeder and pull itself up. Judging by the level of seed, it ate, or dropped, quite a lot. I took that feeder inside. By the end of the day I had taken the other two feeders inside because snow was expected and the winds the next day could reach over 40 miles per hour.

And then the temperature really came down.

Today, the wind was "merely" 15 miles per hour. The birds might not come immediately to the seed and suet feeders but I know they will come, because they must. That's why I went out.

There are not many feeders hanging in my neighborhood. Multiple pairs of cardinals have shown up in my yard, either on the seed feeder or waiting their turn in the bushes. If I see a male chase off a female I know they are not a pair. Pairs sit on either side of the feeder. When the female flies off, the male follows.

Unusual birds may come to eat when they can't otherwise find food. Two days ago a distinctive male purple finch came for seed. He was a one-day wonder. I've had red-breasted nuthatches, smaller than the more usual white-breasted nuthatch, coming to the suet for weeks. These unusual birds would only be at my feeders because they can't find food in their more northern winter territories. 

The birds follow each other to food sources. If a large bird like a blue jay or red-bellied woodpecker flies to my feeders, smaller birds are sure to follow - and vice versa. The wintering juncos are among the first to the feeders in the morning, which attracts the attention of other birds.

One of them is the black-capped chickadee, one of my favorite birds. It is a bundle of energy, exploring everywhere in the search for food. Its territorial song, a descending series of notes, sounds like it is saying "Hey, Sweetie!" Its call is its name: dee, dee, dee. It is in my yard all year long, whether I have feeders out or not. 

It is a small bird that grabs a seed and then flies to a bush to pound the hull to get at the sunflower. It quickly yields the feeder when the slightly larger titmouse flies in. I usually see one, sometimes two at a time.

While my husband and I can hunker down under quilts overnight, chickadees and others are trying to find what shelter they can. They use the yew hedge. They use Spruce. They use cavities in trees. They use nest boxes. They may not even be in my yard but they come knowing there is a dedicated food source here.

According to the book I happen to be reading, "Birds in Winter: Surviving the Most Challenging Season" by Roger F. Pasquier, the priority is finding a roosting site offering protection from predators, wind, rain or snow. That site might be with others by night; by day, the bird returns to its territory.

The chickadee needs to eat enough to create fat reserves that, with puffing up its feathers, keep it warm. It eats and it also caches food in various places it can reach when the weather worsens.

Cardinal pair (Margo D. Beller)

After putting out the feeders I came into my warm house and slowly removed my many layers - boots, long hooded down coat, gloves, wool hat, wool balaclava for my neck and face. Weather like this is dangerous, especially to someone considered a "senior." Even after I put the layers away I still felt weighed down and cold, despite the furnace roaring. Winter makes me feel older than my age, and I know I can do nothing about the cold or anything else.

While I can feel sorry for myself the chickadee doesn't have time or inclination to do that. Its only worry is survival. It must eat so it can still be around when the temperature warms, the snow melts and it's time to find a mate and start breeding more chickadees. 

I should start thinking like a chickadee.

Feeding the Birds

A week after the last snowstorm, just as everything had about melted except for the snow mounded by the plow at the curb and the top of the driveway, we were hit with over a foot of snow. We avoided most of the ice. 

The people we pay managed to make the driveway usable for our all-wheel-drive Subaru when I had to go to a longstanding medical appointment the next day. They also cleared our front walk. That left the rear walk to my husband (MH) and me, after which we dug a trench to the feeder poles. (The feeders had been inside during the Sunday storm.)

The curved blade of this shovel is 12 inches long.
(Margo D. Beller)

Remembering how, during another foot+ snowstorm 12 years ago this month, the desperate squirrels had used the ice-covered snow as a platform to jump over the baffle to the feeders, we cleared space around the poles this time and hoped it would be enough.

It wasn't.

Our snowstorm has been followed by a period of intense cold where daytime temperatures have not gotten much above 20 degrees F and the overnight temperatures have been in the single digits, with windchill in negative numbers. In the immediate aftermath of the storm there was little in the way of bird movement. Nor were there deer or other animal tracks. (Except for those digging out their driveways after the town plow cleared the street, you didn't see much in the way of people either.)

The back path we shoveled. (Margo D. Beller)

There was too much snow in my usual areas for me to do any birding, though I noted what birds I heard or saw while running errands or putting the house feeder back outside each morning. (With the bears in their dens, two feeders that deer can't reach to tip out seeds are left outside for now.) 

Two days later I saw the first junco on the flood wall and the first squirrel climbing down a yard tree. Since then three types of woodpecker and, once, a red-breasted nuthatch have come to the suet. A female cardinal sat on one side of the house feeder while her mate sat on the other side. Jays swooped in, as did house finches. Things seemed to be getting back to "normal" again.

The prolonged intense cold has frozen rivers and lakes. Any bit of open water
will draw land and water birds. But the paths are too snowy to
look for these birds. (Margo D. Beller)

Then, four days after the storm, I happened to look out the kitchen window and saw a squirrel on the long, "squirrel-proof" seed feeder. I ran out on my enclosed porch to rap on the window and scare it off. 

This may seem cruel but I am fanatical when it comes to keeping pests like squirrels and deer out of my yard and away from the feeders. The seed is to keep the cardinals, titmice, chickadees and other yard birds alive. 

From 2014. The feeder on the left is the one that had
the squirrel on it this year. This pole was later destroyed by a bear.
The other feeder pictured is currently inside. (Margo D. Beller)

That's why within an hour I was out with my shovel, digging a wider area around the two feeder poles to make it harder for the squirrels to jump. Luckily for me the snow was still soft enough under a thin crust for me to move quickly and with a minimum of strain. Since then I have seen no squirrels on feeders but I have seen at least three UNDER feeders to get the seeds dropped by the sloppy juncos, house finches and occasional house sparrow. So don't worry about the squirrels.

Winter is a harsh season. In this area what birds don't head south for warmer weather have to find food where they can. At Great Swamp recently I was able to see large groups that included seven types of sparrows foraging at the side of the road on what ground had been churned up by the plow. Winter birds have to find seeds and other food in that ground to stay alive. They also fluff their feathers for insulation, shiver to generate heat, shelter in trees or shrubs and, most important, store food for later use.

This is the replacement feeder pole. It may be hard to see the wider
area dug around it, but it has kept the squirrels at bay.
(Margo D. Beller)

So in a small part of the universe - my yard - I am trying to help the birds. Yes, I have a motive - I want to be able to see them, especially when I can't leave the house. Winter is a harsh season for me, too.

However, I know that little by little the snow will eventually melt. I am looking forward to a few days this week when the temperature rises above freezing during the day. I want to go back to my usual birding places, secure in the knowledge I won't slip and fall in snow. At some point the whiteness and ice everywhere will be a distant memory when the trees leaf out, the flowers bloom again, the insects appear and all the birds - migrant and yard - get to eat.

Until then, I feed birds, not squirrels.

Looking Out My Back Door

This morning I found it had snowed a bit overnight and the roads were shiny with ice. I had thought about going to one or more places to do some birding - not expecting much now that migration is long over, but maybe finding something that has flown south to my area and will now hang around for the winter.

Cardinal in a past winter. (Margo D. Beller)

But since my fall I try to be more careful about where I go to walk. Ice on the road means ice on the paved paths I usually walk.

So I put out the feeders, brewed some coffee, put a cup in a thermal mug and took Merlin outside to listen.

This blog is called Backyard Birding for a reason. It was in my backyard that I first realized the diversity of the winged world. The birds coming to the feeders. The birds calling from the trees and bushes. The birds flying overhead, some of them looking to make a meal of a bird or squirrel.

When weather won't allow me to go out, or even if I am just restless to do something, I either sit on the enclosed porch or I stand on the patio and wait. At this time of year, when I seem to be the only one offering birds something to eat, the yard gets very busy, very fast.

I must be careful where I walk on snowy days.
(RE Berg-Andersson)

Take today, for instance. In no particular order the yard had hairy woodpecker, downy woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, yellow-bellied sapsuckers (two, chasing each other around the dogwood tree), house finches (too many), mourning doves (at least eight, all picking up what the finches dropped), blue jays, cardinals, titmice, a black-capped chickadee, a goldfinch, white-breasted nuthatch, house sparrow and, unusually quiet in a nearby hedge, a mockingbird. (Once in a while a robin or a Carolina wren will pass through, but not today.)

Lately, I've hosted several visitors from the north: white-throated sparrows, juncos and, most unusual, red-breasted nuthatch. This nuthatch is smaller than the white-breasted nuthatch I see more often, and is more comfortable hanging upside-down on the suet feeder. One day we had two birds, a male and female. Both have a black and white face pattern, the male's breast a darker red than the female's. These birds are usually found in pine forests, so perhaps they were attracted to the sheltering branches of Spruce.

The more commonly seen white-breasted nuthatch (top) with
titmouse. (Margo D. Beller)

As for the "...and Beyond" part of my blog title, this afternoon the temperature rose and the wind died down, making it feel like spring, albeit a cold spring. My area was clear of snow. I drove out to the park I would've visited earlier in the day. The path was still covered with snow and the parking lot blocked. 

So I turned around and drove home, content to resume my backyard birding. 

Cutting the Grass

We had a warm period in late February that melted all the snow and ice, including the hazardous area behind the enclosed back porch that gets little in the way of sun. The melting allowed me to put out feeders for the first time in a week. Birds were singing in profusion and I knew spring would be here soon.

The largest of the three ornamental grasses, October 2023
(Margo D. Beller)

So would the spring chores.

There are certain plants that should be left alone over the winter, and there are plants I don't bother to cut back in autumn because it is tiring to work around, over and behind the deer netting.

Now that I have more time to go birding during the week, I have little inclination to go out on the weekend when plenty of people with kids are at the parks. So on March 1, knowing from the weather forecast the wind would start blowing and the temperature would fall during the day, I went out into the garden. 

There are many chores I do in the spring. One is digging out finished compost, which I do sporadically. (I did it last year.) Another is deadheading the plants I left standing. The most important, however, is cutting back the ornamental grasses. 

Ornamental grasses are wonderful plants. They grow tall and wide and the deer don't eat them because the leaves, at least on the type I have, are thin and spiky. But like all plants, including my beloved daffodils (another plant deer don't eat because all parts are poisonous, including the flowers), when the growing season is done there is foliage to cut back. A lot of foliage.

After a long period of dryness we had rain in November
2024 and the grass went from brown to more of a gold
color not seen well in this photo.
(Margo D. Beller)

I was not ready to start work in the garden but I knew this had to be done because eventually the daffodils and other plants in this particular area were going to start growing. The three grasses I have were pummeled by rain, snow and especially wind. The northwest wind blew hard for much of the winter, another sign of changes in the climate as the Earth's oceans continue to warm.

So I planned to attack the plants from the rear. Except I discovered behind one of them that the daffodils had started growing much earlier than usual, even before the crocus, thanks to the unusual pattern of warm weather than followed this season's very cold winter. I also found the irises I had put here after dividing the ones in the front yard were growing, too. So on this particular grass my strategy had to change. (Getting to the other two to cut them back was easier.)

I was glad to see the plants had survived, tho' disturbed by how early they had shown up. The other week I was walking along one of my usual birding areas, Patriots Path, once the ice had melted and saw a phoebe. This flycatcher, a harbinger of spring migration, should've shown up in mid-March, not Feb. 25. And yet here it was, in an area by the Whippany River where I have seen and heard them before. Now that it has become cold and windy again, will it find the food it needs to survive?

I wondered that about the yard birds, too, when I couldn't risk falling on the ice to put the feeders out (a hungry squirrel that could jump over the baffle was another factor). But they managed and were quickly at the feeders once I put them out.

The largest of the grasses before the cutting in 2024.
(Margo D. Beller)

Back to the grasses. It took about two hours to cut the three of them, the largest of them taking the most time. When I was nearly done with that one the wind picked up strong, forcing me to hold down what I had piled in a large pail for composting until things calmed down. But now you can see the growing daffodils the foliage had covered.

As for the other grass - the lawn - it is still brown from its winter dormancy. Eventually it, too, will green and grow and the area will be filled with the noise and smell of lawn mowers. For now, in the renewed cold, it is quiet out there.

Which reminds me, once again I need a spring haircut, too. 

Grasses cut, daffodils exposed after last
March's cutting. (Margo D. Beller)

Winter Blues (Again)

Once again, as in 2015, I am at that point in the year when the cold not only affects what, if any, birds I can see but my mood.

Today I heard sad news about a friend's passing that occurred days before the anniversary of another friend's passing. It was cloudy and, while not windy, very cold. Regardless, I was restless so I left the house to calm myself by walking in some of my favorite birding sites nearby.

(Margo D. Beller)

I was not expecting much. This is not spring or autumn, when interesting birds are passing through the area. It isn't even summer when the insects that torment me are caught by birds to feed their young. This is winter, another in a consecutive string of very cold days.

I needed to get out anyway.

When I got to the path along the Whippany River, I found the river full of ice until I got to the outflow from the nearby sewage treatment plant where the water was warmer. Thanks to having less ice there were ducks - 13 mallards and three pairs of wood ducks. That was promising. There were many people on the paved path but no land birds to keep me there.

So I drove to another part of the path a short distance away where I found only a cardinal over the more-frozen river.

Then I drove to a third area. There was no river nearby but there were birds, albeit birds I could've seen from my kitchen window: titmice, cardinals, jay, juncos, white-throated and song sparrows, white-breasted nuthatch. A couple of Canada geese, likely locals, flying overhead. All that was missing were the hordes of house finches that sit in the feeders and eat relentlessly.

Front yard, a few years ago (Margo D. Beller)

After over 30 minutes of walking and looking at these winter birds I realized I had numbed myself to the point where I could not feel the stick in my gloved hand. I carefully hurried back to the car and its heater. I defrosted somewhat as I drove home, then drank hot tea and added layers to warm me.

I do this birding in the cold because there is always the chance I might find something interesting. Mainly, however, I get restless in winter and get depressed if I stay inside too long. Darkness comes early and morning daylight comes late. Most of the trees have lost all their leaves. The garden has finally been put to bed. The cold seems relentless, making my head ache and accentuating the pains that have increased as I age. It is not my favorite time of year.

What I can look forward to from my kitchen window.
(Margo D. Beller)

This day I'm writing about is a Sunday. I knew that the "birdier" sites such as Great Swamp and Troy Meadows would have people seeking birds as part of the annual Christmas Bird Count. I also knew that at this time of year many birders head down the shore to the places along the ocean where the ducks go to winter and the water isn't likely to freeze. Maybe I'll get to these areas, too, with my husband driving. 

But for now, feeling my mortality, I wanted to stay close to home. 

Winter Starkness

I've written many times about my dislike of winter and how the cold and long darkness affect my spirits.

We have had no snow this year, which could be good
or bad. (Margo D. Beller)

This year has a different wrinkle. We have not had any measurable snow in my part of the world at all this winter. While family members in New Hampshire are wallowing in the white stuff, where I live can be summed up in two colors: gray and brown. Snow would throw a blanket of white on the scene, which would be good for the plants but bad for my back (shoveling) and wallet (hiring the plow guy).

Today, walking this cloudy, cold, damp morning along one of my favorite paths, it was all gray and brown. It is another in a series of unsunny days. Seeing one of the distant jays, cardinals and woodpeckers I could hear would've provided some color but not seeing them, or any other bird except Canada geese flying overhead, does not help my mood.

The trees look depressed. With the leaves long down you can see the branches broken by past storms. The paved path I walk is becoming more difficult because of frost heaves from our weeks of extreme cold followed by weeks of above-average temperature. The Whippany River looks as sluggish as I feel.

Some may say there is beauty in starkness. This is what I saw in my travels this morning.

This pond formed by overwash on the other side
of the trail was frozen a few
weeks ago. Now it sits, slowly seeping
into the ground.

Trees fell into the Whippany River
in 2021. I guess they were left
by the park people because they
don't completely block the river's flow.

Whippany River seen from the path

The starkness of broken trees

Walking the path, surveying the tangle
of plants that will bloom again
in the spring

Among the few bits of color are the brown leaves
of the beech trees.

Space Invaders

Another gray morning. On my enclosed porch, my chair in the corner faces east to catch the rays of the rising sun. But the day is starting cloudy once again, with a stiff, cold wind out of the north-northwest.

As I stare out, sipping my coffee, the sky turns black. Thousands of dark birds, all heading norttheast, fill the sky, a veritable river of birds, more and then more still. I think of Audubon's description of the now-extinct passenger pigeon blackening the sky: "The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse..."

These birds, however, were common grackles.

You see them in small flocks for most of the year, but in winter these shiny, long-tailed birds mass in flocks of thousands.

Grackle flock, February 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Why certain types of birds do this is not known. Safety in numbers? A need to keep warm? Easier to find food? All of the above?

In my area of the country, the common grackle predominates. The much larger, aptly named great-tailed grackle is a bird of the southwest. I have never seen one, but I have seen the shore-loving boat-tailed grackles when I've been on one of the New Jersey or Delaware beaches. An easy way to tell the boat-tails from the common grackles is by looking for the smaller females. If she is brown, she's a boat-tail. If she's black, she's a common.

What they all have in common, besides their genus, is they can be pests, especially when they arrive in a cornfield, at a yard or mass along a boardwalk in large numbers. 

Female boat-tailed grackle (RE Berg-Andersson)

I've written before about the sudden arrival of literally a thousand common grackles on my lawn back in 2020, a year where we did not get much snow to keep these birds away. (As opposed to 2021, when we got too much snow.) I am fascinated by these extravagantly large flocks that appear out of nowhere, stay for a while and then leave for the next food source.

Grackles breed in northern New England, a healthy swath of Canada and into the U.S. midwest, according to the Cornell Ornithology Lab's range map. But they are found year-round throughout the eastern U.S., and that's where my New Jersey yard fits in.

These invasions in my yard generally take place in late autumn or early spring, before and after snow  covers the lawn. Grackles mass in fields and eat certain crops like corn, but in my area they can mass in parks and will eat just about anything including garbage or, in my case, bird seed. When I look through my open office shade and see one of these flocks showing up in my vicinity, the first thing I do is rush out to pull in my feeders. 

Once the feeders and I are safely back on the enclosed porch, I watch. The birds stalk the ground poking for worms, or fly into the corners (or my compost pile) where they can turn over leaves and search for insect larvae or other food. There is a loud chatter of "chuk chuk chuk" as dozens, hundreds or even thousands of birds call to family members. Then they fly to the next yard or, if I come outside, rise into the trees, continuing their chorus of "chuk" before flying off in small groups until suddenly the rest of the flock leaves.

Robin (Margo D. Beller)

Sometimes, I see fellow travelers. Robins also poke at the ground and turn over leaves for food and so join the grackle flocks, and then hang around after the bigger birds have left to find what is left over. I have seen grackle flocks include cowbirds, starlings or, rare for my yard, rusty blackbirds (named for a call that sounds like a swinging metal gate needing lubrication).

Starlings are interesting. At this time of year they also mass and you will see them flying and moving like a giant organism in the sky, almost like watching synchronized swimmers in the way they undulate as one. (Do a search for "starlings massing" and watch some of the videos to see what I mean.)  How do these individuals know to do that? I don't know.

What I do know is these invasions are another sign of approaching winter, and just as inevitable.

The Season of Quiet

During the summer I sit on the enclosed porch, look around the colorful and leafy yard and try to imagine the winter scene of bareness and gray. Now it's the opposite. I sit on my porch wearing a down coat and warm hat, my legs covered by a blanket, and try to imagine the leaves are still on the trees.

I am finally at the point in the year where the lawn services are done for the season, the town is no longer collecting leaves (which doesn't stop some neighbors from putting to the curb whatever last leaves may have fallen) and the majority of the trees and shrubs are bare. I am happy to have the quiet, but the continuing cold and grayness of many days plus the darkness at 5 p.m. make me restless, tired and, sometimes, down because my gardening is done and migration is long over. I feel shut in, and it does not help that we are close to the end of another year and there is a more contagious form of COVID-19 that affects even fully vaccinated people like me. That means another winter of avoiding people in the streets and not visiting friends or family. 

But at least there is no snow, at least not yet.

New Hampshire, November 2021 (Margo D. Beller)

To some it is soothing to have a blanket of snow on the ground, the white providing a nice contrast with the gray skies. Those who depend on snow for revenue from winter activities are very happy to have the snow. Those with the strength and energy to snowshoe, ski or snowmobile are also very glad to see the white stuff.

Not me.

It is when the snow falls that I feel my age and am at my most vulnerable. I think of last year when we had two feet of snow on our property. Will that next shovelful of snow from the back path make me breathless or have some sort of attack? How long will it take my husband (MH) to find me if I keeled over? My neighbors look after their own properties and are not inclined to help the people next door they don't know so well. We have no children or grandchildren so we hire someone to plow our long driveway. We do the rest, carefully, on the off-chance someone would want to visit. That has yet to happen.

Cardinal in winter (Margo D. Beller)

It has not been the best year for me. I look back on my health issues and am thankful I survived them and the subsequent treatments, and that MH has been here to watch over me and chauffeur me to medical appointments. I have been regaining my strength, trying to make up for lost time. But I can never be 100% again. I can't go back in time, much as I'd like to do.

So I sit bundled on the porch, refusing to confine myself to the house, watching the feeder birds, enjoying the quiet and looking ahead to the return of spring.

 

The Smallest Survivor

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. 

--Anne Bradstreet

I'm thinking about a gold-crowned kinglet this winter morning. 

It is at 8 a.m. the rising sun now comes out from behind my neighbor's house and hits me as I sit on my enclosed porch. Little by little the sun's arc has been lengthening as it rises higher in the sky. At this point I can only sit outside on the weekend for the 35 minutes or so I am in full sun at this point of the year because I need time to have breakfast and then ready for work. (In the pre-coronavirus days I would be on a train during this time.) 

The thermometer shows me it is 20 degrees F on the enclosed but unheated porch and my phone showed me it is 19 degrees outside, windchill of 9. That's why I'm thinking about the kinglet.

I am wearing a number of layers from head to toe, including a long down coat with hood. A gold-crowned kinglet, a tiny bird (about the weight of a couple of pennies) with bold markings on its face and wings and a yellow patch on its head (the male has an orange stripe on that yellow patch), does not have that luxury. The one I saw while taking a recent hike in the woods, trying to stay out of a fierce, cold wind, was flitting around quickly in a low shrub, looking for food. 

Gold-crowned kinglet, Pennsylvania, December 2013
(Margo D. Beller)

Usually I see this tiny bird high in a conifer, its preferred habitat, once I'm alerted to its presence by its buzzy tse-tse-tse call. They breed in conifer forests but when I see them it is during migration periods, mainly in autumn. But this bird seems to hang around in areas like mine in winter, as long as it can find food.

According to the people at the Cornell Ornithology Lab, a gold-crowned kinglet can survive in temperatures of -40 degrees F at night. That's 40 degrees below zero. How do they survive?

The scientist Bernd Heinrich wanted to know that, too. The gold-crowned kinglet (as opposed to its cousin, the ruby-crowned kinglet, which does not hang around here in winter) is among the creatures he studied in his book "Winter World" about survival in the harshest conditions. Heinrich, who is professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, owns a lot of property in Maine, which he has traveled for the observations in his many books. He found these kinglets, which normally eat insects, will eat what they can find in winter including spiders, insect eggs and moth caterpillars. They need to maintain an internal temperature of 110 degrees F, Heinrich found.

The gold-crowned will use old squirrel or bird nests and huddle together to stay warm, he found after following several to their roost one December twilight. Like me in my coat, sleeping kinglets fluff up their feathers to make an inch-thick, downy blanket. These feathers make up 10% of a kinglet's body weight. 

Heinrich also found that without this down layer, a naked kinglet would cool rapidly, which would be fatal. He caught one bird and weighed the wing and tail feathers, which are primarily used for flying, and compared them to the weight of the body feathers, which are primarily used for insulation. Kinglets have four times more feather mass committed to insulation than to flying, he learned.

Still, as I sit in the sun's warmth, warmly dressed in my down layer and holding a hot cup of coffee, I can't help but think of that little bird having to stay in perpetual motion on such a wicked cold day so it eat and thus survive. It is a cold, cruel world out there. I hope it survives.

. 

Breakfast With the Birds

It is 32 degrees F at first light. Sitting on my enclosed porch I can see some frost on the neighbor's roof. In my coat, hat and gloves, a blanket on my knees and a large cup of hot coffee in my hands, I do not feel the cold. It is early Sunday morning and I am enjoying a time of peace while the washing machine works inside, behind the closed back door.

I have put out feeders and now I have breakfast with the birds.

Carolina wren at feeder. (Margo D. Beller)

Things start slowly on a Sunday, especially on a cold morning. No leaf blowers, no barking dogs, no shouting children, perhaps one or two people jogging or walking dogs. I take note of what birds I can see or hear as I rest from my week's labors. 

Two goldfinches, now in their winter brown feathers and the male with just a hint of yellow at his throat.

Larger house finches and house sparrows.

A redbellied woodpecker with his brilliant red crown.

Smaller downy woodpeckers, the male with a bit of red on the back of his head.

Blackcapped chickadees, tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches. All fly to the feeder, grab a seed and take off for a safe place to break the seed apart and eat what's within.

Not at the feeders but flying around the yard are juncos. As winter wears on these dark winter visitors will start coming to the feeders. For now, they glean what they can from around the yard.

A Carolina wren sings from various places around the yard, then investigates both seed feeders. 

Male redbellied woodpecker (Margo D. Beller)

A male cardinal calls from the pear tree, watches as the smaller birds come to the house feeder, then flies to the ground to pick at what is dropped, as the squirrels will soon do. This male doesn't seem to like the feeder but his browner mate is not as skittish. She flies to the feeder, shoos away the smaller birds there, has a few seeds and flies off.

Two larger birds fly a few backyards away, American crows. Had they been hawks, such as the Cooper's hawk, and closer the little birds would've flown to avoid the predators. MH always says the hawks have to eat, too. I understand that, but I don't want my feeders to be involved.

One bird not at the house feeder this morning, at least not right now, is the blue jay. It will come to the house feeder, scarf up a lot of seeds and then fly off to digest them, only to return for more. The force of their leaving makes the old feeder swing wildly, and I fear it dropping to the ground and finally breaking apart. So I am glad the jays have not come by while I'm here.

At this time of year, when I am no longer distracted by chasing migrant birds, it is easy to feel depressed and forgotten. There is less daylight. The majority of garden chores are done. Younger neighbors are wrapped up in their families. Older people like me are just part of the scenery, like the birds, and barely noticed. It is hard for me to get going some mornings.

Female cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

During this year of coronavirus, these feelings are intensified because of another element - fear. Older people are often shunted aside. Now they can be told it is for their own good. You give them "special hours" to shop because they are "vulnerable" to this virus. Most of us have longstanding conditions where exposure to the virus would put us in the hospital. It is safer staying home. Those of us with jobs can be "attached" to the world without being in it. But many seniors don't have that.

With the cold comes deprivation. It would be harder for the birds to survive without help from people like me putting out the feeders. Many people nowadays do not have that safety net. Unlike many of the birds, many of us won't be with our family groups this winter.

Sitting and watching the birds, the sun peeks through the clouds. I can see its arc is now short enough that the sun rises just past my neighbor's roof. Were it not cloudy I'd have the sun full on my face for a longer time until it rose above the porch window. Still, I close my eyes and time seems to stand still.

But time does not stand still. When the clouds move back in I can see a black cat in my backyard neighbor's yard, heading away from mine. The birds were not perturbed - I have frequently found this well-kept house cat curled up in the sun on my flood wall as the birds eat - but the squirrels rush up the trees and start their alarmed barking. This is when there is a sudden frenzy of birds at the feeder, eating as if there is no tomorrow.  

Cooper's hawk, a common backyard predator. Not today.
(Margo D. Beller)

I don't know what goes through a bird's brain. I can make some guesses. I can guess the suet is being ignored because it is not that cold (the porch temperature rose at least 5 degrees during the time I was out) and it is more important to cache seeds for later, when other food might not be available. I can guess the birds "understand" the sounds of an alarmed squirrel mean danger and eat so they can have the fat in them to take off quickly and fly far if need be.

But when the squirrels and birds calm down, I find myself agitated. I am not free as a bird.

So I leave the porch before the dogs, leaf blowers and other disturbances start for my warm kitchen to tend to the laundry, consider my other chores and wait for MH to wake and come downstairs. Like the birds, he will be fed.

I look at the clock and see I was outside for over an hour. Time I'll never get back.  

It is too easy for people like me to feel depressed, shut in, fearful and forgotten. The birds don't have these "advanced" human feelings, thank goodness. Sitting on my cold porch and watching them on a Sunday morning helps me forget mine.

The Birds in Winter

It is fortuitous that at the same time when the polar vortex is once again upon us, leaving us with temperatures in the teens (F) despite abundant sunshine, I am reading a book about feeding birds and how this activity went from only in winter to all year. I learned of "The Birds at My Table: Why We Feed Wild Birds and Why It Matters" by Darryl Jones thanks to Cornell's Lab of Ornithology, which also recently published a pdf on "Winter Bird Feeding."

Winter feeder (Margo D. Beller)

I have written much over the years in this blog on birds, feeding them and the harshness of winter (type "seed" into the search box in the upper left corner and you'll see them). As the pdf puts it, "If you feed birds, you’re in good company. Birding is one of North America’s favorite pastimes. A 2011 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that more than 50 million Americans provide food for wild birds."

The report then goes on to remind us all of the importance of helping the birds, what kinds of feeders help which birds the most, feeder placement and the best types of seed and suet to provide, among other considerations. Jones, meanwhile, tries to figure out why we feed wild birds and how the practice of feeding them in winter expanded to all year.

He writes: "The reality is that while wild bird feeding may be a massive enterprise with a global reach, the focus and interest of most individual feeders [the people, not the food implement] is on their own private garden. All those issues and worries may be of provound interest, but unless they affect us directly, they may seem a bit too vague or remote. On the other hand, most feeders are pleased to share their experiences or queries..." Facebook alone has many pages set up by birders in specific regions such as New Jersey and nationwide such as the American Birding Association's reports of rarities across the country.

Watnong Brook, thawing (Margo D. Beller)

But let's go back to bird feeding.

One of my friends puts out seed, suet and peanuts all year. She enjoys watching "her" birds from her bedroom during summer mornings when she is getting ready for work. She puts out liquid for hummingbirds every year, the feeder strategically placed near a pot of bee balm, a known hummer attractant. She used to feed squirrels, too, until they started hitting her bird feeders, including the hummingbird feeder.

I put out seed in fall, when the migrants are moving through, until early spring. In cold times I also put out suet. In midwinter I feel sure no bears will take down my feeders. Otherwise, I take all the feeders in at night. When I see the first reports of hummingbirds in New Jersey, usually after I am no longer putting out seed and suet, I put out sugar water for them. Except for the hummer feeder, which is on a shepherd's crook behind deer netting, the two feeder poles have baffles to keep the squirrels from climbing to the feeders.

My attitude is, when summer comes there are more than enough food sources for the birds and if I want to see them I can leave home for areas where they have been known to show up or have been reported. By late spring it is time to start working in the garden and I am tired of the continual feeding of birds I'd rather not see such as house sparrows. Hummers are another matter: They are hard to find in the wild unless in a garden with a lot of the blooming plants they frequent. Since deer have been known to eat these types of blooms, I don't grow them and provide sugar water instead.

Feeders in winter, before the birds started coming (Margo D. Beller)

Which way is "correct"? Both, depending on the person involved. Some people want to attract or help birds all the time, some want to help during dire conditions, such as the current polar vortex, and leave the birds to fend for themselves and their young during warmer periods. I've been feeding birds for over a decade and am not about to stop even if my feeders bring birds as well as those that feed on them. (Hawks have to eat, too, though I'd prefer it be elsewhere.)

One of the things Jones looks at is whether all this bird feeding is helping or hurting birds. His conclusion is "feeding almost always changes things," but not always in the way we expect. I see many more house finches than titmice nowadays. Cardinals and chickadees must come early to the feeders before the jays arrive and scare them off.

There's more than enough food for all in my yard, but I do wish more people in my neighborhood would join me in this relatively inexpensive bit of conservation that is easy to do and very important.

Feed the birds.

Cold Truths

Only a maniac would be outside on a day when the polar vortex is in town and the air temperature is 3 degrees F but the wind makes it feel like minus 17. We did not get the inches of snow predicted and the sun came out long enough to melt the slush but the bitter, killing cold and wind arrived, just as the weather people said it would.

I am not a maniac, at least not where cold is concerned. I could not even bring out the garbage, much less go looking for birds out in the field.

My favorite winter bird picture. Our snow is gone but the cold remains.
(Margo D. Beller)

Instead, I look out the window.

I have been leaving the feeders out for the past week, sure the bears would be finally hibernating. Today I am sure they are because that is what I feel like doing, too. I have fleece over my pajamas, top and bottom, ready to go back to bed at a moment's notice. First, I go to my sunny office, open the curtains for more warmth than what my hard-working furnace is providing and listen to Bach.

From there I hear cardinals outside, perhaps poking around the hedges behind the deer netting for what they can scare up. I have no doubt they have also been at the house feeder. When I looked out earlier I saw a titmouse fly in. It was all puffed up to keep warm air under its feathers the way you or I would put on many layers to keep our body heat trapped inside. When I put out seed it is the type that has a high fat content to provide energy and thus warmth. Suet has an even higher fat content because suet is rendered fat.

In the past I might've gone out.
Not today. (Margo D. Beller)

It is the coldest day I've experienced in years. It makes me anxious: Will the furnace keep working? Will I be warm enough? Why do I feel the deep need to go outside and get out of the house when I know being outside could literally mean death?

There's an advantage to being a "bird brain" and not having the capacity to worry over the whys and wherefores. You eat and find shelter from the wind and hungry predators or you die. It's as basic as that. When I watch the birds in the bitter cold I feel sorry. I think of homeless human beings and those who are forced by circumstance to have to go out on a day like this and work to make a living and I feel pity for them and anger at the weather, the government officials who can't or won't do the things necessary to make the world better, the state of our world itself. Mostly, I just feel frustrated.

I continue to listen to Bach to stay calm. I see the bare tree branches blowing around, glad we did not lose power so the furnace can keep going. I allow the sun rays to hit me in the eyes because the light and warmth make me feel better. Not even a turkey vulture is flying around now looking for its carrion meal. I think of the last time I fell outdoors, slow to get up. On a day like this that carrion could be me.

Another single-digit cold night is expected but tomorrow is predicted to be "warmer," in the upper 20s. It could be worse, I guess. For now, to use a phrase that has become all too prevalent in a mainly negative way, I shelter in place.