Out in the Cold

In winter we behold the charms of solemn majesty and naked grandeur.  -- James Ellis

This morning it was 14 degrees F when the sun rose after 7 a.m. ET. I had lingered in bed under quilts and was not interested in moving. Then I remembered the birds.

Winter, Patriots Path, Nov. 22, 2025 (Margo D. Beller)

Ever since bears damaged feeders and the poles they hang on - several times over the years - I've brought the feeders in at night. But while I was lying under covers, the birds were in shrubs, hedges and on tree branches, puffing themselves up to maintain a layer of warmth under their feathers to survive the cold. It is why I leave the feeders out as long as possible before dark, so they have the fat energy for survival, and why I rouse myself from my warm bed to put the feeders out in the morning.

Lots of birds came to the feeders today, including the red-breasted nuthatch pair that has been hanging around the yard for way over a week. I did not travel far this cold morning, but one morning the previous week, when it was a balmy 17 degrees at sunrise, I took myself to the nearby linear park known as Patriots Path.

White-throated sparrow (Margo D. Beller)

This park goes on for many miles through my home county. I parked at one section started walking.  

I've seen interesting birds in this particular section in all seasons, and there have been many changes in the topography over the years. But now I just wanted to walk and hope something interesting called for me (or Merlin) to hear and identify. I wanted to see what birds do in the cold. It turns out, the same as any other day - get something to eat and try not to be eaten. In the cold, however, I sensed a bit more frenzy.

As I began my walk, a flock of American crows circled and cawed. Were they chatting among themselves, as corvids are wont to do, or were they disturbed by something - a hawk or me? They circled and departed, but then several black vultures flew overhead. Then some turkey vultures. All the vultures started landing in some of the bare trees near the river. The vulture types did not mingle. 

Among them were six turkey vultures roosting in one tree, and beneath them three deer, in winter camoflage, were browsing the winter-killed grasses. They raised their heads, looked at me, then continued eating. This is a hard time for deer. Plants they'd normally browse have died or gone dormant, and people are out trying to shoot them. This section of the park used to be marked as a "Deer Management Area" but I noticed the orange sign had been removed. No hunting here today.

Turkey vulture (RE Berg-Andersson)

With my binoculars I looked at all the birds and found a roosting red-tailed hawk in a separate tree. All these raptors were waiting for the sun to hit them so they could be warm enough to hunt for their breakfast. I wondered, where did the vultures come from and why did they pick this area to congregate? I can only guess.

The cold kept the number of walkers, with or without dogs, at a minimum so the birds remained where they were as I stood still to watch and listen. Near the intersection with the next road were many birds flying around, looking for food or just some warm sunshine. Robins and rusty blackbirds flew around the trees. White-crowned and song sparrows called from thick shrubbery. I was lucky a swamp sparrow allowed me to see its rich colors. A raven croaked as it flew by overhead. Goldfinches and juncos flitted around. Various woodpeckers banged at trees to dislodge hidden insects. Titmice hung upside-down on smaller branches, doing the same. Jays, white-breasted nuthatch and fish crows called. 

Roosting red-tailed hawk from another time (Margo D. Beller)

I stood for a long time listening, or at least trying to hear over the sound of morning rush hour traffic. (Merlin was a great help in this.) Where the birds went fast, I went slow. But despite my winter gear the cold started affecting me, starting with my legs. Holding the binoculars made my hands very cold, and it was hard to focus the gears. Had I been carrying my stick it would've become painful through my glove. Instead, I was holding my phone, which the cold also affected. Between the cold and the Merlin app the phone dropped to a dangerously low power level. I shut everything off and walked quickly back to my car to warm up.

But I was satisfied with all I saw and heard despite the discomfort. According to the New Jersey Bird Records Committee's list of every bird ever recorded (and verified) in New Jersey (part of a plethora of lists and annual reports it puts out), 502 types of birds have been found in the state (plus five now considered extinct). I got to see or hear 15 of them.

Another time out in the cold. (RE Berg-Andersson)

Today the early birder got the birds. 

Winter Spirits

There are many depressing things about winter, but one of the worst is when it comes weeks early.

Shriveled viburnum leaves, Nov. 17, 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

I'm no great lover of winter, especially when it brings cold that forces me to turn on the furnace, dry air that chaps my skin, and kills off the few days of comfortable autumn weather when the foliage seems to be at its peak.

Meteorologically, winter is Dec. 21, considered the shortest day of the year in terms of daylight. Nowadays in the U.S., we turn the clocks back to standard time in early November. In the space of a day the sun sets at 5 p.m. and then increasingly earlier, bringing darkness at a time when I am trying to finish my work before making supper. I bring in the bird feeders in the dark nowadays and soon I'll be rising in the dark again, too.

We had a major cold snap in mid-November that killed or damaged any plant that was not taken inside or covered. So foliage on several of my shrubs and those I see during my hikes along the Whippany River is shriveled and brown, not given a chance to change color. And then there is my lawn, which seems to get covered with leaves about a day after MH and I take a rake or blower to it. (The large white oak leaves are the last to come down in the backyard, while the neighbor's walnut tree takes its own sweet time dropping leaves that are blown over my front yard.)

Oak leaves hanging on (Margo D. Beller)

And don't get me started on the pods still hanging in the black locust tree.

Raking is a pain, literally, and so is shoveling snow, another hazard of winter.

No, I don't like cold or the increase in darkness. I spend a lot of time in the early morning on my enclosed back porch, watching for birds and waiting for the sun to rise above the neighbor's house and hit me square in the face, the ultimate in sun lamps for those of us seasonally disordered folk.

But since my complaining about it won't change anything, at least until continued global warming brings more hot days or a lake at my front door from extreme weather, I might as well look at the good things winter brings.

With the shrub foliage down along the hiking path I can see usually hidden streams. Sometimes there are ducks - mallards but also wood ducks and hooded mergansers.  If I am lucky, there's a great blue heron. When tree leaves are down it is easier to see hawks flying overhead.

Shriveled forsythia (Margo D. Beller)

The colorful warblers and other passerines are gone but other birds are arriving from the north because they consider New Jersey warm enough to survive winter. White-throated sparrows are plentiful, as are juncos, the American tree sparrows and fox sparrows, all winter visitors. There may be the occasional surprise, such as a goldfinch hanging around my feeder or a reported rough-legged hawk over a field. In some years, birds of the far north must come farther south to find food because of the lack of seed crops or, in the case of some owls or hawks, animal prey.

And, of course, there are the local birds that don't leave so they will be coming to my feeders because they can't find enough weed or other seeds and the harsh cold has killed off the insects. I'm already seeing more titmice, chickadees, cardinals and various woodpeckers.

Another advantage: The garden work is just about over for the year and I can concentrate on important things, like taking a long walk in the bracing cold and looking for birds foraging to survive.

In the end it will still be cold and winter will still come, whatever the calendar says, and whether I am ready for it or not.

Duck, Duck, Goose

At this time of year, when migration is done and most of the land birds I find in my travels are the same as those I can find in my backyard, I want to go where I can see something different. That usually means ducks and, to a lesser extent, geese.

Mallards and a male wood duck (Margo D. Beller)

So on this windy New Year's Day I took an afternoon walk not far from my home. There were 50 cars at the dog park, which means there were at least 50 people and 50 dogs, likely more of each. I have no dog and so kept walking along the road to the local pond.

In the pond, not bothered by the wind blowing patterns across the water, were Canada geese, some mallards, a couple of black ducks and what to my un-binoculared eyes looked like a male gadwall. These are all ducks of a type known as dabblers because they don't dive for food, merely put their heads under water or skim food off the surface. (Geese do that, too.) Usually I find a wood duck pair here but not on this day.

Besides dabblers there are the diving ducks that go under water to find their food. Common dabblers include ruddy ducks, buffleheads and three types of mergansers, among many others. For these, I need to go to bigger, deeper ponds.

Canada geese with a visiting pink-footed goose. (RE Berg-Andersson)

These ducks are short-distance migrants, finding New Jersey warm enough for them to winter in after a breeding season in the northern tundra. Various sparrows, finches, woodpeckers and jays are among the land birds I find in the trees and bushes on my walks while vultures and assorted hawks are aloft.

That's why for something a bit different, birders head to the ponds, inlets and sea coast to look for ducks, geese and other winter birds that arrive after the rails, egrets and most other shore birds have departed. (The exception is the great blue heron, which stays around all year and will frequently pop up from a close-by corner of a marsh and scare you with its size and gutteral "QUARK!" call.)

It was during the winter that a pink-footed goose was found in a small park pond not far from my accountant's office. It was also in winter someone found several northern lapwings, a plover usually found in Eurasia but visiting a farm in central NJ. (Luckily, they hung around for weeks so we could visit and not be overwhelmed by the large crowd of birders that came before us.) In recent years, several sandhill cranes have visited one of the few remaining Somerset County corn fields after the corn was harvested, searching for dropped kernels. These stately birds are always a treat to watch.

Brant geese (RE Berg-Andersson)

It was during our first-ever trip to Cape May, NJ, that MH and I found over a dozen types of ducks, most of them new at that point for us, including blue-wing teal, northern pintail and the more common black duck, mallard and gadwall we've come to know very well.

There were also American wigeons and green-wing teals. Over the years we've seen all three types of mergansers (common, redbreasted and hooded) and a vast assortment of sea ducks including three types of scoters (surf, black and white-winged), common eiders, long-tailed ducks, two types of loons (common and red-throated), cormorants (double-crested and great), harlequin ducks and the striking-looking canvasback.

One of my favorite winter ducks, the harlequin. (RE Berg-Andersson)

Meanwhile, Canada geese are everywhere there's water as well as on any golf course or office park with enough short grass to feed them. This time of year a search along sheltered coasts will bring smaller brant geese while larger marshes and fields will host snow geese, which are white with a pinkish bill.

Unless the waters freeze, these ducks and geese will be around New Jersey all winter. If a freeze comes, they head south for warmer places. Then we all hunker down and wait for spring to return.

Backyard Feeder Drama

This weekend has not only been Presidents Day weekend and Valentine's Day weekend but the weekend of the Great Backyard Bird Count run by, among others, the Audubon Society and Cornell. These counts are useful as a way of getting the average person as well as the avid birdwatcher involved in reporting what they see and how many, which helps the scientists get an idea of what species are increasing and which are on the decline.

Adult sharp-shinned hawk with prey in hole (Margo D. Beller)

This particular day, Sunday, Feb. 15, the wind has been howling and I've had to go out twice to re-set a feeder in danger of being blown off the pole. I came downstairs at 7:30 a.m. and the birds were already all over the 4 feeders I left out despite the risk of wind. It is wicked cold out, wind chills in the minus numbers and even the enclosed porch's thermometer is showing me 10 degrees.

In short, it's cold and the birds gotta eat to survive.

The early risers are there - cardinals, chickadees, titmice - and a few surprises including a pair of American goldfinches and a Carolina wren that nestled inside the house feeder as the wind rocked it like a cradle. When things calmed it flew to the suet feeder and took advantage of the pounding a larger hairy woodpecker had given the near-frozen fat to take a few nibbles before flying off. I like Carolina wrens and if I had been outside I am sure I'd have heard it singing from somewhere nearby.

But I did not go outside. And at 8am, just as a cloud of house sparrows and house finches descended to push off the birds I do like, there was a gust of wind and a sudden large bird in the yard I just knew to be an accipiter and all the birds scattered. The bird flew to a low branch, giving me a perfect view of it. I saw it was an adult (gray feathers, red breast), male (smaller than the female) sharp-shinned hawk with its rounded head and square tail.

Juvenile Cooper's hawk (Margo D. Beller)

Accipiters are the most feared birds in this area. The sharpy and its larger cousin, the Cooper's hawk, are lightning fast and agile enough to fly between trees in a forest, going after birds, squirrels and other smaller animals. I have seen sharpys fly out of a bush. They seem to come from nowhere (unlike the larger red-tailed hawk, a buteo, which either hovers in the air or sits atop a pole or tree before dropping down to grab prey in an open area like a highway).

The sharpy sat for 10 minutes before catching another gust of wind out of my backyard. It took another 20 minutes for any birds to return to the feeders, and I was not surprised they were the intrepid chickadees and their cousins the titmice.

When I told MH about the sharpy he reminded me what it says in one of my reference guides, "Birds at Your Feeder," when it comes to sharp-shins and Cooper's - they like birds at your feeder.

We have hawks fly through at all times of the year, going after birds, squirrels and chipmunks. We've had a small flock of turkey vultures that somehow found a frozen rabbit carcass in a corner of my yard. We've had broadwing hawks, red-tails and even a juvenile northern goshawk, the largest of the accipiters, that somehow found its way to a low branch in my backyard for a day.

I find the accipiters most interesting. When they are young they are brown, streaky and not very good at catching prey. We've seen several near-misses over the years including the time an American tree sparrow flew out of our caged feeder just as a juvenile Cooper's hit it from the other side. It sat atop the feeder stunned, and I took a picture. I've seen juvenile Coopers on a branch on one side of a tree trunk trying to grab at a squirrel on the other side. It would be funny to watch if it wasn't a life and death struggle. The hawk wants to eat, the squirrel wants to live.

Juvenile Cooper's hawk (R.E. Berg-Andersson)

But accipiters have to learn fast if they want to survive and by the time the streaked breast goes red and the brown feathers turn gray they know how to hunt very well - unfortunately for the junco and the chickadee and the mourning doves I've seen picked off in the yard over the years.

The only thing that kept today's sharp-shinned hawk from catching any of the many birds at my feeders was that sharp wind blowing it off course. Today, the little birds got away. Tomorrow?

I've no doubt that sharpy found something in another yard to fill its crop and allow it to live to hunt another day.

Adapting to Winter

The female redbellied woodpecker flies to the house feeder, grabs a black-hulled sunflower seed, then flies the short distance to the pear tree. She climbs up the trunk with the seed in her long bill to the top of one section that has been sawed off flat. She puts the seed on it and pounds until she has broken off the hull and can then grab the seed with her long tongue.

She goes back and forth five or six times to do this as I watch from my enclosed back porch, not too close to the window or I'd scare her. Each time she flies to the feeder she dislodges a young, male cardinal who has been eying the feeder but hanging back while other birds, including two other male cardinals, fly over to get food. She has no interest in the suet feeder nearby. Today, she wants seed.

Finally, the redbelly flies off and the young cardinal flies over and grabs a seed, only to be chased off by a posse of house sparrows.

Female redbellied woodpecker (Margo D. Beller)

At this point I take on my position of omnipotent ruler and tap on the window, scaring the sparrows off and allowing the black-capped chickadees to fly in, grab seeds and fly off. A couple of them go into the upper branches of this same pear tree to grab the seed with their feet and then peck to break the hull and eat.

I've been witnessing this behavior in my backyard for the past 20 or so years every winter. Same routine, different generations of titmice, house finches, jays and white-throated sparrows.

We had a heavy snow last night, and this morning I added to the number of seed feeders because I know it is not going to be easy for the birds to find food. But if I didn't put out a feeder - and I seem to be the only one around in this part of the area hanging feeders - the birds would still find ways of surviving. They're used to it.

They do better than I do. When the snow falls, especially the heavy, wet type we had, my first reaction is to groan. I know I am going to find shrubs bent under the weight and I might find fence posts down because the snow has weighed upon the deer netting. I don't have to worry about feeding myself but I do have to worry about getting groceries in ahead of time or getting the snow plow guy over to clear the driveway before the temperatures fall again in the evening.

Cardinal pair (Margo D. Beller)

I walk around repairing the damage as the birds check for microscopic insects in the branches of the black locust trees over my head.  I hear the sparrows calling from the hedge and the local Canada geese flying overhead. I hear the cardinal pairs calling to one another. A few weeks ago when we had a smaller snow storm but colder temperatures there were six male cardinals in my backyard at once. Today there were three and at least two females. The pecking order - which one eats first, second, etc. - was very much in evidence because only one of the three seed feeders will allow a cardinal to comfortably sit and eat a seed.

As I get older I find myself liking everything about snow less and less. I don't like the shoveling -- it tires me and makes my back sore. I don't like knocking snow off tall hedges and getting it all over me. I don't like depending on the plow guy when there is more than 5 inches of white on the driveway. I do not like the cold at all, and that dislikes gets worse with every falling degree.

It is easy for me to complain because I am bundled in a warm coat and will be going inside a warm house momentarily and can eat when I choose to eat. The birds have to depend on the kindness of strangers - me. I can provide them seed and suet, hedges for roosting at night and, every so often, aid and protection by chasing off cats or raptors. But that's it. They are on their own in the cold and have to depend on puffing themselves up and creating a layer of warm air under their feathers. They will "sleep" in their way to conserve energy to fly and feed the next day in order to survive.

There will still be winter fatalities, just as there are always stories of humans who lose a finger clearing out a snowblower or have heart attacks lifting heavy loads of snow with their shovels.

Today, I'm not one of them. You could say I've learned to adapt, too.

Winter Thoughts

This has been a good week for me, and that fact is unusual enough for me to put my feet up, put on some music and note it here.

We've had a week of below-average temperatures and about an inch of snow that has been slowly melting each time the sun is out for more than 10 minutes. This cold has made it uncomfortable for being out on errands or looking for birds. But in my sunny office right now, life is good.

Compared with last January, the sixth-snowiest January on record, according to the "year in weather" chart the New York Times publishes the first Sunday of the year, I'll take it. We're not even at February yet. Last February was the second snowiest thanks to eight inches of the white stuff. I don't want that again.

Today I looked at all the birds at the four feeders I have out and realized I saw six male cardinals at once. That is a record for the backyard. Two were on the ground with the squirrels, grabbing the seed dropped by the house finches and house sparrows. Two were in the bushes, their red feathers easily seen on the bare branches. One was atop one feeder pole, the last at the house feeder on the other pole.

My yard is the only one within eyeshot offering seed this year, and in this cold the birds are taking full advantage of it.

Also today, I went to the monthly winter farmers market at the Fosterfields county park and bought an assortment of root vegetables (turnip, potatoes), greens (spinach and collard), onions, garlic and artisanal baked goods. It's not cheap to buy at the farmers market - you can get many more things and cheaper at the local grocery store. But they have been shipped in from the other side of the world, the side now in summer.

Male cardinal, winter 2014

What I buy tastes better and lasts longer because they come from farms in New Jersey, which I'd like to think I'm helping to survive when I make my purchases. From the looks of the crowd that got there five minutes after the market officially opened (I got there early for a reason), there are a lot of local residents who want to do the same.

I am lucky to not only have the money to buy these goods but to have parks such as Fosterfields - a working, teaching farm - a close drive from my house. These non-bakery purchases will allow me some variety from the usual frozen peas and dry pasta side dishes. Knowing this gives me the energy to consider what to make this week for supper.

It is such silly thoughts that keep me going in a life where it seems the harder you work the further behind you fall. I am enjoying this transient feeling of calm and semi-prosperity as the sun warms me and music plays as I write.

These are purely human concerns, of course.

I don't know if I'd want to be a bird fighting others to eat my sunflower seed or, if a woodpecker, the suet hanging upside down in the feeder. Then again, birds don't worry about things like paying bills, making the dinner menu more interesting or remaining employed for the paycheck as I do. Their needs are more basic at this time of year: finding food and avoiding predators such as the red-tailed hawk my husband saw in one of our trees this morning.

Backyard red-tail, 2013 (R.E. Berg-Andersson)

Since the birds don't wear name tags, I don't know how many of the ones now at the feeders are the same as the ones there a week ago. I do know today we've had a pair of goldfinches for the first time in a long time, plus a female hairy woodpecker. But those six male cardinals tell me that it's getting harder for these birds to find food.

I am very glad I do not have to depend only on the farmers market to keep me alive. As for the birds, I have a new, 40-pound bag of seed and four more suet cakes for when the current ones are done.

Because it's going to be a long winter.

Winter Birds, Part 2 - Personalities

Recently I wrote about the birds at my feeders during this 2014 winter season. Today I want to focus on their personalities.

It is never a good thing to put human characteristics to wild birds, just as it is never a good thing to consider the birds at your feeders to be "your" birds. I don't consider the visiting cardinals mine, for instance, although I've learned to tell the various males apart thanks to their frequent visits.

Cardinal pair (Margo D. Beller)

I gain great understanding of bird behavior watching the birds at my feeders, but I know if I had no feeders up they would not be in my yard - or at least where I can see them. That is why I put out feeders containing sunflower seed or suet, to feed them and draw them down where I can see them, particularly on days when I might not want to go out in the field.

It is impossible to include all the birds I've ever seen in the backyard. Many do not come to the feeders, but are drawn to the area by seeing all the other birds that do come. For instance, I've seen many robins in my backyard but they are on the ground, searching for worms and insects. Or they are in the bushes and trees, picking off the ripe fruits. But they do not come to seed feeders and I use plain suet rather than suet mixed with fruit, just to keep the squirrels away.

I am not an ornithologist. Nor am I a psychologist. That said, here is what I have observed at the three feeders usually up during the winter.

Titmice, chickadees and white-breasted nuthatches: These birds like to grab and go. Once in a while a titmouse, for instance, will stay on the feeder and use the perch for cracking open a seed. Usually, they grab a seed and fly off to the nearest tree or shrub to have its meal protected from predators such as sharp-shinned hawks.

Nuthatch (above) and titmouse (Margo D. Beller)

These birds don't mob the feeders or chase each other off, most of the time. There is a pecking order and the birds tend to take turns. For instance, one white-breasted nuthatch grabs a seed, takes off and then a second one shows up. These are the birds I prefer at the feeder, plus the cardinals.

House finches and house sparrows: I consider these and mourning doves to be real pests. The house finches and house sparrows will mob both feeders, chasing each other and other birds away. They sit in the feeders and just eat and eat, dropping bits of seed to the squirrels waiting below. If I didn't go outside every so often and chase them off, the other small birds would get nothing.

It is usually a smaller female mourning dove that will fly to the top of the house-shaped feeder and then, with great trepidation, figure out how to fly down to the perch, which it fills because of its bulk. It will then sit and pick through looking for broken seeds since its thin bill is not made for crunching seeds like the finches. Most of the seed she drops to other mourning doves and squirrels below. These, too, I chase off.

House finch and feeder, cardinal and junco wait. (Margo D. Beller)

Blue jays: When these big birds show up, everything else scatters. They dive-bomb the house feeder (they are too big to get through the cage of the second feeder and can't hang upside down to get to the suet), gulp a bunch of seeds and then fly off to either regurgitate them for caching or swallow them whole. Their movements are explosive but at least they don't hang around for too long.

Female purple finch (Margo D. Beller)

Cardinals: A large, sometimes skittish member of the finch family (see my post of Nov. 20, 2011). I find them starting at dawn and have seen them eating at dusk. (Only the robin tends to come out earlier and stay out later, based on the calls I've heard.) They hold their own against the smaller birds but larger birds will scare them off. If the feeder is mobbed by smaller finches the cardinal won't come to it, which is when I chase the pests off. Males will chase off females, even their own mates, during the winter when they come to eat, but in spring males will allow mates to feed with them, usually feeding her directly so that it looks like they are kissing.

Visitors: The smaller goldfinches (see my post of July 1, 2011) will come to the feeders at certain times of the year and are usually left alone by the more aggressive house finches but in winter a lone goldfinch must get to the seed early to beat the later-rising pests. The same is true for the rare purple finches. This year I had 3 females visit at one time. They were left alone. But when there was only 1 it was quickly chased off.

Male rose-breasted grosbeak (Margo D. Beller)

Bigger visitors tend to be left alone, such as the rose-breasted grosbeaks that usually show up in May during the spring migration northward. Like their smaller cousins the house finches, these, too, will sit and eat for long periods of time but they are so pretty and such rare visitors they are welcome to all the seed they can handle.

Carolina wren is another winter visitor, although these wrens are around all year long. Carolina wrens are small but they have a big song and are very aggressive. They are such rare visitors they are usually left alone but they will aggressively defend their right to eat against the pests. These wrens are also looking for broken pieces and don't seem to mind hanging upside down to eat suet. I am always pleased when a Carolina wren visits and then sings in my yard.

Carolina wren (Margo D. Beller)

Woodpeckers: The smallest type, the downy, is skittish when bigger birds, including other woodpeckers, fly in. Otherwise, they will hang upside down and eat suet no matter what kind of tumult is going on at the house feeder above it. The same is true of the largest of the 3 woodpecker types to visit, the red-bellied woodpecker. This one will whack at the suet or come to the house feeder. I've also seen it grab the cage, put its head through and use its long tongue to grab a seed.

Rarely, a hairy woodpecker visits. This one looks like a downy woodpecker on steroids but is not as big as the red-bellied. Most of the time it eats just suet but last year one female liked getting on the house feeder's perch and take seeds.

Downy woodpecker (Margo D. Beller)

Invasion: There are those times in late fall into winter into early spring when thousands of grackles with some red-winged blackbirds, starlings and cowbirds will show up in my yard. Most will be on the ground searching for food but many flock to the feeders, which is why at the first sight or sound of them I bring the house feeder inside. (The reason I bought the upside-down feeder was to keep the starlings and grackles off the suet.) These birds will eat until the feeder is empty and then fly down the road and repeat the process.

Sharp-shinned hawk feeding. (Margo D. Beller)

Finally, there are the raptors. These do not come to the feeder except to pick off the birds feeding. I've seen a juvenile Cooper's hawk slam into the caged feeder as an American tree sparrow fled the other way. MH once saw a broadwing hawk pick off a red-bellied woodpecker and I've seen redtails and even a northern goshawk in my trees. They are drawn to the feeders for the same reason as the smaller birds - the need to feed.

However, I try to make sure the raptors feed elsewhere, if possible.

Call Me Restless

(Margo D. Beller)

(Editor's note: This post was published several years ago, one of many posts where I stupidly removed the link allowing you, Dear Reader, to access it after publication. So I have republished it.) 

When the dark comes early; when the cold wind blows; when the furnace heat dries out everything, including me; when the lines on my face seem deeper; when I feel fat from indulging in too many office snacks; when the house closes in and my husband barricades himself behind a book; when December is in my soul as well as on the calendar, that is when I take myself, if not to sea like the unnamed narrator of Moby-Dick, then to the woods for a long walk.

I have been losing my connection to nature and it makes me feel unnatural. I used to walk all the time at my last job including going to and from the train. I’d hear birds in the morning and look at the stars at night. Not now.

Driving to work has made me slow and fat, my legs rubbery. Winter makes me feel achy and twice my age. I wanted to push myself, to walk and not eat and pretend I had no financial, property or spousal responsibilities.

I went to the Swamp.

The Great Swamp is in the heart of suburbia. Part is a Morris County park. Part is a Somerset County park. The huge part in between is federal territory split between a “wilderness” area and a “management” area.

In spring I take a particular trail into the wilderness area at dawn and find all sorts of migrant songbirds. I also find deep mud, slippery rocks and wild bushes that are cut back once in a very long while. I have to really want to go birding to come here, but it is usually worth it.

This December day I wanted a long, flat, easy road so I hiked in the management area along Pleasant Plains Road, between the Helen Fenske visitor center (named for the woman whose efforts 50+ years ago scuttled a planned airport) and the unpaved area several miles away where the old visitor center once stood.

Many interesting birds have been found along this road, but I wasn’t expecting a lot. Winter is generally a quiet season for birding at the Swamp.

I was there to walk. Yet, almost by accident I found a bluebird in a tree and then a harrier flew low over a mowed, flooded field. Had I been driving I’d likely have missed them.

Several hours later, when I finally turned around and headed back to my car the way I’d come, the walk went from pleasure to an endurance test.

Suddenly the cold wind was in my face. My stomach was rumbling. My leg muscles were twinging and the gravel was making my feet hurt. The thought of my car parked so many miles away made me momentarily panic.

There are times I want to walk and go without food for so long I feel cleansed.

Then there are times I selfishly consider pushing myself so hard I collapse and die on the road.

I felt a little of both on this walk.

(Margo D. Beller)

Luckily, the way back always seems to go faster than the way out. Despite the aches and the wind I was back at the Fenske center a few hours later and then headed home in my warm car.

I was tailgated as I tried to enjoy the ride on the winding Harding Township back roads. On one hill I was forced to pull over several times because behemoths - luxury and otherwise - would come barreling downhill taking a lane and a half, leaving not much room for me.

It was only a more scenic, lower-speed version of my workday commute on Route 80.

I would like to say this winter trip provided an epiphany about the beauty of staying alive, of being glad for what you have, of taking life one day at a time.

That would be a lie. It was more like, you can walk to the ends of the Earth and your problems will still be with you.

Deal with it.

At least I was cheered by MH’s warm smile and the picture he took of a Carolina wren at our suet feeder while I was gone.

For the moment, I am trying not to be Restless.

Winter Birds

I don't know what it is but there has been something about the latter half of this year that has made me disinclined to write here, for which I am sorry for my few but patient readers. Aside from my recent visit to Gettysburg I have not been inspired by much, and those birds I see at the feeder are the ones I always see at the feeder.

So I will note them to the world.

According to the annual winter finch forecast, it will be a so-so winter. No major flights south for pine or evening grosbeaks or either type of crossbill, perhaps there will be some pine siskins and purple finches. All of them fly south when the seed crops in their more usual northern territories are poor. (MH and I saw a couple of female purple finches at our house feeder early in December, but none recently.)

Female cardinal, male house finch, junco. (Margo D. Beller)

 

 

Then again, if the red-breasted nuthatch did come to my feeder, it would find a lot of competition and likely go elsewhere.

At the moment I have 3 feeders up (a fourth will go up once it starts snowing in earnest because it holds more seed), 2 of which hold sunflower seed. In the dawn one of my favorite birds, the cardinal, comes to feed, soon followed by the black-capped chickadee family that roosts in my hedge and their cousins the titmice. A white-breasted nuthatch or two will fly in for a seed and red-bellied and downy woodpeckers will get some suet.

However, soon enough the seed eaters will be chased off by a flock of what I consider pest birds - house sparrows, house finches, jays and mourning doves.

There are people who enjoy feeding whatever bird comes to their feeders, no matter how much of a pig it makes of itself. I do not.

With the exception of the jay, which dive-bombs the feeder to stuff its crop with seed and then flies off, these pests will just sit in the feeder and eat, dropping seed bits down to the squirrels, fighting off the other small birds and the skittish cardinal. The mourning dove is a recent pest. Once it figured out how to jump off the feeder's roof and sit on the perch it hogs the space and just sits there, using its thin bill to find parts of seed already broken.

These are the times when I go on the porch and knock on the window to scare them all off.

The chickadees, titmice and nuthatch have learned they can then rush to the feeders, grab the seed and go.

Black-capped chickadee (Margo D. Beller)

Also at this time of year, grackles, starlings and blackbirds end their mating pairing and join together in huge flocks that wheel about in the sky. Several times during the colder months a flock that can be anywhere from 12 to 2000 will descend on a lawn, poke under leaves, in grass and in feeders for food and then take off, only to land a few lawns on and repeat the process, making a racket in the process.

If I am in my office (with the screen open for the sun's warmth) and see them across the road, I am quick to get downstairs and pull in the feeders. By that time there are usually a few hundred on my back lawn. One of my feeders is in a squirrel-proof cage and the suet feeder hangs upside down (not a natural position for a starling or grackle) but the house feeder is exposed. Once the feeders are safely inside I am fascinated to watch all this mass of black birds, and relieved when they decide to move on.

Other winter visitors are more benign. When the chipping sparrows have left, their cousins the juncos arrive. In New Jersey, the gray juncos are all males. Junco females, which are brown, fly farther south than the males, who presumably stay in places like NJ so they can get up to the far northern breeding territories faster come spring.

There was a time when I really wanted to see a junco, and the first one I did see was in New Hampshire. I laugh to think of that because there hasn't been a winter in the 20 or so I've been in this house when a junco didn't show up, trying to find seed bits on the ground before the squirrels get them.

White-throated sparrow (Margo D. Beller)

White-throated sparrows are the other winter migrant. They show up around the time the catbirds leave. Unlike the juncos, both sexes overwinter in my yard and throughout the region. They are big, like their cousin the song sparrow, but do not have the messy streaking or central spot. Instead, they have white or tan "eyebrows" and the tell-tale white throat. When breeding season approaches, the males' white gets very bright and you can see bright yellow at the end closest to the eye. The territorial song has been described as "oh, Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody" or "oh sweet Canada, Canada Canada" depending on whether you are.

White-throats scratch around under the feeder, although sometimes I see them in the house feeder or in the caged feeder, pulling out seeds or seed bits. Decades ago, as it was going to dusk, I looked at the birds under the caged feeder and found a rare surprise - the larger, redder fox sparrow with the white-throats. Other years I've found white-crowned sparrows under there.

Finally, when you have so many birds - pest and otherwise - hanging around a feeder, you are going to find raptors.

Cooper's hawk (Margo D. Beller)

The other week I was watching the birds eating when the finches scattered and one chickadee seemed frozen in the caged feeder. This can't be good, I thought, and I walked outside just as a Cooper's hawk flew into the yard. It saw me, hung a U and took off for a nearby tree. By this point the chickadee had taken shelter in a bush and there was a lot of nervous calling. Finally, off flew the Coop.

We've also found the smaller sharp-shinned hawk munching on a mourning dove in the snow. MH has seen redtails dining on squirrel. One year we had several turkey vultures on the lawn after they found rabbit that had died under some hedges in the corner. In January, if I care to rise way before dawn, I might hear great-horned owl hooting its territorial call as mating season begins.

So winter isn't a dead season, even if it feels like it to me, especially at times when there are many feet of snow on the ground as we had last year.

I'll have to remember the words of poet William Blake:

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

Small World, Tragic Division

After a week working in the house, I feel the need to get out when the weekend comes around. My preference is to go birding with MH -- it gets both of us out of the house and walking. Sometimes we go to places pretty far afield, depending on the bird reports I read.

Last weekend, when Saturday was a washout after a week when the temperature went from snow and  "polar vortex" to nearly summer, I was hit with a bad case of cabin fever. Unfortunately, during that week MH was hit with a sinus infection.

So I went out alone. When I do that I stick to familiar places closer to home.

On Sunday I walked along Pleasant Plains Rd., the paved - and then unpaved - thoroughfare that runs through the Great Swamp's management area. It is wide open and dry, making it perfect after a flooding rain.

Pleasant Plains Rd., Great Swamp, last winter after Hurricane Sandy (Margo D. Beller)

I was not alone. There were plenty of other people, some with dogs, walking the road although not seeking birds as I was.

On the way back up the road to my car a woman pulled over in an SUV and handed me a flyer of a missing person who had gone out for a walk Saturday afternoon and had not come back. The face and name looked familiar, but it wasn't until the woman drove off that I realized I knew this man from a previous job.

Small world.

She told me he ran marathons and had endurance, but he'd also had a liver transplant years ago and had missed an important dose of medication. I can imagine this man, roughly my age, had also had cabin fever and had left his home in a town not far from the swamp and other parks to either walk or jog, alone.

The experience gave me a strange feeling. I hadn't particularly liked the man when I encountered him at work but the flyer referred to him as a "devoted family man, Boy Scout leader and friend." Now he's gone missing and as I write he still has not been found.

I had planned to go to a couple of other places once I got back to the car, but I suddenly did not want to travel alone anymore. I went home.

You can't live your life around the fear that any moment you will drop dead, be pushed into a van or decide to jog on an icy road only to find you've fallen into a frozen pond. You just can't or you'd become a shut-in.

At the same time, there are stories that give every woman - particularly bird-watching women - pause, such as the woman raped in Central Park's Strawberry Fields. I know exactly what area she was in - it is a quiet area off the main part where all the tourists look at the "Imagine" mosaic put in by John Lennon's widow.

There are a lot of good birds there, in season. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of bad people.

It scares me that this man, a marathon runner, who no doubt expected to be home in time for a hot supper, did not make it home this time. It could just as easily have been me.

Snowed In

It was bound to happen. First, came the three inches of snow to shovel, then an arctic air mass that swept down and froze the snow into a slippery mess. Now, a major snow storm predicted to bring anywhere from five to 12 inches to my little town.

I hate winter.

My husband (MH) was glued to the Weather Channel for nearly a week before the snowstorm arrived. 

There was a time, believe it or not, when storms just happened. Now, with all the technology there are predictions, then refinements of predictions. When the meteorologists were monitoring the approach of Hurricane Sandy last year, it saved lives. With this snowstorm I am sick of all the information. Just let it snow and be done with it!

I see the bird population at my feeders triple in a day and they are in, literally, a feeding frenzy. That's how I know something bad is coming. I don't need the Weather Channel to tell me.

Cardinal pair (Margo D. Beller)

I am in a funk. After a spring, summer and autumn of running around to see birds or working in my garden, it is dark by 5 pm, it is winter and I am housebound. 

When I worked in an office that required me to take the train to get to it, I had to leave the house. I had to walk in the streets because they were better shoveled than the residential sidewalks, step around large piles of leaves if the snows came before the last scheduled leaf pickup, bundle up against single-digit wind chills and, at night, hope the oncoming traffic could see my little flashlight as I walked the streets home.

When I had a job requiring me to drive, I exchanged one group of winter weather dangers for another -- icy roads, drivers texting or talking on their phones, speed demons, and trucks or SUVs that hadn't cleared off the tops of their vehicles so the snow or ice came at me like projectiles.

I don't miss those days. 

Brown creeper (Margo D. Beller)

However, I do miss getting out of the house. Until the recent intense cold froze the snow from the first storm, I was walking every day for the paper, sometimes via the edges of Greystone. But in the last week, when I discovered a whole lot of people who had sidewalks "imposed" on them in the last year hadn't bothered to shovel -- does anybody get fined for not shoveling anymore? -- I have taken advantage of MH's kind offer to get the paper while he runs other errands with the car.

Ah, winter. I find it harder to deal with you with each passing year. Now that I work at home I have to balance keeping the place warm vs. the expected high cost of my gas bill. When the sun isn't shining into my office window, it never seems warm enough. The local growing season is over and I am dependent on produce grown in California or Mexico or points south, if I want to so indulge. 

But who wants a healthy salad on a cold day when a more fattening but warm bowl of soup tastes so much better?

Winter hiking (R.E. Berg-Andersson)

I can't open the windows to air out the house because of the cold, and the heat makes it -- and me -- too dry. I try to compensate with a humidifier, hand cream and a vanilla-scented candle, all of which will be put away when winter is finally over.

Were I more like the chipmunks that wreak havoc in my garden -- the only creatures not deterred by my deer netting -- I'd be under my warm quilts, curled up and asleep, working off my accumulated fat. I would let the world go by until it is warm and sunny again.

Alas, I am not a chipmunk but a human with bills to pay and obligations to keep, starting with keeping my feeders filled for the birds. They have it worse than I'll ever have. 

I know it eventually will warm up out there. It just seems to take longer to get to that point.

Dum Spiro Sparrow

I was not surprised to draw back the kitchen curtains to find birds all over my four backyard feeders. We were having our first snowstorm of 2012 and the first since the freak Halloween storm in October.


January 2012


The birds were fighting each other as much as they were eating. Within sight were three pairs of cardinals jockeying for position at the house feeder; at least one redbelly, downy and hairy woodpecker each taking turns at the suet; and a host of house sparrows, whitethroats, house finches and juncos at these and the other two feeders, with mourning doves below and a quick hit occasionally by a family of jays.

When the house sparrows hogged the feeder and kept chickadees, nuthatches or titmice out for too long, I’d go on the porch to spook them off so the others could feed. Thanks to one neighbor no longer filling his feeder and another who is slow to refill when his empties, I get a lot of visitors in my yard. I don’t mind this - feeding birds is my way of saying thanks for all the pleasure I get seeing these and others in the wild.

But the birds could care less about my so-called generosity. They are just trying to survive.

When they chase each other or sit at the feeders and open their beaks and hiss or spread their wings in an attempt to look bigger, they are trying to get what they can before it‘s gone. The birds that can’t get to the seed directly will go down to the squirrel baffle or to the ground and peck at the bits of seed dropped by the sloppy ones above. Some have even started imitating the woodpeckers and hanging under the suet feeder, an unnatural feeding position for, say, a sparrow.

It is evolution in action. Those that can adapt will survive.

Birds have lived and died without human help for centuries. That I happen to put out feeders is a bit of luck for the birds that consider my yard their territory, or that have stopped briefly on the way to someplace else.

This storm is not very bad compared with last winter, when we had many more storms and so much snow that stayed unmelted for so long the birds were desperate and I could not keep the feeders filled fast enough. Cardinals, usually quite placid birds, were shrieking at others once they were on the house feeder, the one of the four that can accommodate them. If you don’t eat, you don’t live.

It is the same with people.

As I stand in my warm house after a hot breakfast I am more than aware there are people who do not have a roof over their heads and can only eat through the generosity of houses of worship or the community organizations, some to which I donate money, that feed them.

I am also more than aware that in this crazy world we are living in, I and my neighbors are only one disaster away from being homeless and hungry, too.



A rare moment of peace in a life of toil.

 Many of us who lost our jobs have been searching for months, trying to find anything that can use our talents, frequently losing out to those - usually younger and more mobile, without the same ties of house payments and kids in school - who are willing to work for far less in salary.

Some of us are lucky enough to get a job but it is only temporary, because many big employers have discovered it is cheaper to rent an employee through a staffing company and not pay benefits than it is to put someone on staff. There are always enough people searching for work to hire when the contracted worker is forced to leave.

Some of us work in jobs that are becoming more oppressive. We are being told that suddenly, after many years there, we don’t measure up, and if we don’t work harder and longer and change what we’re doing we will face disciplinary review. We are forced to have weekly meetings with supervisors monitoring our “progress,” and may be told if we don’t accept a buyout we will be fired and get nothing.

This was the reason why the message of that ragtag bunch of kids that became Occupy Wall Street resonated with so many of us in mainstream America.

We are told from birth to work hard and save and we will be wealthy and happy. So we work and we are then told we need this and must have that and so must spend and don’t save and don’t think about old age and retirement. We charge and get into debt. When our employers cut back benefits or end them altogether or fire us at a time of increasing prices for gas and basic foodstuffs like eggs and milk, we are on the edge of the precipice.

We think we were shafted because we followed the rules and the deck was stacked against us from the start.

The birds don’t care what goes on below them. As long as they can avoid predators and find a meal and a branch on which to roost through a cold night, they will live to fly another day and breed when spring comes.

Spring seems a long way off.

Today I learned something from my husband. Not only is the state bird of South Carolina one of my favorites - the carolina wren - but the state motto is Dum spiro spero - While I breathe, I hope. Spero is the root of the word despair - no hope.

Hope is the thing with feathers, wrote poet Emily Dickinson.

When MH told me this phrase I heard it as dum spiro sparrow.

That is another reason why I feed the birds - for a short time I can forget about this life of despair and concentrate on something with feathers.