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.

When the Cure Is Worse Than the Disease

Same overflow pond a year apart. In the top picture, from 2018, the pond is
not frozen but some of the trees near it were cut down. (Margo D. Beller)

I am lucky that not far from my home there are a number of parks of varying size. One of them is a linear park that was once a short-line railroad that failed. At one point there were plans to extend a major road through these woods but that failed, too. The resulting park is called Patriots Path because it was first formed in Morris County (the path has since been greatly expanded into several counties), once known as the "Birthplace of the Revolution" because of its proximity to Jockey Hollow, where Washington's troops encamped for two winters years before the better-known encampment at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania.

The path is under the jurisdiction of the county, so it is county workers who do the maintenance. Thus, I am going to blame the county for the seemingly haphazard destruction of trees along parts of this path because of a small menace called the emerald ash borer.

The borer is an insect that, like the Asian long-horned beetle, is invasive and likely came over in wood pallets or other wood products shipped here from abroad. The borer's destruction of ash trees has been well known for months but it was only in the last few weeks signs have gone up along the trail warning of work to be done in the coming days to keep any damage from spreading through the entire forest.

Warning signs (Margo D. Beller)

When that work was finally done and the men, saws and heavy machinery I'd seen were gone, I brought MH to one part of the path for a short walk along the flat, paved trail. What I saw was horrific.

2017 - overflow-created pond, frozen tight.
(Margo D. Beller)

Trees were cut down and the stumps left in the ground. The cut trees were tossed aside or dragged away from the path and left in piles. Why would the county cut down trees it feared would be invested with borers and then leave them there? Did someone think the winter cold would finish off the insects? Maybe it will, but the ugliness of leaving them on the ground to become months of eating pleasure for a plethora of bacteria and insects makes me very angry.

I can understand taking down trees to save a forest. What I can't understand is leaving the area ugly so it is devalued and thus more easily ignored by people who don't care or want to understand why forests are as important to have as ballfields, dog parks or a shopping mall.

A year before, when the wind chill was in the single digits, MH and I had walked this same part of the path and we marveled at how the overflow from earlier rains and the nearby Whippany River had created huge frozen ponds. This year has been particularly rainy so the ponds that formed were deep but definitely not frozen.

Either way, it seems no one cares about these woods, all they care about is killing trees that maybe - maybe - were invested with borers. These county people are no better than my neighbors who take down a 50-year-old, inconvenient tree because they fear it maybe - maybe - will fall on their house.

Two different views of the destruction, Dec. 31, 2018
(Margo D. Beller)

There is such a thing as forest management. I've seen it at work. You take down trees to open up the understory to other types of trees. Thoreau wrote about it when he noticed that in a forest of white pines, any open ground was soon filled with oak seedlings.

Patriots Path, like many other parks, is a bit of woods in a suburban environment. When not chopped down for a housing development it is affected by the pollution from cars, lawn chemicals and even fireplace wood smoke. Too many times I have seen woods along state roads covered with choking vines, usually poison ivy but also mile-a-minute and Virginia creeper. At some point the vines will shut out all light to the trees and they will die. The state sends out mowers to cut the roadside grass but no one notices, much less cares for, the trees. The system seems to be based on benign neglect.

To those areas that proclaim, "See? We have woods here that are protected!" I say, well, I guess that's better than wiping them out and putting in a road or ballfields. But if you don't take care of the land and remove the sick or fallen trees or the vines and other invasives, people are going to ignore the woods as just so much wallpaper. Too many times I have seen people using these natural resources as backdrops to walk the dog, make a phone call or talk to their friends. Maybe it relaxes them but to me they are not walking in the woods to get away from the pressures of modern life or even to look for birds and wildlife. It's just a prettier background than walking Fido on your neighbor's lawn.

Dec. 31, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

Winter is an ugly enough season in New Jersey when the leaves are down and everything is gray. Today with MH, walking on Patriots Path the only birds I heard were the woodpeckers high in the remaining trees. Many of the shrubs that lined the path were either ripped up by the county tree cutters or flattened by their machinery, so the white-throated sparrows that hid in these shrubs are gone.

I am hoping for a heavy snow to cover this mess, and that someone does something to remove the dead trees in spring and make this park meaningful to those who walk the path when the tree leaves sprout and the wildflowers are in bloom.

Feeding Time

Cardinal hogging the house feeder (Margo D. Beller)

Most mornings lately I have gone outside with the bird feeders around 7am when it is light but the sun hasn't risen high yet. Usually a male cardinal is sitting in the apple tree. When I prop open the screened door it starts to cheep to its mate, who cheeps back. It has figured out that when I open the door I will soon be out with the feeders - the suet on my right arm, the caged feeder in my right hand, the house feeder in my left. I go out and hang the house feeder on the first pole I pass, then walk to the other one and hang a feeder on each hook.

I go inside for the water cooler. By now the cardinal is on the house feeder but it flies off at my approach. I hang the water cooler on the pear tree and then walk back around the corner of the screened porch and close the door. Sometimes I stand outside and listen to the birds. Usually I hear white-breasted nuthatches and titmice nearby so I know they'll soon be at the feeder.

Titmouse at water cooler (Margo D. Beller)

Other times I go on the porch and sit in my corner and watch the feeders.

As usual, the first birds were able to somehow communicate that food was available. But once all those birds start coming, it is interesting to see what gets to feed first and what forces them away from the feeder.

One reason I have two seed feeders out is the more open house feeder will accommodate two larger birds, one on each side. The caged feeder allows smaller birds to come into the protective cage (the cage is to protect the feeder from squirrels but I have seen small birds protected from predators), perch and eat. Chicadees and titmice will come, take a seed and leave. House finches will perch and keep eating until something, or someone, prompts them to leave.

A cardinal will sit at the house feeder and, like the smaller finches, eat until it is sated or spooked off. When a house finch or sparrow attempts to sit next to it, the cardinal will force it away. But if a comparably large bird, say a jay or a redbelly woodpecker, flies at the feeder, the cardinal departs. Jays and woodpeckers will sit a while but not as long as the thicker-billed cardinal or finch. When the big birds leave, the smaller ones can grab a bite.

Hummingbird feeder with many portals (Margo D. Beller)

Within the group, there is a pecking order. A male house finch will come to the house feeder. It might allow its mate to sit next to him but if another male house finch approaches it will fight it off if it is not the alpha bird but it will leave if the approaching bird is the alpha bird. The top bird always gets to eat. The same is true for other birds. One particularly snowy winter we had four pairs of cardinals coming to the feeder. The alpha pair always ate. If another cardinal was in the vicinity, the male would fly at it to force it away. Later, one of the others would come eat only to have the alpha male chase it off.

The only other thing I've ever seen that forces a cardinal off the feeder is if it is besieged by a lot of smaller birds that will harass it until it leaves

I don't know if this fighting would be avoided if I had many more feeders of different types out. Unfortunately, I don't have many feeders and all but one are not designed to accommodate a large bird like a cardinal.

Hummingbirds have a pecking order, too. When I had two females coming to the feeder in 2016 the more dominant one would always chase off the other. When a male showed up the alpha female would battle it, too, sometimes winning but sometimes flying off. Mind you, the sugar water feeder has several portals so they all could've fed at the same time and even brought over friends. But that's now how the bird brain operates.

Redbelly dominating the house feeder (Margo D. Beller)

The suet feeder draws woodpeckers. If the small downy is on the feeder and sees the larger hairy or redbelliy woodpecker approaching, it leaves fast. If a female downy is on the feeder and a male downy approaches, she's out of there, even if it's her mate. If two male downys are interested in the feeder, the alpha will chase the beta off, feed and then fly off, allowing the beta to eat - presuming the alpha male doesn't chase it off just because it can.

How is it determined which male or pair is the alpha and which isn't? That's another mystery better left to others to figure out.

Tweeting the Birds

We recently had two days of heavy rain and so I kept the feeders indoors because too much water can rot the seeds and then they are useless. After those two days I put the three feeders (two with sunflower seeds, one with suet) out and watched them from my kitchen.

When the snow is thick, food sources are thin aside from feeders.
(Margo D. Beller)

For a long time there was no activity. Then a white-breasted nuthatch came to the house feeder, then a couple of titmice. Then nothing. A white-throated sparrow appeared on the flood wall and then flew to the base of one feeder pole to look for dropped seeds or scratch at the ground. Later, I would see jays fly to a seed feeder, chug down a few seeds and then fly off to trees to cache them in some hiding place for later eating. Then, a male cardinal flew in. Eventually a flock of house sparrows and house finches arrived en masse at the two seed feeders.

How did they know food was available? How do birds communicate that knowledge? I am no scientist but I have some theories based on years of observation.

Chickadee investigating the house feeder. As it darts to
and fro with seed, it will attract the attention of other
birds hungry for seeds - or for feeder birds. (Margo D. Beller)

Theory 1: The birds remember where there are food sources. If they don't find the feeders out one day, they come back and look again later that day or the next. In my yard they will find the feeders out most days until summer comes, when there will be plenty of other food sources.

If they find no food, they must seek it elsewhere. Birds must eat to survive and in winter they can't hang around the yard in hopes something may turn up. That also includes the hawks that know where there are feeders drawing the smaller birds they eat for their own survival.

Theory 2: A big, bright bird, be it a noisy one like a jay or a quiet one like a cardinal, is hard to miss. So if other birds are flying around the area and see that bright color at a feeder, they follow it, sorta like being followed on Twitter.

White-throated sparrow watching the activity at
the feeders. Soon it will fly below
and pick up what other birds drop. (Margo D. Beller)

Theory 3: Speaking of tweeting, some birds are very vocal. There's the shrill "Thief!" call of the jay are the softer "dee, dee, dee" of the chickadee, the sharper variant of the titmouse and the "hank hank" of the white-breasted nuthatch. Other birds hear the calls and investigate. It's the same reason why, when I find a flock of titmice in the woods, I try to look at as many individuals as possible in case something different is flying with them looking for food. That way I've found myrtle warblers and gold-crowned kinglets foraging with the titmice and white-crowned sparrows with their white-throated cousins.

Theory 4: Birds communicate in a way we humans can't do ourselves or possibly understand.  

Likely it's a combination of all the above. Among each species during the breeding time the birds communicate which area is their territory, sing songs to attract mates or call to their young. But hunger is the main driver at this time of year. When there are few insects, birds must rely on weed seeds or those in feeders. Birds spend a lot of time and energy looking for food and in harsh winters many will die. So when they find food, whether they mean to communicate that information or not, the news gets around.

My job is to provide food and alert the birds so I can continue to hear their tweets.

The Upside-Down Bird and the Creeper

Another winter, another brown creeper (Margo D. Beller)

I see here to-day one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course. This has no black cockade, like the nuthatch.

-- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, Nov. 26, 1859

It is almost the same day 159 years later and the brown creeper I am watching is doing the exact same thing Thoreau saw in his woods, living up to its name by creeping deliberately up a stout tree.

I am in a small park in my town, carefully walking in the frozen slush, and I have stopped to watch some robins. Then I see movement against the brown-gray of the tree and there is the creeper, almost perfectly camouflaged, the movement of its head showing the white below and thus giving it away.

I stand and watch it a long time as it carefully climbs the tree, sticking its long, decurved bill into every crevice. It makes a faint sound that, because I only seem to find these birds in late autumn into winter, is not as familiar to me as that of the nearby white-breasted nuthatch, whose call sounds like hank. 

Creepers, according to the bird people at Cornell, build their nests behind peeling tree bark. Is this bird looking for food or a nest site? The range map shows this bird is a year-round resident of northern New Jersey. They mainly eat insects but will also come to suet feeders. I've never had one there.

That is not the case with the white-breasted nuthatch, which I see at my sunflower seed feeders every day they are out. This bird is not quiet, shy or easily missed like the creeper, it is a pugnacious little bird that stands out. It will fly to the house feeder, cling to the roof, dip its head down and grab a seed even as a larger bird such as a cardinal is sitting inside and eating. When a nuthatch flies in, the house finches scatter, as do most of the smaller birds.

I went to the oaks. Heard there a nuthatch's faint vibrating tut-tut, somewhat even like croaking of frogs, as it made its way up the oak bark and turned head down to peck. Anon it answered its mate with a gnah, gnah.
-- Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1856

White-breasted nuthatch (Margo D. Beller)

Watching the creeper now, I see the nearby white-breasted nuthatch uses an entirely different technique. It does not start at the bottom and work its way up, it flies high and goes up the tree or turns its head around and goes down. For that reason it is called by some the "upside-down bird" because few birds will travel a tree with head down. Even the woodpeckers, climbing trees with their tails bracing them, will go backwards but will not go down head first.

The white-breasted nuthatch, despite having a whole tree at its disposal, now flies at the creeper to force it away so it can examine that spot. The creeper flies to the other side of the trunk, where I can no longer see it. Another nuthatch, on a nearby tree, calls and this one answers.

Unlike the creeper, the only one of its type, there are three types of eastern nuthatches, the white-breasted, the red-breasted and the brown-headed. (I have seen all three.) The brown-headed is found as far north as Delaware, although occasionally one hitches a ride on the Cape May-Lewes ferry and shows up to thrill birders in New Jersey. Its call is high-pitched and squeaky, more like a mouse than a bird.

The red-breasted is a bird of northern, piney woods but in some years, such as this one, it can't find enough food and so moves south. This phenomenon is called irruption, and we have them most winters although the birds flying south may vary. (One year it was snowy owls.)

Besides the red breast, this bird is easily identified by the black line that runs through the eye. Its call is another pitch entirely from the white-breasted nuthatch and usually faster. This year I saw several in the larches on the outskirts of a dog park near me for one bright morning, but it was only that one day.

If I am lucky, a red-breasted nuthatch will come to my feeder, too, but usually it is quickly chased off by the slightly larger white-breasted. That has been the case so far this season - a blink-and-you'll-miss-it visit by a red-breasted nuthatch that was just figuring out how to take a seed when it was chased off by the white-breasted. I hope it got a chance to come back and get a seed or two before heading for a pine forest.

White-breasted nuthatch about to force off a titmouse.
(Margo D. Beller)

Renewing Vows, With Rakes

Go to any search engine and type in "renewing vows" and you'll find plenty of ideas for throwing what to me is mainly an excuse for a big party and a trip to an exotic locale. Many couples who have been married for decades like to do these renewals, as if the warranty on their marriage is about to expire and they'd better do something about it quick.

MH and I, who have been married for decades, aren't ones for big parties or exotic locales. We do things our own way. We renew our vows every Autumn when we must go into the backyard and tackle raking the fallen leaves.

Maple leaves, before the fall (Margo D. Beller)

With all the rain we had during the last weeks of summer, MH and I were not sure what we would get in the way of autumn color. When things did finally begin to color, they seemed patchy and uneven. Many trees stayed full of green leaves. But then it got cold and it seemed almost overnight the leaves started to turn. For about a week we had intense color that made it a joy to be outside.

That changed very recently when the winds started blowing and we had a brief warmup. There are now many more bare trees, or trees where the leaves are shriveled and brown, the overwhelming color.

I had to rake pods to the curb last year but not this year!
(Margo D. Beller)

When we first moved here and realized what we had on our property, we didn't know what to do with all the pods that fell from the one female black locust tree in our front yard (the other three are males; all were planted by our town, which is responsible for their maintenance). I collected them in an old garbage pail and kept it in a back corner of the property, where I now have my compost pile. What a relief to learn the next year we could put them at the curb with the leaves!

This year, there are few pods on the front lawn and the bulk of the leaves are in the back. We used to use a bed sheet in our raking but now use a very large tarp, which means fewer but heavier trips to the curb.

The other day was our first foray into this year's raking (this does not count when MH used his mower for the last time to mulch the leaves, or I collected leaves in a leaf vac to put into compost). We have a routine. I take out the blower we bought after the first year of raking and herd the leaves into piles. MH comes out with his gloves and rake and starts pulling other leaves from the edges to those piles. I grab my own rake and start putting the piles into the tarp we've spread out. He goes to the opposite side of the tarp from where I work and does the same. We hold down the tarp edges with our feet to get as many leaves in as we can. I push leaves into the center to make room for more. By the time we decide it can take no more, we have a heavy load to drag to the front of our house.

Befitting our personalities, he quietly does his job while I noisily try to get him to do something to, I think, make the process more efficient. He listens and agrees about half the time.

Black-capped chickadee (Margo D. Beller)

As we work there are birds calling around us, waiting in the dogwood tree or the shrubs to see if we will bother them as they fly to the feeders we work near. One black-capped chickadee has a more metallic-sounding call. "Could that be a Carolina-blackcap hybrid?" MH asks. Possibly, I say. Carolina chickadees tend to be in the southern part of New Jersey but who knows anymore as birds once considered "southern" now become more common up here.

Same with the raven we hear croaking its call as it flies overhead. Ravens used to be found in high elevations but we've been hearing them more often in our neighborhood, which is only about 400 feet above sea level. We stop to look for it and see its wide, spade-like tail as it sails by. I am impressed by MH. He has become more of a birder now after all our years together. Although most of the time he says he can't identify even the most common of birds without my help, there are some he now knows after being willing to listen to their calls. Having more eyes and ears out in the field is a great help to me.

Brook color (Margo D. Beller)

Otherwise, we don't talk much until we get to the curb and then we yell at each other if one's movements threatens to unbalance the other. I notice another older couple up the street are using their rakes to push leaves to the curb. They don't use a blower. They may not even use a tarp. They seem to have steel arms. If they hear me yell at MH they politely ignore it. They don't make a sound and work in sync. They're a partnership, too.

I think of how I used to do a lot myself. But now, while I can rake, use the blower (which shakes me painfully) and even put leaves into a tarp, there is no way I can drag down a heavy, leaf-laden tarp or empty it alone anymore. For that, as with so many things, I need my partner.

As if to mock us, the day after we finish our raking the wind blows and the lawn becomes more littered than it was before. Way too many leaves to use the mower on them. We'll just wait for the rest to come down, go out with rakes and tarp and then finish the job for another year. Until then, there's no rush. 

I Am Thoreau

"Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of 500 or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation."

-- from the journal of Henry David Thoreau

There are two times when I am especially glad to be at home, working at irregular hours if at all -- when the day is gray, rainy and cold (keeping me inside anyway) and when the day is glorious (and I want nothing more than to be outside).

Autumn color, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

In October, the weather went from September warm to November cold before settling on "normal" - whatever that is anymore. The continued rain had kept most of the trees leaves green but in the last week, with the return of "normal," the trees that hadn't lost all their leaves have suddenly popped with color. 

For the longest time in my backyard the white oak, normally the last tree to color, was the first. But now the elm is glowing gold, the red oak leaves are scarlet, the Norway maple went crimson and the small sugar maple in the corner by the compost pile is a brilliant yellow. Of course, now the wind has started howling and the trees are dropping leaves quickly.

During this week, I went out to the local park to enjoy some of this foliage while it lasted, on a clear and cold day where the blue of the sky made the colors so grand I was even more glad to be alive than usual.

"The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” -- Thoreau

Walking along the cobblestoned memorial path took me past the crab apple trees filled with berries, which were being scarfed down by robins. I don't get robins in my yard much unless they show up in the dogwood or the viburnun and other hedges before the squirrels can get to the fruit. But here they were in their glory. There were also starlings gathered at the tops of trees and on telephone wires. 

Maple in the park (Margo D. Beller)

Then they suddenly flew off and when I studied them closely I saw why - a sharp-shinned hawk was in their midst. The starlings veered one way, the small accipiter another. It wasn't interested in a starling meal.

Thoreau, in his books and journals, writes about the restorative qualities of being in nature, and the importance of slowing down and paying attention to what you see and hear. When I go into the woods now I tend to walk slowly although when I am with MH and his balky knees I tend to walk on ahead and then stop to look and listen while he catches up. Here in this park, next to my town's library, I can see the brook has risen almost to the top of its banks because of the recent rain. I can hear the soft notes of the white-throated sparrow. I can enjoy the turkey vultures sailing around in the wind.

And then one lands in a treetop before my approach prompts it to fly to the top of a telephone pole, where it spreads its wings and hangs out. I stop to watch it and take a picture to show MH. Around me are cars driving too fast in the road, people power-walking, joggers, dog walkers. None are aware of this big, black bird sitting over their heads. They are more disturbed by my standing there, presuming they notice me at all (which most do not).

Turkey vulture (Margo D. Beller)

This is the moment when I do not miss having a "regular" job that takes me away from my home for 12 hours a day and keeps me in a state of stress between my obligations and my commute. (I've done train and car; it makes no difference.) Yes, I don't make the money I once did and I don't get the benefits. Thoreau had the same problem. If he had his way he'd always be in the woods, measuring the depth of Walden Pond, watching the birds, talking to the neighbors about the animals or fish they hunted. 

But even Thoreau had to make a living once in a while to help out his family besides his writing. He ran a school in Concord. He taught the children of Ralph Waldo Emerson's brother in Staten Island, NY. He taught Emerson's own children. He lectured. He surveyed. He sold pencils made in his father's factory. "Work" was a necessary evil and he did it as little as possible.

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” --Thoreau

When I can't take hours out of my day to go outside, I feel terrible. Having read Laura Dassow Wells' 2017 biography "Thoreau: A Life," I know Thoreau never felt he wasted time walking the Concord roads during a full moon or traveling to a much wilder Cape Cod than you'd find now. He felt the wasted time was the time he spent working at a job. 

Crab apples (Margo D. Beller)

I am almost 20 years older than Thoreau was when he died in 1861. On my worst days, I can walk outside and feel better, almost as though I did not have any health problems. Of course, I feel it later. But seeing a bird I've never seen before, or seeing one I haven't seen for years is wonderful. When my city friends wonder at what I know of birds, I tell them I was not born with this knowledge, I had to seek it out in the field and then my reference books. Just as Thoreau did.

I am lucky there are so many parks within walking or driving distance of my home, and that I have the strength and stamina (and companion) to enjoy them. I am lucky I have enough money and no debt to afford this current state of my life. I allow myself to be surprised by what I find rather than tick birds off a list. 

I would never compare my powers of observation to Thoreau's. I have the advantage of strong binoculars, detailed field guides and land set aside for hiking that is not someone's private property. But Thoreau had the advantage of a (then) small town where he was known, indulged and allowed to wander. He did not have paved highways and fast cars and industrial noise and lights polluting the sky. He could see more, even if he was not always correct about what he was seeing. It informed his writing, which is why "Walden" and his other books are still read generations after his death.

You can decide for yourself if wandering has made me, like him, a better writer. But I do feel like a better person.

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”  -- Thoreau

My Walden Pond - Reservoir, Central Park of Morris County
(Margo D. Beller)