Free Day

Thanks to computers and the Internet, we know about storms days before they strike. This isn't always a good thing. It meant that MH, former Boy Scout, was anxious to get in food supplies days in advance. It meant I cooked enough food so I could have things that only needed to be warmed on the stove top in case we lost power. It meant taking money out to pay the plow guy. In my case it also meant being angry about the inadequacies of this house and of me.

After a relatively snow-free winter, we learned of a snowstorm that would hit last night. We were expecting the worst - six inches of snow followed by an inch of ice and then a drop of 30+ degrees to freeze it all.

I am older now and not enamored of being in the road show of "Frozen." There's a reason why Florida is known as God's waiting room - no shoveling although you do have those pesky hurricanes every summer.

Jan. 20, 2019, pre-plow guy (Margo D. Beller)

But here I am in New Jersey. I woke and looked out the front window and saw it was not as bad as predicted and the town plow had already been through. What was 3 inches of snow last night - the totals had been lessened as we got closer and closer to the actual event - was now 2 inches or so of slush. I went downstairs and opened the back door to push some of it with my shovel. Heavy, as expected. I thought of our 38-foot driveway, mandated by town code, and I thought of MH and me pushing this heavy stuff with our assorted ailments.

I called our plow guy. He seemed surprised to hear from me. But he knew, as I do, that the forecast is for the temperature to fall from a relatively balmy 40 degrees F to about 6 overnight. It will be enough for MH to push stuff off our walkways and for me to check on the feeders I left outside overnight. (I am now certain any self-respecting bear is safely resting in a cave. In effect, that will be what I do for the better part of today and tomorrow.)

Before the storm, MH and I had done as much as we could while we still had power. So today is a free day, free in a sense that my usual Sunday chores are done and, once the shoveling part is done, I can use the day for myself. Were I a younger, more foolish person, I'd be out in the field with my binoculars. I know there are many who are outside now, whether with binoculars or skis. Instead, I will be writing and reading or watching the feeder birds.

They have been coming at a rapid clip. I will smooth a path through the slush to the feeders, clear the slush off them and then withdraw. At least in my yard, they will be fed during the freeze. I remind myself that even if we lose power for a day or so because of frozen tree limbs falling on the power lines, we will survive. The birds, meanwhile, aren't free to relax and must hunt for what food they can find.

Bird Eat Bird

One of the handy books I keep on my shelves of birding guides is "Birds at Your Feeder: A Guide to Feeding Habits, Behavior, Distribution, and Abundance." It was one of the first books I bought when I got interested in birding.

It gives species accounts for dozens of birds that are likely to come to feeders including northern cardinals, white-breasted nuthatches and white-throated sparrows along with birds I'm not likely to see in New Jersey such as black-billed magpies and pyrrhuloxia. Want to know what kind of seed will attract a goldfinch? This guide will tell you.

Immature Cooper's hawk that missed a meal.
(Margo D. Beller)

This is what it says for sharp-shinned hawks, the first species in the book:

Favorite feeder foods: Mourning dove. blue jay, European starling, dark-eyed junco, pine siskin, house finch, house sparrow.

Infrequent choices: 21 additional prey species, similar in size to those listed above.

Or as MH likes to say, "What's a sharpy's favorite food? Birds at your feeder."

Yes, it's a bird eat bird world out there, particularly in winter when birds must flock to feeders for food when they can't find berries or bugs. They become more visible and so do the predators that eat birds to survive.

This morning I came out with the feeders to find a dusting of snow on the patio and the lawn. I sat on the enclosed porch in my coat to await the male cardinal that always seems to know when I have put out food. He came, taking a seed and then chasing away the white-throated sparrow on the baffle below it. Aside from these birds there was very little activity as the snow continued falling lightly. Two titmice came to grab seeds and fly to the pear tree to eat.

Then, as I looked ahead, something large and brown came up from the ground to the roof of the porch where I sat. A mourning dove? Then why is the titmouse suddenly giving its high-pitched alarm call? I soon saw the answer when the sharp-shinned hawk flew from the roof to a nearby branch. Juvenile accipiters (including the larger Cooper's and northern goshawk) are brown but become gray as they mature. This one was a juvenile - brown and empty taloned. I have seen sharpys fly close to the ground to pick off a meal so this one must have flown into my yard low and, for whatever reason, flown up to the roof where it could be seen by other birds and avoided.

Immature redtail hawk observed in my backyard. (Margo D. Beller)

Eventually, the sharpy flew off to the trees on the next street but then passed over my yard on the way to the woods on the edge of the community garden behind the houses across the street. Not long after, the jays began hitting the feeder and the titmice, house sparrows and house finches came to eat, not be eaten.

In time, the juvenile will learn it must become a better hunter if it wants to survive the winter. Accipiters are built for speed and agility. Their wings are such they can fly between trees, which larger hawks such as a redtail can't do. I have chased sharpys out of my hedge. I have been buzzed by sharpys while in the woods. In my yard alone I have seen an adult literally pick a junco out of the trees, crushing the life out of it with a nauseating pop. I caught one sharpy after it had grabbed a chickadee, which it took into a neighbor's shrub to finish. Catching a big, plump bird such as a mourning dove will feed a crow-sized female sharpy very well (female hawks of all types are always larger than the males).

Mature sharpy finishing off a mourning dove in the backyard.
(Margo D. Beller)

No raptors will turn down a bird meal if it can't catch anything else. Great horned owls will eat the much smaller screech owl. Turkey vultures have been known to push young birds from a nest to kill and eat them (which is why you will often see crows and other birds attacking vultures that get too close). Both northern and loggerhead shrikes have the nasty habit of killing smaller birds and impaling them on a branch to snack on later. (The shrike is known as the "butcher bird" for this reason.)

I know, all birds have to eat, even the ones that feed on the birds at my feeder. I get that. Still, not in my yard. This is why when a raptor appears in my yard trees I stand outside near the feeders, to study it while protecting the feeder birds. The raptor eventually flies off to look for its meal elsewhere.

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)