Bird's Eye View

Sitting at the top of a tall tree, the male cardinal sings out his territorial song just as the first light is coming into the sky. It is April and he is letting other cardinals know he has THIS territory for himself, his mate and any young that manage to survive. After a few long choruses, he looks down and sees a figure, dressed in the same red as he, putting a box up, the box with the seeds. He flies down to a smaller tree and the figure hangs the box, turns, looks at him and says something. Then, the figure goes back inside and the cardinal comes down to eat. 

He grabs a seed and jumps atop the iron feeder pole, eating as he looks around for any predators or rivals. His mate flies to a nearby shrub and he takes a seed to her, which she accepts. He flies back to one side of the box, his mate the other. They eat until they are full or something spooks them into the bushes. But they'll be back.

Female cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

In sports there is March Madness. For birders the madness revs up in April, when northbound migrant birds are heading for breeding territories and pass through my area. But this is also when the resident birds prepare to breed. Starting in late March, the birds in my yard have been arriving at the feeders in pairs, two by two like Noah: Two house finches. Two cardinals. Two titmice. A downy woodpecker male comes to the suet, flies off and is replaced by a female. Pairs of robins are walking over my lawn, looking for worms, grubs or insects. Sometimes the male in one pair will fly at the other male, jockeying for more space.

Not long after sunrise you can find me standing outside my back door after I have put out the feeders and water in my long, red robe. The male cardinal comes almost immediately to the house-shaped seed feeder, a hairy woodpecker to the suet. It is good to see both male and female hairy coming because that means a nest has been excavated out of a tree nearby. There was a time I would confuse the hairy with the smaller, similar looking downy. Not now. Other woodpeckers call - flickers, redbellys and the occasional pileated -  and I've been hearing more Carolina wrens calling.

Singing male cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

It is a fine time of year, especially when my many types of daffodils are in bloom. Daffodils are my favorite flower because all their parts are toxic, so the flowers aren't eaten by deer and the bulbs aren't eaten by squirrels or chipmunks. I wish these fine flowers - available in an assortment of colors, sizes, even petal types - grew all year. But they'll be gone soon, to be replaced by other flowering perennials.

When the red azalea blooms it will be time to think about putting out a hummingbird feeder. These birds are drawn to red flowers. As of April 16, according to one website that tracks the migration of all types of hummers in the U.S., the ruby-throated hummingbird (the only one regularly found in the east) has already been seen in the southern part of the state. Another warm day with strong winds from the south and the birds should be up where I live.

There are still white-throated sparrows around with the chipping sparrows singing in my front yard. Juncos are rarely seen now and the catbird has not made it up here yet. Soon.

Hummingbird at a friend's feeder (Margo D. Beller)

Same with the house wrens, so I haven't put out the wren nest box yet. The kinglets, ruby-crowned and golden-crowned, have come, as have the blue-gray gnatcatchers and the pine and palm warblers. Ospreys are on their nests. Fish crows are flying with nest-building materials in their beaks. Even a pair of cowbirds, those parasites of songbird nests, recently came to my feeder.

The recent heavy rain has prompted the oaks and other trees to flower and leaf out. (The maples have been in flower for some time.) Usually the reports of warblers increase once the tree is full of green leaves, making it even harder to find these colorful birds unless you know their songs.

This is why no matter how bad winter gets, how dark, cold and snowy, I look ahead to when it will finally be spring and the daylight will lengthen and the climate warm. But not too much. I am in no rush for summer.

Goodbye to All That

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.
   -- Yogi Berra

With April and the start of the spring migration I have traveled to several birding locations near me to see and hear what could be out there in the morning. Of late I have been going to familiar trails, as well as those I haven't walked in a few years. In the latter case I found things that were disturbing.

Atop Hawk Mountain, 2010 (RE Berg-Andersson)

I suppose it is a good thing so many people in my area feel the need to "get out" and go hiking. They like to dress themselves and their children in the latest outdoor gear out of the catalog of their choice and then scamper around, splashing through streams and bushwhacking off the trails on foot or, on occasion, on a mountain or other type of bike, taking pictures or filming with a portable camera to post to social media.

The problem is, in a national or state park or a sanctuary run by a private organization, there isn't always the money (or interest?) to repair trails worn down by all these people as well as the heavy rains that bring up tree roots and rocks or that have eroded ground around bridges and other structures.

The other problem is, I am getting older and afraid of falling. I've had several falls in recent years, including one just today in a national park located not far from me in New Jersey. I haven't broken a bone yet but I don't want a first time.

More birders on Hawk Mountain, 2012
(RE Berg-Andersson)

Back in September 2010 MH and I went to the north lookout at Hawk Mountain. On our climb up we found an assortment of warblers feeding during their migration south. After watching the raptor show we came down a second trail and found a life bird, a Bicknell's thrush. Two years later we went back. Thousands of people climb to the north lookout atop Hawk Mountain and it showed. The rocks were broken and worn. Maybe the hawk counters who know the area like the back of their hands didn't mind, or the rugged outdoor types or the ones who had no idea what they were doing but just wanted to be up there because they'd heard about it somewhere. But for MH and me the climb up and especially the climb down were full of peril, with several near-falls on my part. And that was when MH's knees were still good.

Never again unless we go to the south lookout, the one that is flat and wheelchair accessible.

I have also found worn and dangerous conditions at the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary run by NJ Audubon, a private group, and at the Freylingheusen Arboretum, a county park that was the first place I went to hike when I moved down the road over two decades ago. I wandered that place, usually alone, so much you could drop me anywhere blindfolded and I could find my way out. Now, all the paths I explored are blazed and filled with map-clutching people who want to walk in the woods and be "in nature," with or without phones on. Paths are eroded and not fixed, or they lead to locked gates or are closed entirely. Tree roots stick out. One uphill climb I did for the first time in years was so eroded near the top I had to grab the nearby beech until my panic ebbed. And now, today, my hike in the national park, Jockey Hollow, where the path I took was narrow and well traveled.

Scherman Hoffman, before the erosion (Margo D. Beller)

I know there are those who like a hiking challenge, the more extreme the better. I am not one of those people and I try to avoid them as much as possible. Luckily, to look for little birds during migration season it pays to get out early, before the mountain bikers and the hikers with their day packs and ski poles to steady them over rocks and ravines. It helps that I am now semi-retired and can travel on the weekdays during the school year and avoid the families who want to get their kids away from their phones and scramble up hills as tho' they were in a public playground.

The downside is, if I slip and fall, as I did as I was leaving a muddy trail up a slight incline to the road, I am usually alone. This fall was relatively mild. The next one might not be.

MH, bless him, is not too worried when I go off myself. His knees are such that there is no way he could've walked on any of the trails I mentioned above. After my most recent fall, I am not going back to any of these places either. For now, there are plenty of flatter places I can get to where, despite the erosion, I can find plenty of birds, and there's always out of state.

I'm not that sad to be saying goodbye to these old haunts. I'm just sad that I must.

Pill-eated or Pie-liated Woodpecker? Who Cares?

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 9, 2014, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

The other day, reading posts on the New Jersey Birders Facebook page, I saw a discussion over how to pronounce the word "pileated," as in the largest type of woodpecker you can see in New Jersey. This is one of those arcane discussions people will get into, like whether to say CARIB-be-an or Carib-BE-an. (The Gershwins wrote a whole song about such matters.)

Male pileated woodpecker (RE Berg-Andersson)

In the case of this woodpecker, there are those who say pie-liated and those who say pill-eated. I fall on the side of the Pillers, just because I find the word Pill easier. But it doesn't really matter either way because when you see one of these big birds - crow-sized, black and white with large red crest - the first thing out of your mouth tends to be "my God!" or "what IS that?"

This back and forth on how to say its name - the upshot was it can be said either way - got me thinking about a post I wrote for another blog back in 2014. March is when you start to hear a lot of woodpeckers, as well as other birds, calling or singing out, announcing their territories. In the case of the pileated, you will also hear it whacking into trees to pull out its favorite food, carpenter ants.

So here is some of what I wrote back in 2014:

Whether you are walking in a forest or park or sitting in your suburban backyard, there is nothing more distinctive than the sound of a pileated woodpecker whacking a hole in a tree, seeking the carpenter ants within.

Everything about the pileated is BIG. It is about the size of a crow, so when it flies over you in the woods it gets your attention. It has a large crest and a large bill that it uses to make large, rectangular holes in trees. If it is a male, he will have a little red "mustache" the female lacks. Sometimes the sound of one chopping into a tree reminds me of a woodsman with an ax. (Watch Jim O’Malley’s video of a pileated woodpecker here.)

Even its laugh is big. It carries far whether in the forest or the backyard. In fact, most times it is the laugh that alerts me to the bird because it’s otherwise rather shy. I am sure the creator of the old “Woody Woodpecker” cartoon character had the pileated’s crest and laugh in mind.

I was once walking in my town to the morning train to work when I discovered a pileated, at eye level, whacking away at a tree. I was able to walk within five feet, so close I could see it was a female. She ignored me. There must’ve been a lot of ants in that tree. “That’ll be down in a year,” I thought. In fact, it took two.

A tree full of holes is a goner. The very fact the woodpecker is on it shows the tree is infested with carpenter ants, and that weakened tree will die. But those holes also keep others, including smaller birds and even bats, alive because they create temporary shelters. So even a dead tree has its uses.

As for the name, whichever way you pronounce it the word “pileated” means having a crest covering the pileum, which is the top of the head of a bird from the bill to the nape.

The pileated is the largest woodpecker we have in the U.S., unless you believe the ivory-billed woodpecker is still around. Back in 2004 it was believed one was found in an Arkansas swamp decades after it was presumed extinct. The effort to locate this woodpecker was the subject of the 2005 "The Grail Bird: The Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker" and other books. Birders were excited about this. Many wanted to head down and find it. Even David Allen Sibley created an addendum on the ivory-billed you could download and add to his bird guidebook.

Female pileated. I confirmed this with my
binoculars after I took the picture. (Margo D. Beller)

According to “The Grail Bird,” which I read, the kayaker who got a glimpse was asked if he really saw a “Lord God” bird. Wasn’t it more likely to be the more common pileated? He claimed it was not a pileated. If you look at John J. Audubon’s portrait of the ivory-billed and compare it to the photograph above, you can see the difference between the two woodpeckers.

However, Audubon, writing about the pileated in his journal, said its flight is “powerful, and, on occasion, greatly protracted, resembling in all respects that of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.”

Audubon has three ivory-billeds in his portrait. To get the birds he had to shoot them – with a gun. No digital cameras back then. We don’t know how many ivory-billeds were killed before he got the portrait he wanted but we do know from his journal that Audubon regretted killing any more birds than absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately, others didn’t think the same way and the ivory-billed is likely extinct. Not so the pileated, of which Audubon used four birds in his portrait. In his journal he wrote:

It would be difficult for me to say in what part of our extensive country I have not met with this hardy inhabitant of the forest. Even now, when several species of our birds are becoming rare, destroyed as they are, either to gratify the palate of the epicure, or to adorn the cabinet of the naturalist, the Pileated Woodpecker is every where to be found in the wild woods, although scarce and shy in the peopled districts.

Luckily for us in “the peopled districts” of New Jersey, these woodpeckers are still “every where to be found” today. It is up to all of us who love birds and open spaces to keep it that way.

Waiting for Timberdoodles

This post is based on one that originally ran on April 19, 2017, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day. 

“The woodcock is a living refutation of the theory that the utility of a game bird is to serve as a target, or to pose gracefully on a slice of toast. No one would rather hunt woodcock in October than I, but since learning of the sky dance I find myself calling one or two birds enough. I must be sure that, come April, there be no dearth of dancers in the sunset sky.”  -- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac 1949

American woodcock (free photo courtesy National Park Service)

I expect certain things in late March. I expect daffodils and other early bloomers to start poking up through the leaf litter, which means I have to remove said litter for the daffodils to grow and be seen better. I expect to see and hear more robins as the snow melts and the exposed, softened ground allows them to pick off worms and other things trying to get away from the rising water table. I expect to start seeing the first reports of early migrants including phoebes and pine warblers.

And then there is the American woodcock. This time of year is when I expect to start seeing reports of this odd-looking ground bird doing its mating peent and acrobatic flights into the dawn or dusk as it tries to interest a mate. Those reports just started this week. The woodcock's mating season here in NJ should last into April.

Within walking distance of my house, on the former Greystone property, there are brushy areas where a male woodcock would display well. I just need to get out of the house into the cold to watch for them. However, about two years ago MH and I learned of a place where many woodcocks were being reported and a woodcock walk was to be held. MH and I attended and my report of our visit, for another blog, is below:

The sun goes down as a warm early-April Sunday that begins to chill thanks to a clear sky. We're on a damp path near a small pond - Esox Pond, to be exact, in Somerset County's 950-acre Lord Sterling Park - looking at a brushy field and waiting for an American Woodcock to start its mating call.

From late February to about May, these plump, Robin-sized, land-based shorebirds, whose brown, mottled covering helps them blend well in cover, do something very unusual as they attempt to perpetuate the species.

Pine warbler - not yet, but soon (RE Berg-Andersson)

To eat they probe for earthworms with their long bills in brushy fields, near wetlands, which is why Lord Sterling naturalist Ben Barkley and Mike Anderson, director of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary, have led a dozen of us to this spot, where Barkley knows some males like to congregate. According to Barkley, there could be as many as 30 Woodcocks at Lord Sterling, while Scherman Hoffman has about a dozen, including two males heard within the last few days from the fields by the Vernal Pool, according to Anderson.

As the sun goes down and we wait, we see Great Blue Herons, a Cooper's Hawk and Wood Ducks, among others, fly over as they look for a good place for the night's roost.

Robins are calling. As the darkness spreads, male frogs - Wood Frogs and Spring Peepers, at this time of year - begin a loud, continuous chorus as they try to attract mates.

In the middle of this cacophony, at around 7:30 p.m., we hear the first nasal peent of the Woodcock. We have been led here earlier to get the birds used to our presence, ahead of the hoped-for show.

One peent leads to another and then six more before there is silence. No one makes a sound as the sky gets darker. Then the peents begin again, this time from another direction. And then another. Soon there  are four or five male Woodcocks calling.

But that is not what we are there to see.

When I have seen an American Woodcock, it is usually when it is almost literally underfoot. Because they blend into the leaf litter so well, you frequently don't see one until it flies up at your approach - as one did a few years ago near the entrance to the Scherman Hoffman yellow trail along the Passaic River- or scurries away, its crunching of the underbrush the only way I could find it.  I've never been able to photograph Scolopax minor, even on the very early morning a few springs ago when a Woodcock was peenting from the roof of my house!

At dawn or dusk during breeding season, the Woodcock shows why it got its other name of Timberdoodle.

Imagine a 9-inch elephant (as seen sitting from the back) sprouting small wings, taking a giant leap into the sky - 200 to 300 feet - and then coming back to earth in a zig-zag pattern while its three outer primary feathers make a twittering sound as it lands on or near its jumping-off point.

"There it goes," said Anderson. While I didn't hear the sound of the wings I did see the bird - once I realized it was not a particularly large bat flying where the little bit of remaining light allowed me to see it.

Lord Sterling Park at dusk, just before the Timberdoodle show.
(RE Berg-Andersson)

As with the calling, once one started flying, so did other males. One female flew in low to investigate. Once she and a male mate, she will build a nest on the ground and lay three to five eggs. She will sit on the nest for three weeks. The hatched young will leave the nest after two weeks.

According to Barkley, Woodcocks are considered a "resident" species in New Jersey, although individuals do migrate.

Woodcock is not an endangered bird but its life is not easy. According to the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, the Woodcock can be hunted during migratory duck season in Autumn.  The state lumps Woodcock in with Rails, Snipes, Coots and Moorhens in its rules of what licensing is required.

According to Mike Anderson, overhunting is just one reason for the decline in the Woodcock population. Another is disappearing habitat. There are fewer brushy fields, and those that were around 40 years ago are becoming wooded areas that, in turn, are cut down for housing developments.

Places like Scherman Hoffman, Lord Sterling and the nearby federal Great Swamp, as well as other parts of the National Wildlife Refuge system, are managed to help the Woodcock population, Anderson said.

Meanwhile, in the darkness there are male Woodcocks flying around everywhere. One takes off in front of us and I follow it with binoculars as it rockets into the dim light and disappears, only to suddenly swoop down and buzz us about 10 feet away as it lands. Barkley puts on his flashlight and there he sits, the star of the show, the Timberdoodle, still as a statue, waiting for the light to be turned off.

But we don't want it off. We want to look at the mottling of its back and take a picture of this strange creature few of us see. Several of us grab our phones but we're too late when it silently takes off for the brush.

"Can't do much better than that," Barkley said. And so we leave to a mounting chorus of Woodcock, Wood Frog and Peepers calling in the cold darkness of a not-so-silent night.

Lettuce Start the Growing Season

It usually takes me a few days to a week to get used to the changes in the light caused by the start of Daylight Savings Time. Just as the light started waking me at 6:30 am, we changed the clock ahead and now I am back to rising after 7am, or in the dark before then. Now the daylight lasts until close to 7pm, which would be great if I was doing things outside, such as working in the garden. However, despite one or two days of above-average temperatures, it has generally been too cold to do any work outside aside from adding to my brush pile.

Optimism (Margo D. Beller)

And yet, going to the local Agway to replenish my seed and suet supplies, I bought a package of lettuce seeds.

I grew lettuce in a planter years ago and it did rather well considering I planted it at the wrong time of year. But the other year I tried again at the right time of year and the seeds did not germinate. I have since learned lettuce seeds have a short shelf life.

But I wanted to try again. I was tired of paying a lot of money for organic lettuce sold by a local farmer (using a protective tent) at the winter farm market this past season or buying less-than-satisfactory lettuce from who-knows-where at the supermarket. MH will eat lettuce on his sandwiches and it is another good way of getting him to eat greens. The cost of a package of seeds is cheaper than buying seedlings, even if not all the planted seeds germinate.

Lettuce, I am told in my reference books, is one of the easiest plants to grow. You can get two crops - planted in early spring, it grows into the summer; planted in late summer, it grows into the early winter. Lettuce likes the cold.

Nowadays I like trying to plant things as a way of coping with an over-mechanized and -technical society. If successful, I grow food. If not, I learn what not to do for next time. If successful growing lettuce, I may try other crops that cost a lot to buy at the farm markets such as chard and spinach.

Mainly I am feeling the itch to get my hands dirty. Although the thought of the spring cleanup work I'll have to do tires me, seeing the daffodils and other early bloomers poking their noses above the soil gives me incentive to make them more visible. I want to finally put the pepper pots back outside. I want to plant the dahlias I've stored in the garage.

I want the warmer weather so I can use those longer daylight hours productively, working in the garden and looking for birds. Soon enough the migrants will be passing through on their way north.

My brother-in-law in NH is waiting for the sap to start rising in his maples so he can start on this year's sugaring. I notice the maples in my yard have begun flowering, putting red coloring against the blue sky. Maybe the sap is starting to rise in me, too.

Backyard Bird Census

Every year, the Cornell Ornithology Lab in New York and the national Audubon Society hold a Great Backyard Bird Count during the Presidents Day weekend. As the name implies, the idea is to encourage people to go outside or watch bird feeders and count how many of which types of birds show up.

White-throated sparrow (Margo D. Beller)

It is a chance for non-scientific types such as me to collect data that help the real scientists track movements of birds around the world and see which types of birds are on the increase and which are declining.

For me, it is a chance to do a census of which birds are in or calling near my house.

I am not a counter most of the time. It is enough to put "titmouse" in my notes rather than "3 titmice seen between 9 am and 9:15am." But I try to do this for the count at least one day during the four (Friday through Monday) days it's held.

I've already learned a few interesting things:

So far I've seen a marked decrease in the number of house sparrows. This could be for any number of reasons. It could be they are going to other feeders where people are using cheap millet seed these sparrows can more easily eat rather than the sunflower seeds I use, which they would have to crack open. It could be because there is a large number of house finches in the yard (I saw as many as nine at one time, all over both feeders). With all that competition there could be less incentive for the sparrows to hang around. (Although they will nest in anything including street lamps and under a window air conditioner. I know of one large sparrow flock using a row of forsythia on one street I walk on my way to the post office.)

Jay (Margo D. Beller)

I have seen no more than one or two blue jays at a time. There was a point a few weeks ago when there were as many as six taking turns hitting the house feeder, making it swing violently as they took off. Jays, like other birds, have a pecking order and if a jay comes out of turn it is swiftly forced off by another. Were those other jays just passing through?

I have seen or heard no Carolina wrens from my yard lately. These little brown and gold-fronted birds are the only wrens that will hang around my part of the country during winter - as long as they can find food. I know in past counts I've found at least one. There was one I heard during a hike and one calling quite some distance from my house one morning a few weeks ago. I am hoping the recent polar vortex didn't affect the wren population.

I have seen no juncos in the yard lately. That is another bird that will be out of the yard for weeks but then suddenly shows up in small numbers. However, the number of white-throated sparrows has remained fairly steady. Usually there is at least one I see or hear. Yesterday there were five, most of them checking for dropped seed bits under the feeder. When winter starts they tend to stay in the bushes but as the cold wears on they become a lot less shy. For instance, there is one that has made it his business to fly into the house feeder and eat there. It will not leave for the house finches and reluctantly leaves for the bigger cardinals and jays. As the winter goes on the male's white throat and the white "eyebrows" and yellow near the eyes will get so bright they can be easily seen in the dusk. This is the white-throat's breeding colors. Although white-throats have been known to remain in the New York metro area (in such places as Central Park, for instance), most will fly off to their northern breeding territories as spring approaches.

Red-headed woodpecker, North Carolina
(RE Berg-Andersson)

There is always a chance something unusual will be around to count. One year during the count, walking along a part of Patriots Path, I encountered a redheaded woodpecker, a southern bird that has been slowly moving north in its range as climate change makes the world warmer. For the redheaded, the challenge is finding the dead trees it needs for roosting. When I found it, it was noisily flying around one that was surrounded by water, just like its usual swamp (caused by the nearby Whippany River flooding). At the time, the sighting was unusual enough for my report to be questioned by the scientists, but I convinced them of my accuracy. Now, however, these birds have been found more often in New Jersey, with a confirmed nest in the dead trees of Troy Meadows.

I doubt one will show up in my yard this year but, given the increasing warmth of the world and destruction of its usual habitat through so-called development, next year is always a possibility.

Avoiding Pepe Le Pew

According to the 2019 edition of The Old Farmer's Almanac (and it is old, first published in 1792), on Feb. 24 "Skunks mate now."

Never have three little words been so obnoxious.

This means for the last week of this month my windows will continue to be kept tightly shut because there will be a very good chance of stink during the night, either between two male skunks fighting over a female, or a female skunk trying to fight off a male.

The real Pepe le Pew (free photo courtesy of Pixabay/Wikipedia)

Skunks can stink up the area at all times of year, of course. That's how they defend themselves from predators. They use two anal glands that can shoot the noxious spray up to 12 feet away. I can remember being awakened one autumn pre-dawn by the howl of a cat followed by the familiar, pungent odor of a skunk. The cat's eyes would've been stung and the skunk would've skittered off on its short legs.

The common striped skunk, made famous by the Warner Brothers cartoon character Pepe Le Pew, is the one you’ll find in New Jersey although there are 11 species, nine of them in North America. Like the house cat Pepe frequently mistook for a potential mate, I do my best to avoid skunks.

Sometimes it isn't so easy. In the dark, skunks are very hard to see. When I used to walk the streets of my town in the dark pre-dawn hours to get the train to work, skunks would cross the road ahead of me or, in one memorable case, two baby skunks turned out to be on a lawn next to me as I sensed something nearby in the dark. I walked very slowly away so as not to scare them into spraying. If you don't threaten it, a skunk continues on its way.

Skunks are solitary creatures except during the winter, when several may den together, and in the breeding season that runs roughly from mid-February into March. This is also when you’ll see - or smell - the most road-killed skunks as these nocturnal critters cross roads to find a mate and will treat your fast-approaching car as one big predator to spray.

You might wonder, what is a skunk good for in the greater ecological scheme of things? Skunks will eat the insects that otherwise destroy your plants and lawn or nest in your house: grasshoppers, crickets, beetles and wasps. They love grubs, so if you see deep holes in your lawn you can thank your local skunk. However, skunks, like raccoon and bear, will also eat pet food and garbage left outside.

(free photo courtesy of Pixabay)

That’s why skunks are becoming as common a N.J. sight as gray squirrels, and for the same reason: A well-fed skunk is a breeding skunk. After mating the young are born about two months later, with five to six, on average, to a litter. They will nurse in the den for about a month and a half.

If you presume a skunk has bred in February, the young are active by May, which is just in time for a parent great horned owl that bred in January and hatched its own young to start picking skunks off to feed them. Great horned owls are not put off by skunk smell because they can’t smell the spray.

When owl meets skunk only the smell remains in the morning.