Watching the Neighbors, Round 2: Coming to Terms

Once again I fell into the trap of thinking I, homo sapiens, knew more than a wild bird that evolved long before I did, in this case accipiter cooperii.

Male Cooper's hawk, April 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Not three days after I wrote my last post thinking I had intimidated the Cooper's hawk pair because I was taking their picture, they were back. For all I know they came back earlier but I was not outside to see it. This is why I should never presume. 

I don't know, I can only observe. 

Man may think he/she is at the top of the food chain but the reality is, all creatures must adapt to their circumstances. People used to shoot at Cooper's and other hawks. Now that is illegal. That has brought back the hawk populations, and with them the need for a good place to nest and rear young. 

That, for the Cooper's, increasingly means nesting in towns and suburbs rather than the forests, which are being ripped down for so-called development.

Here is how I described the return of my new neighbors in my bird log of March 31: "I don't know why I thought I could intimidate a hawk. Yesterday [March 30] circa 7 am, I was outside and heard a "kek." I looked up [and] there they were, working on twigs for the nest. I put out one feeder and stood by as the male cardinal, perhaps sensing why I was there, came to feed as usual, jumping to the top of the pole. His mate called to him from the dogwood. When he flew off I moved so she would not see me but I could be seen by the hawks. They weren't interested, and the female cardinal stayed put. Only after I went back on the porch did [the female and then the male again] both come to eat. After they left I got the feeder."

Since then any hope of "normal" has disappeared. As with the coronavirus, there is a "new normal" in my yard. The nest, like the virus, like the clouds that have rarely departed over the past week, hangs over my thoughts and has changed the feeder birds' behavior - and mine. After several days of no activity at the caged seed feeder or the suet feeder I emptied them until winter. Now, I only put out water and the house feeder, which can accommodate all the birds large and small. The cardinals have not deserted me, not just because I am feeding them (I would like to think) but because I think the pair has its own nest nearby.

Now, at dawn, I go outside and hear the usual birds - song sparrows, Carolina wren, more robins, the cardinals. I hang the one feeder and usually the male flies from his hiding place to a nearby shrub, waiting for me to move away. He eats, then jumps to a high perch to sing his territorial song. His song used to cheer me, now it fills me with dread because I am watching that damned stick nest. Other birds might come by but as soon as we hear that "kekkekkek" I know one or both predators are back and so do the birds and squirrels.

Another year, another juvenile Cooper's hawk in flight (RE Berg-Andersson)

Still, I leave the house feeder out all day because the hawks don't seem to be hanging around the nest all day - yet. I have watched them long enough by now to think - not know - they are most active at dawn and at dusk. Yesterday I sat on the porch and watched the hawks on a stout branch of the next tree over from the nest tree. The male worked on the nest, flying up every so often with twigs. 

But he did something else, too - he mounted the female. Ten seconds of noisy avian sex. He worked on the nest and than mounted her a second time. As far as I know I am the only person who witnessed it, but the male cardinal was smart enough to grab some food while the hawks were otherwise engaged. Eventually, the male Cooper's flew south and, a few minutes later, so did the female. Then the birds and squirrels started returning, tentatively.

On the one sunny day we had this week, I had my office shades open. I am frequently distracted by noise and movement on my street, which is greater than usual at this time of year because of New Jersey's stay-at-home order. But I wanted the shades open to let in the sun, and that is how I saw one of the hawks flying around the front yard. Finally, I raised my shade and saw the male sitting on a branch on the tree in front of me, working to break off a twig! I took his picture. Eventually he left.

So, as with the virus and being forced to wear a bandana over my nose and mouth, I have had to make an accommodation. The hawks are not going to give up the nest and I am not going to give up feeding at least some of the birds.

I look on the bright side. Since the hawks arrived I have seen only one blue jay at the feeder. I have seen only one house finch. The jays bombard the house feeder, making it swing so wildly I fear it will fall to the ground. The house finches arrive en masse and make a mess while blocking other birds from eating - unless it is a bigger bird like the cardinal. There are fewer squirrels running around the lawn. I have seen no chipmunks, at least in the backyard. 

I am allowing myself to look at these visitors with wonder. Last year I enjoyed watching the robins at their nest. This year it will be Cooper's hawks. 

The day I photographed the male was windy, and I was amazed how aerodynamic the birds are. They seem top-heavy with their squared-off heads and wings compared with their relatively slender, rounded tail. The pair are juveniles - both brown-backed and streaked on the breast rather than the mature hawk's gray back and dense red streaking on the breast. But these juveniles know what they are doing. From the branch, the hawk jumps off and spreads its wings, allowing the updraft to carry it higher. Unlike the smaller sharp-shinned hawk, with its flap-flap-soar wing motion, the Cooper's seems to glide.

The male cardinal continues to sing from a high perch whether a hawk
is around or not. (Margo D. Beller)

I've learned where it got its name: It was, says Wikipedia, "first described by French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1828. This bird was named after the naturalist William Cooper, one of the founders of the New York Lyceum of Natural History (later the New York Academy of Sciences) in New York."

Here is how John James Audubon describes the Cooper's in his Birds of America: "The flight of the Cooper's Hawk is rapid, protracted, and even. It is performed at a short height above the ground or through the forest. It passes along in a silent gliding manner, with a swiftness even superior to that of the Wild Pigeon...seldom deviating from a straight-forward course, unless to seize and secure its prey."

It is that flying "a short height above the ground" that keeps the squirrels high in the trees when the hawks are around and the mourning dove - a favorite snack - away from the area under the feeder where the seeds are dropped.

Audubon says the male is 20 inches long with a 36-inch wingspan while the female is 22 inches long with a 38-inch span. This is much bigger than what David Allen Sibley says in his guide, although he gives only one measurement despite knowing the female is bigger than the male: 16.5 inches long with a 31-inch wingspan. 

Cooper's passing through another year
(Margo D. Beler)

While the Cornell Ornithology Lab does not give the hawk's dimensions, it does provide this handy tip:

"While catching smaller birds is just doing what comes naturally for a Cooper’s Hawk, many of us would prefer not to share the responsibility for the deaths. If a Cooper’s Hawk takes up residence in your yard, you can take your feeders down for a few days and the hawk will move on."

But what if that residency involves an honest-to-Audubon nest? In that case, here is what I can look forward to: one brood a year, two to six eggs, 30-36 days of sitting on the eggs and then 27 to 34 days of young in the nest. The Audubon field guide says the young "may climb about in nest tree after about 4 weeks, can fly at about 4-5 weeks."

That puts the time when both parent hawks will be feverishly seeking food for the young at around mid-May, peak songbird migration time. If the young hawks successfully fledge, they should all be gone by mid-summer, which is when the hummingbird feeder I still plan to hang and the house wren box I still plan to hang should be pretty busy.

And maybe this coronavirus plague will have passed by then.

It's going to be a long season.

Watching the Neighbors: Look Who's Here

Watching the neighbors is a long-time suburban occupation that has become even more important, at least to me, as people stuck working indoors or with small kids at home take to the streets in greater numbers during this time of coronavirus to keep from going stir-crazy. 

Cooper's hawk nest, 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

I keep the shades open on sunny days and so I am frequently distracted at my work by all the passersby, wondering if they are neighbors and, if not, who they could be. There are also the service trucks pulling into neighbors' driveways, landscapers doing the annual "spring cleanup" lawn service and the occasional herd of deer I have to go outside and chase off.

It was because my office shades were open one day this week that I saw a large shape fly over the house and wondered what it could be. That evening, when I went outside to take in the bird feeders, I learned what that shape was and I was less than excited.

I've had bird nests in my yard, including a robin's nest for a good hunk of last summer. The house wren box is a nest I provide. I've even had hawks of different types in my yard, but they are usually passing through, hunting for a meal.

But to discover a Cooper's hawk, with mate, building a nest high in my next-door neighbor's maple tree with a birds-eye view of the feeders, I knew this was trouble.

Cooper's hawks are accipiters and, like their smaller relative the sharp-shinned hawk, are very nimble hunters in parks, woods and backyards. Unlike the bigger and bulkier buteos such as the redtail hawk, accipiters can maneuver through tree branches and bushes after their prey, especially after the hawks have matured to become better hunters. I have seen mature accipiters catch and kill birds and I've also seen immature accipiters miss and then sit on the lawn or atop the bird feeder looking, to me, puzzled.

Watched like a Cooper's hawk, the larger female on the right.
(Margo D. Beller)

About the only "good" thing about having Cooper's hawks rather than sharp-shinned hawks around is the former prefers medium-sized birds rather than, say, a titmouse or chickadee. Cooper's prefer mourning doves and one of my least favorite birds, the European starling. But they will also go after other medium-sized birds including common pigeons, robins, jays and flickers, according to Cornell's Ornithology Lab. Cooper's have been known to eat chipmunks, mice and squirrels. (I can do with fewer chipmunks.) 

But a cardinal would be just the size for a Cooper's and I have a pair that use my house-shaped feeder daily, the male prone to taking a seed and then jumping on top of the feeder pole to eat while showing others this feeder is his. When he did that the day after I discovered the nest I watched nervously until he left. After that I noticed no other birds came to the feeder and the squirrels high stayed in the trees.

The hawk pair seemed to be more concerned with building their nest of sticks the day I found them. They flew to a nearby oak and laboriously broke off smaller twigs to add to what had already been built up in the V formed by two branches high in the tree. Again according to Cornell, "Nests are piles of sticks roughly 27 inches in diameter and 6-17 inches high with a cup-shaped depression in the middle, 8 inches across and 4 inches deep. The cup is lined with bark flakes and, sometimes, green twigs."

Robin's nest, 2019 - I don't mind nests like this in my yard. (Margo D. Beller)

Typically it takes two weeks for a nest to be formed, so this one couldn't have been started that long before (bird traffic at the feeders had not appeared to be down, tho' since I was working I couldn't be completely sure).

Once I realized what was going on I grabbed my binoculars to confirm my guess as to what kind of hawk these were. One look at the prominent "eyebrow" confirmed they were Cooper's. Then I got my camera and used the telephoto lens in hopes of getting a decent picture of the nest. (My picture above was taken the next day.)

The next morning, around 7 a.m., both hawks were back to their nest building. I heard robins, cardinals and Carolina wrens calling as usual, except nowhere near my yard. When a Cooper's is in the area, birds like low. So do squirrels, which were not their usual boisterous selves chasing each other around the yard. I got my camera and started taking pictures again, especially when at one point in their twigmaking both hawks were on the same branch.

They looked at me intently. Then the male left and I heard it call "kekkekkek" from another tree. The female looked at me a little longer before leaving. I checked the nest throughout the day but they never returned.

Typical male cardinal behavior, photographed through
the backdoor screen. (Margo D. Beller)

That afternoon the squirrels were back looking for dropped seed under the feeders and the house finches, woodpeckers and cardinals were back eating. The danger was gone.

It was likely the hawks realized I had discovered the nest, or perhaps they didn't like me taking pictures. Unlike the redtails "Harold" and "Maud" whose nest I discovered many years ago in another town, this nest was in plain sight and close by. Seeing me taking pictures these hawks were likely as unhappy to have an intrusive neighbor as I was to have a bird-eating menace. It was easier for them, and safer for their prospective young, to abandon the nest and start over someplace else. Cooper's hawks are not an endangered species and I am confident that eventually the female will lay anywhere from two to six eggs in her one brood of the year.

Had these birds picked a tall Norway spruce or some other type of evergreen where the nest (and they) would be hidden, I'd never have seen them and perhaps not realize the danger to the feeder birds until too late. But they had picked a maple tree that had not leafed out yet, and even as I was taking pictures fish crows were cawing and circling the tree. Crows don't like having hawks in the vicinity either.

So the Cooper's hawks are gone and the danger is past for the cardinals and other feeder birds, at least from this source. My human neighbors, however, remain as noisy as ever. 

In the Fog

The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not.  
-- Anne Sexton

The fog hung thickly around me as I walked a road through woods near my home early in the morning on the first day of spring. The air was cool and moist on a day that promised to rise into the mid 70s, even though we are still in the middle of March. 

Morning fog (Margo D. Beller)

The fog grayed out everything including the still-bare trees, the shrubs and grasses starting to go green. It obscured the street lights from the nearby food pantry and the cars that were invisible until nearly upon me.

Birds seem different in the fog. Their calls and songs seem louder. I walked and heard a Carolina wren, a little bird with a big song. I stopped to look up and there it was, a small, dark shape on a high branch. It was not perturbed by the fog. Its instinct says it is time to announce its breeding territory. This bird was not alone. By the time I got home an hour later I heard at least five Carolina wrens as well as a number of other birds including fish crows, cardinals and a few robins.

There was no one at the dog park. Is it the early hour - just after dawn - or the fog that has kept people and their pets away? Or something else? I wondered. There were few cars driving this road, too. I had my solitude but had to walk quickly because I didn't have much time before I had to start work.

It was 7:15 on a Friday morning in the age of COVID-19.

Normally, the road and the dog park would be busier. Early on, the few people I saw during my walk either traveled in a different direction or, if we passed each other, rigorously stayed on the other side of the street to give us "social distance." If we made eye contact we smiled or nodded our heads. One man gave me a little wave. On the way home the runners came out, most staying in the street but a few were on the sidewalk. I gave those a wide berth.

(Margo D. Beller)

This is a dangerous and uncertain time. MH has been ill and the day before this walk I had begun feeling strange, perhaps unwell. To me this felt like a cold. The common cold is caused by a coronavirus, after all. But THIS one, COVID-19, is a different beast. Too much computer work gives me a headache. Is this what caused today's. The weather has been cold and damp. Is that why I can't feel warm? I haven't the foggiest idea.

MH, in that scientific manner of his, reasons he has a mild form of COVID-19. He has stayed home and rests in the guest room. He reasons the flu shot we had in October is helping his immune system fight this virus, and I hope that is the case for both of us. 

I am taking the attitude of an old friend, who said his way of dealing with illness is to ignore it. Unfortunately, it is hard to do when the news seems to be nothing but this virus, how nations are reacting to limit its spread and how many have died. Those of us with mild symptoms are told to stay home and avoid emergency rooms, and I am more than happy to do that. I am lucky I can work from home and continue to be paid. Many, many others can't stay home because of the nature of their jobs or because if they don't work they don't get paid. I was in that situation until a few months ago.

The morning fog lingered into afternoon as the temperature rose and children who have been blocked from school, sporting events and even gathering in town parks kept their playing to their yards or took walks or bike rides with their parents along my side street. I could see and hear them through my open office window. I don't blame them. I need to get out or go crazy, too. 

Overnight it rained, the fog lifted and the temperature fell to a more seasonable level. The birds were waiting for me this dawn to come out with the feeders, particularly the male cardinal that flies to a nearby bush as I hang them and then rushes to eat at the house-shaped feeder when I am back on the porch.

Empty dog park, streetlight through the trees (Margo D. Beller)

This Saturday morning I waited for the sun to break through the clouds as I  watched him and the other birds. At one point I heard a hairy woodpecker, an uncommon and skittish visitor. One appeared at the suet to eat but I kept hearing the call coming from another direction. Then she flew off and the male appeared. A pair! I'm supporting a breeding pair of hairy woodpeckers! I am protective of hairys. I rarely see them except at the suet feeder. This is why I put out suet, I thought.

This is why I feed birds.

Life goes on, these hairy woodpeckers were telling me. You might have your virus scaring the hell out of you but we have other things to concern us. We must mate, build a nest that is hidden and inaccessible - perhaps in one of these big trees in your yard - and create a family to carry on our species. Your feeder helps us, yes, but if wasn't here we'd do what we always do and find food to survive.

We all have to survive, I agreed as I watched these birds with tears in my eyes. I hope we all do.

Birding in the Time of Coronavirus

Sitting on my porch, I am glad to hear the robins, cardinals, Carolina wrens and other birds calling at dawn, even if dawn is now an hour later thanks to Daylight Savings Time. The forsythia, daffodils and hyacinth are in bloom, the shrubs are budding and the crocus and snowdrops are fading.

It is a wonderful time of year. But it is also the time of coronavirus.

The wide-open space of Great Swamp (Margo D. Beller)

This virus is not new, but the strain, found in 2019, is - highly contagious, easily spread, first found in the Chinese market city of Wuhan when it passed from animals to people.

So, unfortunately, we have a new word in our vocabulary - COVID-19. 

This plague has been virulent in coastal cities, including New York, because they are hubs for travelers and commuters who have brought the virus in from elsewhere or bring it home. There is no vaccine for it and most who will contract it will have mild, almost flu-like cases. Those who are particularly vulnerable to being deathly ill are older people with pre-existing conditions.

While people in the cities have been freaking out, the suburbs with their office parks have not, at least to me. But with many schools closed and markets selling out of bread, toilet paper and cleaning supplies including hand sanitizer, that may change. MH went to the market for cans of soup, as he did before Hurricane Sandy. But this time he was too late - shelves were depleted (except for two cans of soup he found) and lines at the register were long. He said everyone was calm.

Last Monday, having two risk factors and having to travel to work on public trains where an increasing number of people have been wearing masks (or an equivalent) and gloves, I was getting very worried about my health. I stayed home Tuesday. That day we learned someone in our building tested positive for the virus. My office was ordered to work from home for the foreseeable future.

Start of a boardwalk trail at Great Swamp (Margo D. Beller)

So I've been at home, relieved of my backpack burden. But after the first few days of taking dawn walks or sitting on the porch after putting the feeders out in daylight rather than darkness I started feeling cabin fever and knew that I would have to get out at least one weekend day.

While MH refused to budge, I left Saturday morning for the wide open spaces of Great Swamp in hopes of finding one of the earliest returning migrants, the phoebe. I was not disappointed. I was also cheered by finding bluebirds and a tree swallow. Overall, as far as birding went, it was quiet. But to my surprise I found a lot of people who also felt the need to get out, either to go birding (with binoculars or large-lensed cameras), walk their dogs (on leash in a natural wildlife preserve) or travel with their children.

Normally I don't like being around other people while I seek out birds, but this time I was glad to see others had decided, like me, to put aside their concerns, stay away from their phones and televisions, and just get out for some fresh, cool air and sunshine.

The Passaic River as I listened to frogs from a bench (Margo D. Beller)

My first stop was on a boardwalk trail, which always draws people. A few of them pointed out the phoebe I'd been hearing, giving me a chance to see this welcome visitor. At my next stop, however, I was completely alone except for the chorus of spring peepers, tree frogs, the occasional pickerel and the small turtles known as sliders. I sat on a bench looking at the Passaic River and listened to the sounds of spring.

My last stop was the Great Swamp tour road, which also had many people walking or driving through. On my way home I drove through Jockey Hollow and was amazed by the large number of people, alone and in small groups, hiking the tour road or the trails. These were not birders - no cameras or binoculars - but people who felt the great need to GET OUT on a very nice day. Like Great Swamp, Jockey Hollow is a federally run facility and I was glad both were open. (Other parks, such as Duke Farms, had shut their gates and closed for at least two weeks because of the virus.)

I got home to MH tired, hungry but glad I had been out for a few hours. I would advise others to be careful, wash your hands but go outside and get away from the bad news every so often to save your sanity.

The Washington Sea-Eagle, and other Audubon Mysteries

A friend recently gave me an interesting gift. She does volunteer work for a nearby university that periodically sells old books to raise funds. These books (and videos) are donated. One such donation was a jacketless, hard-backed volume with "DAMAGED COPY" scrawled across the cover.

It was destined for the garbage when my friend looked at the title and saved it, thinking I might find it interesting.

I do indeed. This volume, not damaged at all, as far as I can see, is a facsimile of the first two volumes of John James Audubon's "The Birds of America."

Washington's sea-eagle (photographed by Margo D. Beller from Volume 1 of "The Complete
Audubon" published by the National Audubon Society.)

Audubon's original "Birds of America" was an "elephantine" folio - 435 life-sized (and thus extremely large) hand-printed portraits. Quite an effort that took years to finish. The pictures were sold by subscription but they were expensive to produce and so were costly to buy. Audubon, who'd failed as a businessman before turning to painting, knew a smaller edition would be a less-costly alternative. Seven volumes, containing 500 plates, were published in 1844. Audubon supervised the first edition. He died in January 1851.

For the 75th anniversary of the National Audubon Society (founded in 1905), Volair Ltd., the publisher, cut the number of volumes reproduced in 1978-79 down to five. According to the Preface, to "make this edition more compact and thus more manageable, each of the five volumes contains two of Audubon's volumes within a single binding. Not a single color plate has been omitted, not a word of text has been deleted from these timeless American classics."

So I have volumes 1 and 2. Within are some of my favorite birds and a few mysteries.

Many of the birds' names are not much changed now than they were in Audubon's time. The "Wilson's Flycatching-Warbler" is what is now the Wilson's Warbler. The Black-throated Green Wood-Warbler has lost "wood" from its name. The Mourning Ground-Warbler has lost ground and the Nashville Swamp-Warbler has lost the swamp.

Some of the birds go by different names now. The Short-Billed Marsh Wren is now the Sedge Wren. The White-bellied Swallow is now the Tree Swallow. Why the Cliff Swallow was also known as the Republican Swallow I can't imagine. The Traill's Flycatcher has been split into the Alder and Willow flycatchers. The American Redstart is listed with the flycatchers because of its similar habit of darting out to catch a flying insect and then going back to its perch. Now it is considered a warbler.

The buteos, now called "hawks," were called buzzards then so Volume 1 contains Red-tailed buzzards and Rough-legged buzzards, for instance.

Audubon's lifelike rendering of the Common Buzzard
(photographed by Margo D. Beller from the anniversary edition)

But then I find the "Common Buzzard." Audubon says the figure in the drawing above was shot (by someone else) by the Columbia River. I mentioned this to MH and he, in his methodical way, found the National Audubon Society, which has reproduced all the plates on its website, believes this to be a Swainson's Hawk because the entry includes a link to that page in the field guide. (William John Swainson was a British ornithologist who lived from 1789-1855 but he was not the one who named the hawk. To find out who did, click here.)

For me the biggest mystery, literally and figurative, is Haliaetus Washingtoni, the Washington Sea-Eagle.

According to Audubon, who said he first saw one of these in 1814, the adult male he painted is 3 feet 7 inches (42 inches) long with a 10-foot wingspan. That's a major-league bird! (By contrast, the wingspan of a bald eagle is between six and 7.5 feet and it sits 30 to 32 inches tall.) Few had seen this bird or even knew of its existence at the time he finally shot one to paint two years later. He decided he had discovered a new species and so named it for George Washington because, in his words, "as the new world gave me birth and liberty, the great man who ensured its independence is next to my heart...If America has reason to be proud of her Washington, so has she to be proud of her great Eagle."

The eagle looks Washingtonian (George was 6 feet 2 inches, much taller than the average man of his day), sitting tall and noble. The mystery, however, is if it ever existed.

According to the popular website Mental Floss, it didn't take long before "other naturalists began to question whether the bird was really a distinct species. [Audubon] was accused of taking sloppy measurements of his specimen and overstating the physical differences between his bird and other species. Washington’s eagle, as a species, was quickly discredited among scientists, the consensus being that the bird was either a misidentified bald eagle or a hoax and publicity stunt. Just a few years after Audubon’s death in 1851, the journal American Naturalist called it a valid species only among 'amateur ornithologists.'”

A black-throated green warbler by any other name is just
as nice.  (Margo D. Beller)

Could Audubon have misidentified, perhaps, a very large first-year eagle (immature eagles show no white)? British zoologist Dr. Karl Shuker, writing on his blog, points out Audubon had seen more than enough bald eagles and golden eagles in his travels to know something unusual when he saw it, especially a much bigger bird. Shuker goes into a lot of detail about the controversy over this bird and how others, including some in more modern times, claim to have seen one.

"Needless to say, of course, this is all highly speculative (especially with no apparent palaeontological support for such a bird)," he writes. "And yet...every so often, a report comes along that makes me wonder, what if?"

So on this day when we once celebrated George Washington's birthday, let us raise a toast to this majestic eagle, hope it wasn't overhunted into extinction and be thankful Audubon memorialized it.

A Plague (of Grackles) on My Lawn

The invasion of my neighborhood began at approximately 3:45 on the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 7.

The day started with a heavy rain, which was predicted to end with snow showers, strong winds and plunging temperature. The change in air pressure was already giving me a massive sinus headache, which was why I was working from home.

As the wind picked up and the snow showers blew in I went out to dump a week's worth of compostable material into the pile before it froze. That's been one of the advantages of a winter short on snow but with lots of rain and, for the most part, temperatures above average - I could dump my compost into the big pile in the corner of my yard rather than start stockpiling pails on the enclosed porch until the snow melted and the pile defrosted.

Grackle invasion, Feb. 7, 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Coming back to the porch, I saw about a dozen robins and maybe half that many grackles on my lawn. Then I saw more grackles on a lawn on the next street. Then they were everywhere, flying from tree to tree over my head, and making a ton of noise.

I expected this and wasn't happy. I don't like grackles. They will attack the feeder, and each other, as they work to get at and devour all the food, keeping the birds that usually visit the feeder away in the process. If you see one grackle, you can be sure you'll soon have more. Grackles stay in very large flocks in winter, as do many other types of birds including the starlings, cowbirds, blackbirds (both red-winged and rusty in this part of the country) and even robins I've seen following grackle flocks. There is safety in numbers, a better chance of finding food with more pairs of eyes and, when hundreds of birds huddle together in a large space like a pasture or field, warmth.

When I've had invasions in my yard they have generally been just before or just after the snowfall of a more typical winter. In autumn the birds kick aside the fallen leaves to see what's underneath. In late February or March, any snow is generally melting, the ground is softening and the rising groundwater forces worms and insects to the surface.

When I speak of "grackles" I am referring to the common, or purple, grackle, so named because when the light shines on its iridescent black feathers they look purple. There are other types of grackles, depending on whether you are near the ocean (boat-tailed grackle) or in the southwestern part of the U.S. (great-tailed).

Friday's invasion came during an unusually (for this area) less-cold period. We have not been (as yet) set upon by the polar vortex and, as I said, we have not had much snow, certainly not the heavy snow topped by ice that had squirrels so desperate for food one year they could jump over the baffles, grab the feeders and try to pry open the protective caging.

Does increasing daylight trigger these invasions? Was the less-cold weather a factor? Is global warming to blame? I don't know.

Another view that can't begin to show the large number of birds.
Margo D. Beller)

Recently, there have been reports of thousands of grackles converging on areas across the country. In New Jersey, birders from Mattawan to Madison have reported thousands on their feeders and lawns. MH told me of a very large number he saw while running errands, less than a mile away from home, in one of our town's parks a day or so before the Friday invasion. Maybe that same group decided to check out my part of town.

Because I was standing in my backyard, those flying in went to the front yard and the yards across the street and beyond to hunt for food, as you can see in my photographs. The pictures can't begin to show the full extent and, of course, you can't hear hundreds of grackles making their usual noises - a kind of rusty-hinge cackle and a sharp "chuck!" - or the thunder of hundreds of birds taking off at once.

Like the starlings you will see in winter swirling around in the sky and looking like a single organism, grackles somehow can communicate to each other it's time to move, and fast. So when I stepped out the front door to take my pictures, several hundred took off from my property to the next yard, which is where I photographed them. The sight was fascinating as well as horrifying. Had I not seen the massing while my feeders were out there would've been dozens of big birds trying to get at the seed and the suet even though, with the exception of the house feeder, the feeders I use are not configured to allow big birds that don't like hanging upside down from feeding. But that doesn't stop them from trying.

As I watched from my front door all I saw were grackles, although other smaller black birds could've been among them. If you're a smaller bird of similar habit, following a large flock of grackles feeds and protects you, too. I do know that around the side of my house was the original group of robins, doing the same picking at the ground as the larger birds while staying well away from them. Did the robins follow the grackles or the other way around?

One last thing about grackles and their cohorts that is an unfortunate truth but a truth nonetheless - if 50 robins showed up on my lawn I'd find that charming, a sign that spring would soon be upon us. If I see 50 black birds, it looks evil. There is a reason Alfred Hitchcock used a "murder" of big, black American crows to attack children in a playground in his film "The Birds." To paraphrase one birder recently on the (private) NJ birder Facebook page, I tried to turn the grackles into cardinals to enjoy the spectacle but it just didn't work. Black is associated with evil and seeing hundreds of grackles covering the lawns and creating a major din was evil.

Groups of robins don't look nearly as evil. This picture was taken on
Long Island in November 2017.
(Margo D. Beller)

This was, without doubt, the biggest invasion with the largest number of black birds on my suburban lawn since our first year as homeowners, when I went to the backyard to investigate a creaking noise and found hundreds of grackles, starlings, cowbirds and perhaps some blackbirds, which took to the trees at my approach and stayed there, making a racket, until they started flying off in small groups for other areas that could accommodate such a large flock. If I'm not around, MH is under standing orders to watch for grackles and bring in all feeders if he sees an invasion underway.

Soon, all these birds - like the other, more colorful types I go out of my way to find in the woods during migration- will pair, mate, nest and create more. Then the large flocks will regroup.

The morning after the invasion, sitting on my porch in the cold sunshine, a group of about 30 grackles flew over my yard. They didn't stop, to my relief, as I watched the cardinals, woodpeckers and titmice at the feeders.

By the way, a flock of grackles is called a "plague." That's as good a way as any to define what I saw Friday.

Limits to Technology

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."

— Albert Einstein

I don't go out of my way to be continually plugged in. My old car has a radio I can tune and a player for one CD at a time. There is no dock for continuous music from an iPod, nor do we use satellite radio. I keep using my 10-year-old phone, a BlackBerry, because it has a real keyboard for sending short messages rather than a touch screen. It has a decent camera and I can read emails. I can't "interface" with some sites anymore because BlackBerry has become a dinosaur, sort of like me, but those are sites I don't miss. 

BlackBerry, photographed using my tablet (Margo D. Beller)

Unlike the people I see on my various trains to work now, or on the busy streets of New York City, I can't monitor social media on my phone - no Facebook, no Twitter, no cat videos, nothing. I can listen to music I've loaded on it but most of the time I use the phone for what I consider its primary use - as a way to make a call (although now I also use it to text).

That said, I am no Luddite. I've had to learn how to use technology in order to stay gainfully employed. I recently bought a small tablet I can use when I travel or if I don't care to go upstairs to my laptop, itself an improvement from the "old days" of two decades ago when I had a full computer rig with drive, monitor and keyboard. My laptop is lighter and has more power than the old rig, but even here I prefer using an outside keyboard and a mouse, both of which have wires I plug into ports. (Yes, I've learned what a port is.)

Technology has also invaded the birding world beyond taking a decent pair of binoculars out into the field. 

Bird-centric technology is everywhere, starting with the apps. There are apps you can put on your souped-up phone to send your bird sightings directly to e-bird, the service run by Cornell University's Ornithology Lab and the National Audubon Society that lets you record your lists, check what's happening at "hotspots" around the world or in your backyard, and read bird-related news. You can load field guides into your phones rather than lug around your copy of the 1947 Peterson guide. You can download thousands of bird songs to check what you are hearing at that moment rather than trying to figure it out later. You can use the Global Positioning Satellite, or GPS, on your smart phone to go into the woods and presumably not get lost because you'll be able to check where you are and the type of terrain you might be stepping onto. 

Tablet, photographed using my BlackBerry (Margo D. Beller)

Even binoculars have changed. You can buy them with night vision to find that great horned owl hooting at you at midnight. There are digital binoculars that act like digital cameras so, in the words of one site, "you will not just be able to view objects but also you will be able to record them." 

I admit, some of this stuff could be helpful, especially as I get older. So why don't I use it? The cost is one reason. And the more bells and whistles, the more things that can go wrong and/or break, just like with some of the high-tech cars.

Another reason: I like to use my brain. 

It seems too much like work to go charging into the woods headlong after some reported rarity and depend on an app you might not be able to access if you don't have a signal. Too many people go into places where they are not supposed to go because they think they can get out as long as they have the app. It is like the drivers who pay no attention to road conditions, expecting the car to think for them. 

If I need to know where I am, I study a map - a paper one. Or I travel with MH, aka Mr. Map, who will either know from studying a paper map where we're going or will check his phone, which is a bit smarter than mine. I prefer to "listen" to my sore knees, my lack of breath, my fatigue and know when to turn around and go back before it's too late.

My Nikon 10x50, non-tech binoculars (Margo D. Beller)

If I am looking for a bird I'm hearing, I use my non-tech binoculars. They can't help me see at night, they can't automatically send my data anywhere, but they help me see what I am looking for, at least most of the time (especially since upgrading to 10x50s).

Again, I've learned to live with technology. But I've also learned technology has its limits. So do I.