Goings-on in My Garden

It was pouring in my part of New Jersey on this Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend. My office allowed us Friday off for a long weekend, and I used the sunny, warm day to go to a few garden centers to look at things I am considering for my property.

Hepatica (white flower) and vinca (purple flower) in front netted garden plot
(Margo D. Beller)

Turns out hundreds of other people had the same idea.

In this time of coronavirus, scared people have been stuck at home for over two months. But now that it is finally feeling less like winter, there is a pent-up urge to get out. But to where? Many are ready to hit the beaches (at approved social distances) or the mountains but the rest of us are still staying close to home. So I should not have been surprised the three places I visited were filled with a lot of people buying vegetables, flowers, mulch and other garden supplies. I would say the ratio of buyers to store employees (everyone masked) was 3:1, all trying to make up for lost time. In the end, I bought nothing,

Even so, I have been doing work in the garden because it allows me to be outside, away from people and work, and do something that creates loveliness.

Azaleas (and growing daisy plants) protected from deer
(Margo D. Beller)

I have been lucky. I have perennials that come back year after year, although sometimes there is winter damage. For instance, the peony buds froze during the unexpected cold snap early in May. But the rest of the flowers and shrubs have done very well with the cooler temperatures and abundant rain. The red azaleas are the best I've seen in years, columbine that have sprouted from seeds thrown in various beds over the year are flowering and the daffodils were glorious while they lasted. I even had a flower bloom I haven't seen in years - hepatica, a woodland flower that got into one bed and I've left alone, waiting for it to flower. I've only seen it bloom one other time before now.

After my first attempt at growing peppers from seed for this year failed, I threw more into a small pot. When warm sunshine started hitting the window sill more frequently, nine seedlings appeared, crowded together. They are now spread (socially distanced?) between two bigger pots on the sunny window sill. They will be staying there until they get big enough to put into bigger pots that will be protected in a chicken-wire cage from chipmunks, which have already dug up rosemary I had in a pot and almost ruined the dahlias I planted.

Pepper seedlings, 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Unfortunately, when you look at pictures of my flowers you see the deer netting. I've learned to make it disappear in my mind's eye but I can't do that in reality because of the deer, many of which have been passing through the yard in recent days now that there are bushes and other plants to eat.

Chipmunks, however, can easily get behind the netting and in some ways are more deadly to the plants with their digging, looking for nuts they buried last autumn. I surround vulnerable smaller plantings and those like the dahlia not big enough yet to fill their pots with old metal gutter fencing to keep the diggers out. It works, for the most part.

Houseplants on the porch with seed containers (Margo D. Beller)

Only recently has it been warm enough for me to move most of the houseplants to my north-facing enclosed porch. The humidity will do them more good than being inside a house where the air conditioner will be on soon enough.

As for the birds, the other day I heard a male blackpoll warbler singing in one of the backyard trees. This bird, whose spring mating colors makes it look similar to a black-capped chickadee, has a distinctive song that sounds like a braking truck and has one of the longest migration routes of the birds passing through here. It is usually one of the last migrating warblers, so hearing it prompts mixed feelings - it's a warbler but it's also the end.

Empty wren box (Margo D. Beller)

I know there are plenty of other birds still heading north, but my yard has gone quiet as the birds staying here have begun their nests and don't want to draw attention to them. No house wren claimed the nest box this year, although once in a while I've heard a wren singing nearby. My two seed feeders seem to be drawing a lot more jays, house finches and grackles, so when they are empty that will be it for feeders until autumn, save for the hummingbird feeder that usually draws one or two in June into July.

By then it will truly be summer and the flowering plants of this spring will have faded except in my memories.

Catching the Waves

Memorial Day, what many like to think of as the unofficial start of summer, will soon be here. In this age of the coronavirus it is taking on even more meaning as state officials, eager to keep their stir-crazy and/or unemployed constituents from rising up in rebellion more than they already have, are slowly reopening beaches to give the people some release and perhaps a reason to pretend everything is normal again. If only.

In my state of NJ alone, the governor has said beaches will be reopened by Memorial Day, subject to social distancing restrictions. Based on the reports I've seen, these aren't being followed much and I wish the police luck in helping the "knuckleheads" keep from infecting themselves and others.

Mexico Beach, Florida, April 2010 (RE Berg-Andersson)

I am not one to just sit on the beach. I'd rather be looking for birds there. That's why this year, at this time of year, it is particularly painful to me to be kept to my home because of the contagion that could kill me. I do not walk the streets of my town because it depresses me to have people jump out of my way, sometimes into the street with traffic, to give me distance, even though I wear a mask. MH runs the errands, masked and with the car, while I work from home.

When I have gone out this month, it has been at dawn's early light to catch a different type of wave - bird migration.

The first wave, in late April, are the earliest migrants including phoebes, ruby-crowned kinglets, pine warblers, Louisiana waterthrush and redwinged blackbirds. Ospreys are reported. Waves of sea birds including northern gannets head north along the coast.

Then come the first two weeks of May when things get interesting. The bulk of the other types of warblers pass through plus tanagers, the rose-breasted grosbeak and some of the shorebirds. This would normally be the time when MH and I would travel to some of our favorite birding locations - Old Mine Road in New Jersey, Sapsucker Woods on the campus of the Cornell Ornithology Lab in upstate New York, my brother-in-law's woodlot in rural New Hampshire. Migration will continue for another couple of weeks but by June the birds should be sitting on eggs and won't be as easy to find.

Cattus Island ospreys, Toms River, NJ, April 2019 (RE Berg-Andersson)

Things are different this year, of course. There are no facilities open for eating in or going to the bathroom, something MH and I need to do when making our long trips. So even though I have taken a week off in June, we really have nowhere to go short of day trips to areas no more than 20 miles from us.

Luckily, there are quite a few of these.

This year has been wacky not just for the pandemic but because of the weather. Two days ago it hit 84 degrees F. On May 13 and 14, at the time I left the house for different parts of Patriots Path, the temperature was in the mid-30s, The first morning I chilled myself as I ignored my discomfort to concentrate on the many, many birds I was hearing. The next morning I had more layers on, including two on my hands because holding a wooden stick in the cold can be uncomfortable after a while.

The reward was worth the discomfort. The birds I found (mostly by ear) included, of the warblers, northern parula, chestnut-sided, yellow, common yellowthroat, myrtle, black-throated blue, black-throated green, ovenbird, northern waterthrush, Blackburnian, worm-eating and hooded. Besides the robins, cardinals and catbirds I can also find in my backyard were Swainson's thrush, wood thrush and hermit thrush, which are in the wave following the warblers. So are the sparrows - swamp, vesper, savannah, chipping, Lincoln's and their relative the towhee. (The white-throated sparrows and juncos that spent the winter in my yard have moved on.) The rose-breasted grosbeak sang sweetly. Goldfinches and indigo buntings flew over the road. The Carolina wrens were joined in song by house wrens. A green heron flew along the Whippany River and was soon followed by a great blue heron. The list goes on.

Birding Old Mine Road, May 2017 (RE Berg-Andersson)

For a birder it is important to be out as the sun is rising for two reasons: First, the birds that have arrived after a night of flying are actively foraging, so there is movement, particularly important when you are looking at trees that have begun to leaf out. The birds are also singing territorial songs as the sun rises, warning others to keep out of their area. If the bird breeds in NJ, it is looking for a mate and a nest site, not necessarily in that order. Once the sun rises high enough, I've found the bird song stops. I don't know why.

The second reason to be out early if you're a birder is to keep the human traffic at a minimum. On the paved path I walked on May 13, the number of people increased as the sun rose and temperature warmed somewhat. On the unpaved path I traveled on May 14, there were only two joggers and four men on mountain bikes who might've been the park police making their rounds.

Because I can't get out as much as I did last year (when I did not have a regular job), it has taken me longer to find the warblers I used to hear in my travels. The weather had not helped. Until the strong northwest winds finally died down on the night of May 12, there had been little bird movement to my part of the country - it is harder to fly with a headwind - but, according to the radar I consult, there was a lot of traffic into the midwestern U.S.

That situation changed the night of May 14 when the winds shifted to blowing out of the southwest, bringing rain, warmer temperatures and plenty of birds to the northeast.

There are even waves within waves. The males precede the females so they can rush to the breeding territories and find just the right nesting spot. So when I was out I had a close look at a female scarlet tanager, for instance, and a female black-throated blue warbler, which are duller in color than the males so they can blend in. It took knowing their characteristics - the thicker tanager bill, the small white patch on the warbler's wing - so I could identify them.

Black-throated green warbler, Sapsucker Woods, May 2019
(RE Berg-Andersson)

That's part of the challenge and the fun and why early May is my favorite time of year as a birder. That I can't go to the places I KNOW have the birds I have yet to find is frustrating and more than a little depressing.

However, despite the exhaustion of rising early and then putting in a full day of work, thanks to the two midweek trips I took and another MH and I took Saturday I think I have caught up with the birds I can see in my area, for the most part. It's not the higher breeding terrain of Old Mine Road or Cornell or New Hampshire where there are other birds I can't find around here, but it will have to do.

It is unfortunate the enforced isolation has made me more wary of people than ever, and now the noise adults and their children and dogs make bothers me even more. I understand their need to be outside in good weather, particularly when it is warm. I feel it, too. I just don't want our times outside to coincide.

They can have the beach. For now I'm sticking closer to home.

Watching the Neighbors: Mother's Day

This has been a topsy-turvy, Bizarro World type of week. On May 9 there was snow falling in upstate New York and much of northern New England. In my part of New Jersey the temperature fell to around the freezing level, making some of my sun-loving perennials less than happy.

Meanwhile, the strong wind made the high of 45 degrees feel like 30 degrees.

Map of conditions around 11 p.m. ET by Cornell University Ornithology Lab,
 screenshot by Margo D. Beller

That's why the migration forecast radar map put out by Cornell, seen above, shows a big, blank area over my part of the country while all the migrants are hitting the midwest, as the yellow and pink shows.

Did I mention it's May?

This week would be when, in years past, MH and I would've taken some time off to travel and look for northbound migrant birds. The coronavirus put an end to any planning. Like everyone else, I've had to make do and stick closer to home. That includes birding. But with work taking a lot of time my birding is mainly on the weekend.

MH and I have found some interesting birds - worm-eating warbler, a Blackburnian warbler, an American bittern posing for the camera I didn't have on me - but so far we have not seen some birds I've seen more regularly such as the northern parula and the indigo bunting. There has been a house wren in my yard but it is not using the nest box I hung in the apple tree. For a time some other small bird that could fit inside, perhaps a chipping sparrow, was using it but now it seems to be empty.

The weather had not helped either. When we had a rare warm and sunny day the crowds (most of them nonbirders and minus face masks) hit the state parks just as the birds did. (We stuck to a smaller, local park.) But most of the time it has been rainy, cold, windy. In those conditions you can't plant many types of vegetables and during a recent dawn walk through my town's community garden before work I saw most of the plots filled with weeds or cold weather crops such as lettuce.

That's where the law of unintended consequences comes in.

With less human traffic in the community garden (and, until recently, at the nearby Central Park of Morris County) creatures have become emboldened, and they sometimes wander out of that area and into my neighborhood.

"Fox pup" by gm_pentaxfan is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Deer are a given, and usually in May I watch anxiously for pregnant does that might want to drop a fawn or two (or three) in my yard, as has happened in years past.

This time it's a different type of mammal.

For the last two mornings, around 6:30 a.m., I have gone outside with the feeders. A small fox, likely a female (vixen), has popped up from behind the flood wall in the corner of my property and then trotted quickly away. We've had fox pass through before, which might be the reason we haven't seen a rabbit in the yard in many years.

This morning, however, was quite unusual.

I was in my porch chair, relaxing in the sun with my coffee, when I heard a house wren sing, loud. I slowly got up, turned and saw the bird on the patio. Then it flew to the top of my garage. The next time it sang it was somewhere in the front yard. Since I had my binoculars with me - I had hoped for migrants in the seeding oaks - I walked to the end of the back path and scanned the trees across the way from the top of the driveway.

There was the vixen, across the street, quickly trotting in a neighbor's yard not far from the community garden. She stopped to give me a long look and I quickly saw why.

A couple of playful pups in a nearby backyard. Then another. Then another. Four baby foxes.

Mom took off, spooking some nearby squirrels. The pups continued playing until a neighbor's dog barked. They stopped playing and huddled together. You must know they were in the yard of the neighbor who had put the hole in the sky and would not think twice about calling Animal Control. But never underestimate the power of a mother. To my relief, when I turned to go back to the house Mom must've called her pups to her because when I turned back for a last look they were gone.

At the time I took this picture, the sticks poking out from the bottom
showed an occupant. But lately the nest looks abandoned.
(Margo D. Beller)

And to think, I was worried about deer dropping fawns.

It is obvious to me now the vixen behind the flood wall was hunting to feed her babies, just as the nesting birds are doing once the eggs hatch, presuming the recent cold didn't kill them. It is also obvious to me the den is somewhere in the woods that are on the other side of the community garden from the side that abuts the neighbors across the street.

Why should I care about foxes? Besides the fact they are really cool animals there's the down side. According to the field guide to mammals co-authored by Kenn Kaufman, foxes eat rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, lizards and birds.

Birds. Oh boy.

Did I mention I saw Mom and babies on Mother's Day?

I thought I'd dodged a bullet when the Cooper's hawks abandoned their nearby nest. I guess not. If it ever stays consistently warm and more people are in the community garden growing their tomatoes, peppers and zucchinis, the foxes will stay hidden. They are smart enough to know to stay away from people.

At some point my plants will go out on the porch or in the yard and the feeders will come into the house for the summer. The birds will go farther afield for food since they'll have no reason to drop by at, say, 6:30 a.m. when there's a fox in the yard.

Perhaps I'll even be able to go farther afield, too.

A Hole in the Sky

I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree.
-- Joyce Kilmer

What would Jersey boy Joyce Kilmer think of the suburbs now? I don't think he'd be too happy.

My new frontyard view: Suburban lawn just so, hedges clipped,
inconvenient tree removed, big hole in the sky.
(Margo D. Beller)

When he wrote his poet in 1914, his home state was not nearly as built up as it is now. There were no ribbons of multi-lane superhighways crisscrossing the land. There were no "office parks" on what was once farmland. There were no sprawling housing or retail developments with names like "The Preserve," "The Collection," "Town Centre" or "The Shoppes at ..." 

And I'm willing to bet there were many more trees. (Warning: Another jeremiad ahead.)

I have been living in the northern NJ suburbs for over 25 years after decades in parts of New York City. I wanted more space, quiet and privacy. Now I have my quarter acre, different trees and shrubs (some I planted, most already here) and birds coming to feeders. Much of the time it is quiet, so quiet I can hear cars or conversations from some distance away.

But there are things about the suburbs that still disturb me after all this time.

Large areas of woods have been removed for shopping malls along one major road near my home, creating more traffic (as well as more stop lights to handle it). It is still hard to look at one of the supermarkets I visit without remembering the woods torn down to build it.

When it comes to residential development, the unspoken mantra here is, I do what I want in my yard. As long as it doesn't affect you, it's none of your business. I don't know what my neighbors (with one exception) think of the bird feeders or my deer fencing or my compost pile but since it's in my yard and not affecting their property it's not their problem.

When the longtime neighbor across the street, the one-man homeowners association who has taken loud and long exception to the deer fencing in my front yard, decided to cut one of the very tall trees in his backyard, it was hard for me to watch.

My new backyard view, with remains of viburnum in center.
(Margo D. Beller)

The crew, using horrible-sounding saws and a grinder, took a day to destroy this tree I've seen from my front door for 25 years. They also cut some of the lower branches of the remaining three, which was a relief considering I thought he would be removing all four. But what was left behind looks unnatural, ugly. There is a big hole where the tree used to be. All this guy cared about, I'm guessing, is the damage this tree was causing to the fence he had put in when the trees were, no doubt, much smaller. (This is based on what MH saw in that backyard when he was returning from an errand.)

This neighbor is not alone. Many put trees and shrubs too close to a fence or a house foundation and have to take them out before there's too much structural damage.

In addition, with the improving economy - until the coronavirus closing of businesses threw millions of people out of work and whacked it down to Great Depression levels - many of the houses on my street have new owners. It seems one of the first things these people do to make the house their own is rip up what look to me like perfectly good plants. One new homeowner obliterated a big, lovely, perennial flower garden created by the previous owner when Hurricane Sandy in 2012 toppled a spruce in the front yard. It's been replaced by a lawn. Another took down two huge pines in that front yard, which would've thrown welcome shade on the house in summer, after judging them to be too close. They were replaced with tiny plants on either side of a new front path.

I like trees, even those that drop leaves or pods I am forced to rake every year. They breathe in the carbon dioxide we exhale and breathe out the oxygen we need. They provide shade. They provide a place for birds to rest, forage, build a nest. Without trees, flooding rains would wash away soil. Lawns would burn to a crisp. My mid-Atlantic state would look like someplace out of the wide-open West. 

But hack back they do, every year, whether the plants are healthy and flowering or not.

One fewer tree for birds like the white-breasted nuthatch to use for rest and
finding food. (Margo D. Beller)

Then there are the yard nuts, the people who cut their lawns every week whether it's needed or not or who, in the case of my backyard neighbor (a woman I've had problems with for years), decided to cut back or down every shrub, planted by her parents, on the edge of her lawn so she could have an easier time mowing. In 25 years out here I've never understood why people feel they must cut back trees or flowering shrubs like forsythia in spring instead of waiting until the flowers are gone or until fall when the plants would go dormant anyway. I guess human convenience trumps all.

One such shrub this woman cut way back was a huge viburnum I'd always thought was on my property until MH, hearing my screams (ignored by the neighbor) went out to check the property line and confirmed that, unfortunately, what was left behind was on her side of the line. No more place for birds, no more privacy.

The birds have since adapted and use other shrubs. But I have not adapted so well because there is a gaping hole.

However, I can do something about this particular situation - plant my own tall trees or shrubs to fill the hole on my side of the property line and block this neighbor out (and vice versa).

I don't think Robert Frost had the NJ suburbs in mind when he wrote that "good fences make good neighbors," but in this case it fits.

Free as a Bird

I am the first to admit that compared with what is going on in the rest of the world during this coronavirus plague time, I've gotten off easy. I have not lost my job, I continue to earn my pay, my health is good and MH recovered from what was fortunately a mild bout of the illness. Still, we're afraid. The virus is out there and it is very contagious.

And there is the mental effect. I hate to sound like a whiner but I have been generally depressed by the hoops we must now jump through for something as basic as going to the market, and have been afflicted by a restless feeling of isolation.

Tempe Wick Reserve, Mendham, NJ (Margo D. Beller)

Having state and county parks closed has deprived me of places nearby to visit on my lunch break or on the weekend. It has forced restless neighbors and strangers to take to my quiet street if they need to get out,  creating more traffic on sidewalks and noise as I try to work. I stopped walking on my town's roads weeks ago because it is depressing to have people - almost all of whom are not wearing face masks, unlike me - run into the street with their pets or children, or cross it entirely so we don't come too close.

Social distancing has made us all anti-social, or maybe just scared.

So I've been staying home, restlessly working or sitting on my enclosed porch, doing chores in the yard and watching the birds at the feeder. Until this past Saturday.

It is mid-April and I'm seeing reports the birds are starting to make their way north. Early migrants - pine and palm warblers, chipping sparrows, phoebes, redwinged blackbirds - are already here. There will be birds passing through that, for whatever reason, won't be interested in what my yard has to offer. So I must go find them.

Necessity is the mother of invention. While most of my usual birding spots are closed to me, I decided to go to some still open and relatively close to my town, including a new (to me) place I learned about from birder reports.

So off I flew off on a rainy, chilly, gray day when I figured most people would stay indoors and allow me to bird in peace. I was right.

First stop, a local park in a different part of Morris County (not every town closed local parks; mine did). This turned out to be a wide-open space with a flat, grassy path that was, unfortunately, sopping wet and muddy from that morning's rain. The many flickers, cardinals, savannah sparrows (another early migrant) and the great blue heron that flew over did not mind the wet and neither did I.

(Margo D. Beller)

Second stop, a pond on the border between Morris and Somerset counties, where I could park on a side street not far from the entrance to the federally run Great Swamp. There is a lot of fast-moving traffic on the road I must cross from where I parked to the pond but it is a very good area to see birds in all seasons, including ducks and other waterfowl. This time there were five different types of swallows zipping around - large purple martins, forked-tailed barn swallows, white-breasted tree swallows and at least one each of the brown northern roughwing swallow and the smaller, gray bank swallow. Across the road I found palm and yellow-rumped warblers in and around the shrubs. A birder taking pictures of the swallows was eager to talk so we traded information and told stories from a socially approved distance. I realized how much I missed talking to another birder.

Back at the car I drove to the end of the street, where there is a turnaround close to the Great Swamp's entrance road. In a tree near where I parked I found more palm warblers plus a couple of pine warblers and, wonder of wonders, a larger, gray sparrow with white trim on its tail and an eye ring - vesper sparrow! I'd never have seen it driving on the entrance road.

Finally, while many of the swamp trails have been closed, the main tour road is still open. I made several stops, careful when I walked or drove around people. One birder in his car told me of the kestrel in a tree on the edge of a field. I found it. In another area where I once found a barred owl I stopped and found my first-of-season eastern towhee and veery plus a field sparrow, among others. At the overlook, two distant female northern harriers passed over the trees, hunting.

I was having so much fun I hated to go home but cold, fatigue and hunger were taking their toll. I made a few short stops on the way home, mostly to listen from the car, and discovered something odd: Many people seemed to me to be driving the back roads aimlessly, for instance taking a road that ends at a trail head. As I sat by that trail head listening to the Canada geese, I watched a number of cars come in, turn around and leave without stopping. Maybe their GPS told them the road went through, which it hasn't for decades.

Great Swamp tour road (Margo D. Beller)

Or maybe this was a way for people to get away from home and avoid others without worrying about catching the virus, the ultimate in social distancing.

It makes me wonder what life will be like when we return to "normal." For now, at least, my restlessness is gone.

Watching the Neighbors: The End(?)

Squirrel on nest April 19,2020 (Margo D. Beller)

This Sunday morning, when I put out the bird feeder as I always do on nonrainy days, things were the same and yet very different.

The Cooper's hawks were gone.

Up until Wednesday, the hawks were acting as usual. The male flew to the nest with twigs at first light, the female sat on a nearby branch facing where the sun would be if it wasn't cloudy. Every so often they noisily mated. At some point the male must've flown off because of what happened next. Two fish crows flew to branches close to the nest. The female Cooper's, comparable in size to the crows if not a bit larger, flew at them. They left and she sat in the nest for a long time, so long I thought there might be eggs in there. But after 15 minutes or so she, too, left.

That's been it.

Squirrel at work
(Margo D. Beller)

I have done nothing to prompt this. The yard birds and I had been adapting to the presence of predators. I had out only one feeder. When the male cardinal came after singing from a nearby tree, he would not stay long. His skittish mate came by even less frequently. Squirrels stayed up in the trees until the hawks, as usual, flew off for the day. For the past two weeks or so, the hawks had returned to repeat the process at dusk before going off to roost.

It took three days to realize there was a lot more activity in my yard. Squirrels were digging in the lawn for buried acorns. An assortment of bigger birds that would make more of a meal for a Cooper's - redbellied woodpecker, jays, mourning doves - returned to the feeder. Each morning I had looked at the nest and seen no activity. Then, yesterday afternoon, I watched as a squirrel climbed the tree to the nest with a bunch of leaves in its mouth.

Cardinals in apple tree, pre-mating (Margo D. Beller)

It had claimed the nest. While Cooper's use sticks and line the nest with bark, squirrels tend to use leaves and other softer materials. No squirrel would dare climb into an active hawk nest.

This morning, unusually cold for mid-April (frost on the roofs and some of the plants), I looked up at the nest and it was a different shape - piled high with leaves. The squirrel sat on the branch beneath it. Then it climbed down for another bunch of leaves.

When the male cardinal came to the feeder he was back to his usual habit of grabbing a seed and eating it atop the pole. At one point he flew to his mate and I thought he would give her a seed. Instead, they mated far more quickly and silently than the hawks.

Frost on quince leaves; most of the flowers are gone (Margo D. Beller)

What prompted the Cooper's to abandon the nest the male had spent over two weeks building? Was it the heavy rain we'd had for several days this week? The unusual cold? The lack of sun? Had the female felt threatened by the fish crows discovering the nest? Did one or both die in an accident or attack from something larger, either winged or human?

Or was it simply these were two immature birds that, after being prompted to mate and build a nest by that internal process triggered by longer, warmer days, couldn't continue the work of raising a family?

I have no answers. It could have been any one or more of those things. What I do know is I have more birds in the yard and may now be able to put out more feeders again. Unlike the cloud of coronavirus that continues to hang over the world for the foreseeable future, the uncertainty caused by the hawk nest appears to be gone.

The hawks may be elsewhere, of course, and there will always be other predators either passing through or nesting nearby. The yard birds and I will have to remain vigilant.

Life Going On

Every spring I am surprised and relieved when I see signs of life in the garden, showing me the perennials survived the winter, even a relatively mild but wet winter like the one just past.

Red quince, yellow forsythia, green boxwood, blue sky - 2020
(Margo D. Beller)

This year, of course, things are very different in the world. With the coronavirus, many parks - including ones I visited just days ago - are closed to us. Supermarkets have restrictions on how many people can be admitted, forcing us to stand on line, six feet apart, faces covered.

In the yard, the Cooper's hawks are still flying around at first light, the male flying to and from the nest to work on it between noisily mating with the female on a nearby tree. So far, the female has no reason to sit in the nest. The cardinals, meanwhile, give me a reason to get up in the morning and put out the feeder. I hear the cardinals sing along with several types of woodpeckers, jay and even fish crows. Also, I am hearing the first migrants - in my travels I've found chipping sparrows, phoebes, ruby-crowned kinglet, bluebird, pine warbler, palm warbler and redwing blackbird.

Deer won't eat daffodils, making it easy to grow them anywhere.
(Margo D. Beller)

Like the birds, the plants are returning. The early bloomers were the crocus and snowdrop. Now long gone, they've been replaced by daffodils in various shades of yellow and white, the standard and grape hyacinths, the blue and white glory of the snow and the purple flowers of the ground ivy. The forsythia's yellow flowers are only now starting to give way to green leaves, as are the red flowers of the quince.

Maples have been in flower for weeks. They are now being joined by the oaks. The pear and apple trees are leafing, the apple showing the hint of the flowers that will later form this year's crop. Among the shrubs dogwood, boxwood, lilacs and viburnum are starting to leaf out, and the andromeda is showing its bell flowers. The irises are taller and the lilies, goldenrod, bleeding heart, hostas, coneflower, salvia and - so that's where I transplanted it - lobelia show me they survived. So did the garlic I found growing in the compost pile and potted.

Flowering andromeda (Margo D. Beller)

I don't have cherry trees but they, magnolias and the Bradford pears are flowering all over town, already dropping petals on windy days.

The ornamental grasses and butterfly bush I hacked back last month have put out fresh foliage. I've seen no signs of the milkweed seeds I planted or the joe-pye that looked so sickly last year or the lily of the valley but I am trusting they will come when it gets warmer than it is now.

Perhaps the most pleasing discoveries in my yard are the appearance of so many columbines in areas where I put seeds and where the plants themselves put seed. The lenten rose is finally sending up new leaves to push aside the tattered old ones. The peony, which has moved from box to pot to unnetted plot to, finally, one behind netting is also showing itself, and I hope it will flower. 

Deer damage (Margo D. Beller)

There are other, less pleasant signs. Pollen is starting to cover the street. The grass MH recently fed is now ready to be mowed - a little behind our neighbors, whose lawn services have been polluting the neighborhood with gas fumes and noise for weeks.

A deer discovered a weakness in my netting and browsed the closest euonymous bush. It will grow back. Almost all my flower plots are netted to protect them from deer, although netting does nothing to stop the digging chipmunks. I have learned to ignore the netting when looking at the flowers (unless I must pull it down to work in the garden) although it will, of course, show up in my pictures.

Weeds are back, too, including the ground ivy, the garlic mustard and one thin small weed with smaller while flower I can't identify. In one corner of my back plot where I once had a cactus there is something growing but I don't know what it is - for now I will leave it and see what develops. That's part of the fun of spring, you never know what will show up from elsewhere.

Mystery plant (Margo D. Beller)

One thing I do know will happen is I will be spending a lot of time at home for the foreseeable future. That means a lot more time in the backyard, tending plants, pulling up weeds, checking on the deer fencing and watching for spring birds passing through. They, thankfully, are still free to go where they wish.