Growing Concern

I like trees. I've written about my despair when they are cut down, including by me. But after a recent walk I had to wonder about the unintended consequences of planting some trees in a particular area.

Saplings, May 2023
(Margo D. Beller)

In the Central Park of Morris County not far from me a field was planted with tree saplings a number of years ago. All you could see were rows of protective tubing. In autumn 2021 I went for a walk in that area after a long absence and noticed the saplings had grown tall enough to be seen above the tubing.

The other week I went back and the saplings were even taller. I could now identify many of the trees including tulip poplars, maples, even at least one sweetgum. What happens when they all grow up, I wondered. Tulip poplars alone can grow 70 to 90 feet tall and have a 35- to 50-foot spread. It is also a fast-growing hardwood tree, which might explain why it was planted here.

Saplings, November 2021
(Margo D. Beller)

I can't remember exactly when Morris County put in the saplings. It could've been after hurricane Sandy blew through in 2012 and toppled trees in this field, once part of a working farm associated with the old Greystone hospital. The saplings could've been planted as part of the work the county did when it took over the land to turn it into a multi-use park.

The field in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012,
which might be the reason more trees
were planted. (Margo D. Beller)

During that time, the old hospital buildings including the wards, the farm and the Kirkbride administration building came down. Old or damaged trees came down with them. (Many other trees that came down in a different area were neither sick nor damaged. They were in the way of a very large planned soccer field.) 

This old farm field usually draws a lot of birds depending on the season. In past years I've found different types of sparrows, warblers, vireos and thrushes. But now I have to wonder what will happen when the trees grow to their full height. The area is already changing. The grasses around the saplings have not been cut and have become very long and weedy. This is good for some birds but not for others. 

Once the trees have grown and darken the area it will change even more. Will there be more forest dwellers? Bird that look for insects or build nests in treetops? I fear the sparrows and other grassland birds that prefer wood edges to deep woods will go elsewhere. 

I'll just have to see what happens when those trees throw shade.

Catching Up in the Garden

Last week, New York City had the dubious distinction of having the dirtiest air in the world because of the smoke blown on winds out of the north from wildfires that continue to rage throughout Canada. At its worst, the smoke made the sun look deep orange, kept the temperature to the mid-60s (F) and turned the sky brownish-yellow. The smell of burning wood was thick.

Stargazer lilies, supported by a tomato
cage, protected by deer fencing.
(Margo D. Beller)

Living as I do 35 miles or so due west of the Big Apple, I could not avoid this manifestation of the continuing harm of what is now called "climate change," but I still refer to as global warming. (I know there are differences between the two terms but the overall destructive effect is the same.) There has been very little rain anywhere in my area, and apparently the same is true of Canada.

This is not the first time smoke has filled the skies over my part of New Jersey. Usually the smoke comes from wildfires in the southern part of the state, such as in the Pine Barrens, during extremely dry periods during the summer. The smoke is blown north on hot winds from the south. This year will likely be no exception because with the lack of rain those fires continue, unfortunately.

But this thick yellow smoke from Canada was unprecedented. A persistent low off the eastern coast kept pulling the smoke into my region until the air was toxic to breathe for those of us in "vulnerable" groups, who were urged to stay inside with the windows closed. I was under house arrest, for the most part. If I absolutely had to go outside, I kept it short and wore a mask. 

Blooming viburnum (Margo D. Beller)

The world continued on without me, of course. People were urged to limit their pets' time outside but the wild animals - including birds - were still out there foraging for food, both for themselves and for their young. Somehow they managed, but I have to wonder about the effect of that poisonous air.

When the smoke finally cleared, literally, it was with relief I could go back outside. I walked around the yard and found some flowers had faded - the rhododendron, irises and the peony - while others were blooming (viburnum, salvia and stargazer lilies) or growing to the point where they would soon bloom (butterfly weed).

Meanwhile, what I thought were peppers growing from the seeds I'd planted a few months ago are not peppers. I'm not sure what they are. I've moved those pots to make more room for the pots of marigolds and zinnias that are definitely growing from seed. 

I don't know what this is but it isn't
a pepper. (Margo D. Beller)

The apple tree is filled with growing fruit that has been getting knocked to the ground, still too raw to be usable. I'm not sure if the squirrels are searching for ripe apples to slack their thirst of if the tree is dropping apples to save energy because of this drought. Maybe both. 

I also took note of the birds. One of my few trips outdoors was to make sure the water dish was full. It drew a pair of goldfinches, a song sparrow and a jay. (I'm sure there were others, including squirrels, but I didn't see them.) Every so often I would see the resident cardinals and catbirds hunting around the yard. Overhead I heard cedar waxwings and chimney swifts, hunting for seeds or insects. 

Apples in tree (Margo D. Beller)

And, of course, I was able to see what was happening with the house wrens. Based on their activity the eggs had hatched but the young were still small enough for either parent to go inside to feed them. When the young get bigger they will jostle for position and the parent will only be able to feed the one or ones that can push to the nest box opening. Right now the parents go in with food and come out, sometimes with chick poop, which must be removed to keep bacteria out of the nest. I estimate two or three young are in the nest.

As I watch the wrens following their instincts to feed their young so they will one day (soon?) fledge, feed themselves and continue the cycle, I have to wonder why it is that humans, the top of the food chain and the only creatures capable of creating weapons - and now weather conditions - to destroy themselves, are considered to be so damned superior.

This cropped picture was taken through my porch screen. if you look
carefully you will see the parent wren over the box. Less
obvious is the wren looking out from inside.
(Margo D. Beller)

Summertime

 In summer, the song sings itself.

-- William Carlos Williams

Since I last wrote, we've had a roller-coaster month of May. There were days of rain so heavy it flooded my favorite walking trail. There were days that were much colder than usual, including one when I needed to protect my plants from possible frost. Then it turned hot and very, very dry. My husband and I did some traveling. I was downsized out of a job. Many of my early plants bloomed and faded, only to be replaced by others including the rhododendron, the irises and the peony. I accomplished several big garden projects - including weeding, creating a border trench, and removing and replacing deer netting and fencing - to my physical detriment. The lawn grass became very long but it was cut before any pregnant deer would want to drop a fawn on the lawn, which has happened in the past around now.

Rhododendron (Margo D. Beller)

And spring migration came to an end.

It is always with sadness that I acknowledge it's over. I think of what birds I found and what I didn't find. In my part of New Jersey the northerly winds in late April into early May seemed to have kept down the number of migrants passing through. The radar I looked at showed the birds flying north, bypassing most of my state, taking the path of least resistance. When we visited family in New Hampshire and stayed at a motel by Lake Sunapee it was a pleasure to sit on the screened deck at dawn and listen to the birds I had missed in my area. Except for our annual trip to Old Mine Road to listen for the birds that breed in the high terrain of the northwestern part of New Jersey, the only birds I have found lately are local breeders.

When it finally became warm enough I planted my pepper seedlings and moved the house plants to the enclosed back porch. In the backyard I went from two seed feeders and one suet feeder to one seed feeder and the hummingbird feeder. But there were nights it got cold and one when it got very cold, and that night I covered the pots and the peony, which had flower buds about to open. 

Peony, when the buds opened (Margo D. Beller)

Now, on Memorial Day, the so-called start of summer, it is hot. Yesterday I took in the last seed feeder and washed it out. Until then it had been drawing pairs of white-breasted nuthatch, cardinal, jay, goldfinch, house finch and song sparrow, the last one an unusual feeder bird for my yard. Now, the yard is quiet except for resident birds including the catbird. The birds should be either sitting on eggs or ready to do so.

That brings me to the annual saga of the yard house wren.

Every year the story is different. This year I hung the nest box in a different area of the dogwood tree than last year. In the past it only took a few days for a bird to come. But with this year's winds it took several weeks for a house wren to even show up in the yard, much less investigate the box. Early in May, just before we went on vacation, I saw a wren with a stick in its mouth go into the box. If it was a male, it was "dressing" the potential nest site to show its mate. Its mate would decide if she liked the location. If she did, she would bring in more sticks to create the nest. So I don't know if the wren was a male or female because they look alike.

My favorite walking path under water after
two days of very heavy rain. It has
since dried. (Margo D. Beller)

Fast-forward 10 days. I returned to work only to learn I and a number of others were out of a job. I spent time on the porch. What I saw from there were two house wrens actively shuttling back and forth with food to the box. According to the Cornell Ornithology Lab, incubation is nine to 16 days and the nesting period is 15 to 17 days. Maybe I had misjudged when the nesting period began?

Then, something happened.

We had a few cold mornings, including that very cold morning I mentioned when I had to protect my plants. The shuttling stopped. I didn't see much of the wrens. Recently, as I listened to the male singing from a nearby bush, the female came out of the nest box. But there was no active shuttling. She would return with food and go back inside. She would not come out again for a long time. 

I have no camera in the box so I can only guess at what is happening. 

Scenario 1: The young they had been actively feeding got big enough to fly, left the nest and the pair started a second brood.

Scenario 2: Something killed the young - the cold, a predator - and the pair immediately started a new brood.

Scenario 3: This is an entirely different pair of house wrens.

Wren box in its 2023 location
(Margo D. Beller)

In all the time I've put out a nest box I have never had a pair of wrens have one brood, raise the young, get them to leave the nest and hunt for themselves, and then the pair start a second brood. There would not have been enough time for that process, or for an entirely new pair of wrens to have found the box and lay eggs.

I lean toward scenario 2. Most likely the young had grown too big for the female to get inside the box and sit on them when the temperature dropped to the low 30s and so they died of the cold. Less likely is a predator getting to the young. One of the advantages the nest box provides is the small opening - too small for a cowbird to drop in an egg or admit a predator any larger than an extremely small snake. 

However, it would not have deterred disease from entering and sickening the young birds fatally. That's another possiblity.

At present I go outside in the morning when it is cool. I hear the male wren singing his territorial song. The female appears with food and goes into the box. After a while, when the male sings, perhaps telling her it is safe to do so because he is nearby, she will leave the box to hunt and then fly back and enter the box. The male stays in the area.

Perhaps in a week the pair will be shuttling to and from the box to feed young. This summer I'll have more time to watch for it. 

Life and Dying in the Backyard

Every spring I am surprised by my plants coming back after the winter. This year is no exception despite temperatures that reached the 80s in February and the 30s in April, with very little snow but lots of rain. Although some plants did not get as tall or as showy as usual, they did flower. The same is true of the trees and the shrubs. Both the apple and the pear trees have flowered, despite being severely cut back early this year. Where there are flowers there will be fruit, albeit fruit too high for me to easily pick.

Dogwood flowers in 2016 (Margo D. Beller)

This post will focus on one particular tree.

I have lived in my house for over 25 years. In my suburban neighborhood "woods" means trees on the property border. Any trees planted in the front or back yards have been put in by the homeowner. Over the years I've had to cut down yard trees for various reasons. I have, however, planted two trees - the blue spruce we nicknamed Spruce Bringsgreen and a flowering dogwood.

I planted the dogwood because in the fall it is supposed to produce red berries for the birds. Since that tree was planted in 2007 I've learned berries are not guaranteed. Like the other flowering plants, it depends on the weather. Some years there would be lovely pink flowers on the dogwood. But that did not necessarily mean berries would follow. Some years yes, some years no. The fresh green leaves would go red in the fall. 

Dogwood berries, 2019. Note the discoloration
in the autumn leaves. (Margo D. Beller)

Since planting that tree I took it as a given that once established it would always be there. But like any other living thing, trees die. Sometimes they are killed by man, who cuts them down or pollutes the air. Sometimes they are killed by insects, as was the ash tree I had to cut down because of the emerald ash borer. Sometimes, however, they are killed by bacteria or fungus.

I don't remember when during the winter I first began to notice one branch was missing some of its bark but I did eventually notice, especially when more bare patches began to appear. I became alarmed when the apple and pear trees, the viburnum, the forsythia and the lilacs started leafing out and the dogwood remained bare. I thought the tree was dead.

My first indication something was wrong.
(Margo D. Beller)

I was going to write about it here. I even had a name for my post - Dead as a Dogwood.

But reports of the dogwood's demise were premature - after a recent heavy rain it started to leaf out.

Not everywhere, however. The part of the tree where the bark has come off remains bare, as are a few of the lower branches. 

I did some research into dogwood diseases, and to my horror discovered there are quite a few. The one that appears the closest to what is happening with this tree has the awful name of "crown canker."

Hoping for the best, I wrapped the lower part of the tree to prevent the bark that was just starting to flake from getting worse. I used my lopper on some of the lower branches and will have to use a saw or chainsaw on other parts. Because the tree went straight to leafing there will be no flowers. The leaves are small and I doubt there will be fruit. I don't even know if the tree will be alive next year.

(Margo D. Beller)

As I looked at some of the pictures I've taken of this tree over the years I realize the signs were there: discoloring in the leaves, the irregular production of fruit. It was not until the bark started falling off that I realized this tree is sick. Should I have used the sprinkler last year instead of letting the grass go brown and deprive the tree roots of water during the summer drought? Should I have added more mulch to what I had already put down at the base of the tree? 

Dogwood leaves, 2023 (Margo D. Beller)

I don't know. This year I'll use the sprinkler more and I'll use my saw on the dead branches. The tree may be disfigured but I hope it will recover. Or it may die. Living things die, even trees.

In the meantime, as I have for the past two years, I have put up the house wren nest box on one of the living dogwood branches. I heard a wren singing the other morning as I put out the feeders. The bird investigated the box, then flew to another yard. Will it be back? That, too, is unknown.

The Ladies Who Sing

It is finally spring. Trees are leafing out. The daffodils are at their peak. The lawn has greened, the lawn services are out and the pollen is flying.

And there is birdsong, lots of birdsong. As light comes into the sky the dawn chorus begins - robins, cardinals, titmice, song sparrows.

This is my favorite time of the year. At any moment a migrating bird may stop in my yard to visit the feeders or hunt for insects in the trees and shrubs. The light comes into the sky around the time I wake up and by the time I get outside the birds are singing.

The other morning I was outside with my coffee, listening to the dawn chorus. There was a cardinal singing particularly close by and for once I wanted to watch him sing. I walked along the path to get a better look and stopped when the song seemed to come above me in the apple tree. But where was the distinctive red male cardinal?

Female cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

There was no male. The singer was the brown female, whose dull coloring allowed her to blend into the bare tree branches near the very top rather well. 

I had been fooled, but I'm sure I am not the only one who has made that mistake.

Here is the common thinking about birds: The males, brightly colored to attract a mate, do the singing to either draw a female or defend its chosen territory, its song warning other males of its type to stay away. The duller females mate, choose a nest site, then build the nest for the eggs she will incubate.

But that thinking is wrong, I've learned. Female cardinals sing just as often and as loud as their male counterparts. It turns out female birds of quite a few species do, too.

How have we managed to miss all these female singers? There are a number of reasons, some of them literally man made.

I did some research and it turns out the study of female birdsong has been increasing, and there have been quite a few articles on this very topic.

One problem with knowing if a female is singing: It is hard to tell the male from the female of many types of birds. For instance, I can't tell if the titmouse singing "peter, peter, peter" in my tree is a male or not because the males and females look alike. They are the same size and color. Some singing birds have only the most subtle difference in shading, such as the black head of the male robin and the dark gray head of the female. 

Male or female titmouse?
(Margo D. Beller)

Another problem: There have not, historically, been a lot of studies of birds beyond those of temperate zones in the U.S. Most of the birds that have been studied come north in the spring and go south for the winter. But there are many more birds, just starting to be studied, that stay in those South American rain forests and jungles and do not migrate because they have all the food they need. These female birds sing all the time, to protect territories or draw a mate. (Of course, there is an even greater universe of birds living and migrating in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.)

According to what I found on the Cornell Ornithology Lab site, a 2016 study pointed out that in a sample of more than 1,000 songbird species from around the world, 64% had females that sing. Many tropical species and some temperate-zone species, such as female cardinals, "sing regularly; while others sing during specific parts of the breeding season," according to Cornell.

Take the song sparrow. A 1943 - yes, that far back - study by Margaret Morse Nice, found female song sparrows sing early in the breeding season, mainly to warn other females away. But she also found female singers among temperate-zone birds including northern mockingbirds, Baltimore and Bullock’s orioles, white-crowned sparrows, European starlings, cedar waxwings and house finches.

To me that is impressive - her study covered nine years of observations - because in many of these birds the males and females look identical.

Both of these birds will sing very
sweetly for you, if you have ears to listen.
(Margo D. Beller)

That study is impressive to me for another reason - it's a woman doing the research. Bird research, as in most of the scientific fields, has been a male domain. Most of the researchers have been men and, back in the day, not many of them were interested in traveling outside the United States and were even less interested in dull females, much less whether they could sing. As in so many areas of our western patriarchal society, gender bias determined what we all believed.

That, however, has been changing, slowly. 

Here is a sampling:

The Auk, now known as Ornithology, is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Ornithological Society. The society was formed in 1884! This is the place for people who go far beyond Sunday birding, the (mainly) men who make the rules as to taxonomy and other fine details of birds and their lives. Even here you'll find a study on female birdsong, complete with abstract, figures and tables, and references.

Femalebirdsong.org goes further: This site provides actual female birdsong calls and gives you a way to be a Citizen Scientist and gather even more data. There are also links to articles on the topic of female birdsong.

The Female Songbird Project is another a Citizen Science initiative.

Audubon: The granddaddy of bird preservation organizations puts the spotlight on a study "tackling the gender and geographical skew in avian song research."

But wait, there's more: Do a google search of "female birdsong." You'll find all sorts of other articles from mainstream publications including Scientific American and the Washington Post.

If you take away anything from this blog post, it should be to keep your mind open as well as your ears and eyes. Or, to quote Abigail Adams, who in many ways was far ahead of her time, remember the ladies.

Spruce Bringsgreen Speaks!

Hello again! Margo told me that some of you have been asking after me. It has been a long time [Editor's Note: Nearly five years, to be exact.] since the last time I've written in this blog, so it's high time I tell you what I've been up to lately.

So far, about 50 feet. [Colorado blue spruces can grow 75 feet tall in the wild but 30-60 feet in the yard, so I think Spruce might be exaggerating a little.)

Spruce Bringsgreen after the Feb. 28, 2023, snow.
(Modified photo by Margo D. Beller)

Yes, I've been growing. I put out my first cones so I am now a mature Colorado blue spruce. I'm the pride of Margo's yard and, unlike some of the other trees she had cut back recently, I've been left alone to get bigger and spread out. Maybe a bit of tickling of my bottom branches as that guy she now has mowing the lawn instead of her husband works around me. The deer leave me alone because they know I'm prickly and don't cotton to being nibbled on.

It has been very nice in this yard. We haven't had a lot of snow in a very long time except once, which gave me a thick, warm coat. [See photo.] But that didn't last long. The way I am built, the stuff just slides off once the sun comes out. Soon enough I am my old self again.

Spruce dressed up for Christmas, 2018
(Margo D. Beller)

However, I will say that it has been sad to see some of the old neighbors cut down. Up and down this block the tree cutters roll by in their trucks and the air is soon filled with the sound of sawing, mulching and stump pulling. I know Margo dislikes it very much because she tells me that. Some of the old guys were sick and had to come down, I guess, but some of them I don't know why they had to go. Maybe they were in the way. 

The cedar I can see by Margo's front door was cut in half by the people who came to do her tree work. That cedar got almost as tall as the roof, and it used to provide shelter for some of the small birds. It also has softer leaves than mine and the deer would get at it, as they get to most things. 

[Note: One of the biggest problems in suburbia is people planting trees too close to the house. This cedar, and one on the other side of the front door, I had planted in 1995, when I was a new homeowner and didn't know better, as I was to learn about most of the deer-attracting plants I put in before I put up netting to save them. The other cedar eventually died after an ice storm and I cut it back myself. I needed professional help on this second one because it was too tall. It would almost double over when covered with snow.] 

The cedar before it had to be cut back.
(Margo D. Beller)

Now the birds take shelter in my branches. Being so tall, they can be high off the ground and away from those four-legged predators that seem to come through this yard with increasing frequency, particularly at night. 

I don't mind sheltering these birds. The ones that go "dee, dee, dee" [black-capped chickadees] are fine. They stay quiet, fly out for food, eat it elsewhere and then come back to me to hide or get away from the wind or to rest. But those black and white ones [male juncos] are terrible. They fight each other, they fly in and out, they make a lot of noise as they get in each other's way. But they'll be gone once it gets warm.

Sometimes a redbreasted bird [a robin] will bring bits of material and make a nest high on my shoulder, but it rarely stays. I don't take it personally.

It's hard to believe I've been planted in this spot for as long as I have [since November 2007]. It feels good to be rooted. I know Margo comes out to admire me frequently. I've no fear she will be cutting me down. That's about all a tree can hope for nowadays.

The Woodpecker Story Continues

The story never ends, it just enters another chapter.

It was over a month ago I heard the knocking of a pileated woodpecker excavating one of my neighbor's trees. At that time I wasn't sure if it was digging out a nest or just hunting for carpenter ants. If the latter that meant the tree might decay and die in a matter of years.

Pileated trying to hide from a sharp-shinned hawk. 
(Margo D. Beller)

When a squirrel climbed too close the woodpecker flew off. It was then I saw two holes so it was looking for a meal. I later learned February is not when these birds build nests and breed.

And now we get to today.

After spending some time outdoors in the cold and wind I returned home and made some hot tea. When I finished my drink I went into the kitchen to wash the mug. Through the open curtain, at eye level, I could see a male pileated whacking at a different tree in the same neighbor's yard.

Was it the same bird as a month ago? Could be. This one continued to whack at the tree until it could put its head into the hole and use its long tongue to pull out an ant to eat. Even then it kept using its long beak to chop further into the hole.

(According to the people at Cornell, while the pileated woodpecker’s primary food is carpenter ants, it also eats "other ants, woodboring beetle larvae, termites and other insects such as flies, spruce budworm, caterpillars, cockroaches and grasshoppers." I'm glad the bird was getting rid of one or more of these pests.)

The woodpecker kept at its work. It did not notice me taking pictures from my enclosed porch. Nor did it notice another neighbor's kids playing basketball, the birds flying to the feeders or the squirrel sunning itself on the flood wall.

Pileated rather far along in excavating.
(Margo D. Beller)

But what did stop it, suddenly, was the appearance of a male sharp-shinned hawk. From my porch I saw it fly low to the ground, heading toward the hedge where many small birds roost. The male is smaller than the female, and mature birds have red breasts rather than brown streaks on a white chest. This bird, I could see, was small and had red on the breast. These accipiters are fast, nimble flyers, able to maneuver through a hedge and fly out with a meal. (I can only hope it didn't pick off one of the cardinals or other birds I've seen in the hedge, tho' these birds have to eat, too.)

The pileated, meanwhile, had moved from the hole to another part of the tree and flattened itself against it. It did not move for a long time. Pileateds have black backs so perhaps the idea was to be unobtrusive. Whatever the reason, it stayed still. When it sensed the danger had passed it moved back to the hole and continued its excavation. 

Back at work after the danger is gone.
(Margo D. Beller)

As I write this it is still at the hole, tho' when I looked for it out an upstairs window I saw it was briefly spooked by a squirrel climbing the tree. Unlike the February visit, however, it did not leave. It spread its wings to make itself look bigger - pileateds are the size of a crow - and the squirrel left. 

I expect the bird will be there chopping at the tree when I go out this evening to get the feeders, at which point it will leave as it gets dark. 

It will be interesting to see if the bird returns to another tree in this yard, and which of its meal trees will fall first. (Not into my yard, I hope.)