Thirty-two years ago, on the night of Oct. 15, my mother died in a hospital in Brooklyn, NY, from the cancer that returned after five years, spread from her spine to her liver and then to her brain.
She was 60.
It is hard to believe that it has been 32 years when in many ways I remember the events of her death, my getting the news and the funeral as if it was yesterday.
But that's not why I am writing today.
I was thinking today about how the world has changed since she died in 1980.
What would my mother think of computers now? Around the time she died they were still big, clunky things that easiily filled a room. Programmers needed keypunchers - one of my college jobs - to type keys that would put holes in a certain order for the computer to read the information and then do what it had to do.
Now, computers have gone from filling a room to filling your hand. In my own case I went from a personal computer tower and monitor that my husband and I had to take turns using to separate laptops that have more memory in each than those big computers.
What would my mother think of smartphones? When she died, you had a phone. It sat on a table or was attached to the wall. It rang and you answered. If you were expecting a call you waited by the phone. How many songs did we grow up with where someone lamented waiting by the telephone that never rang.
Now, we're always connected. You can put an answering machine (with caller ID, to screen out the spam calls) on your landline - presuming you even have one. A lot of people have been giving them up.
Instead, they carry around a phone that isn't used so much as a phone anymore as a way of getting directions, planning your day, googling information, sending email and taking pictures. The talking part is almost an after-thought.
What would she think of texting? Of driving and texting or driving and talking or people walking down a public street blithely shouting intimate details?
What would she think of the end of the space program? It was America's pride. She would've remembered the Soviet spacecraft and President Kennedy's determination to best them in space and get to the moon.
She died before the first space shuttle, Columbia, was launched, in 1981. And now the entire program is gone, Columbia with Discovery and Endeavor. If anyone is going into space it is either a private company or another country including, gasp, the Russians.
What would she think of buying music electronically, by the song? In that, she would see a lot that's familiar. Buying individual songs was what one did, first with 78s, then with 45s. You collected them and put them into an album - hence how the word got used for what we also called long-playing records, or LPs. The concept of buying them through a company like iTunes and the possibility of sharing songs electronically would've confused her, but the overall by-the-song concept would not.
She would also recognize some of today's best-selling musicians, starting with that bunch of geezers known as the Rolling Stones. They've been together 50 years. She would remember when they appeared on Ed Sullivan and Mick Jagger had to sing "Let's spend some time together" while the look in his eyes reminded you the line actually went "Let's spend the night together."
Perhaps she'd be shocked by how old they look now. But then she could look at the Beatles' Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and think they haven't aged a bit - unless someone reminded her George Harrison died of cancer in 2001 at age 58 and John Lennon was murdered.
In 1980, as it happened, two months after my mother died.
What would she think of having a black man as president? It would scare her. But what would scare her more would be the thought of losing Social Security and Medicare, as the other guy's plans might do. And she would worry about an anti-Semitic nation like Iran building a nuclear arsenal. Yet, the fighting in the Middle East would look all too familiar.
Same stuff, different millennium.
And what, in heaven's name, would she think of the destruction of the World Trade Center, Osama bin Laden, the invasion of privacy, picture IDs to vote, the torture that has become flying in an airplane, airline security, the state of the economy, the end of job security and the widening gulf between rich and poor?
Yes, the world has changed a lot since 1980.
However, I can't say all of that change has been for the better, especially for me since Oct. 15.
Cape May
(RE BERG-ANDERSSON)
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Flipping the Bird
When I’m out in the field birding, I run into a lot of nice people. They ask what I’m looking at. Sometimes they point out things I don’t see. We may talk shop, we may not.
If they have a spotting scope, they offer to let me look through it. One couple - at an industrial area in Salisbury, Md., that was drawing a lot of grassland birds one recent September - not only let us look through the scope but identified the birds we were seeing (I’m as bad identifying grassland birds as I am shorebirds).
When we are standing and looking at birds - whether at Sandy Hook’s Spermacetti Cove or Scherman Hoffman’s hawk platform - there are people who are friendly and who enhance the birdwatching experience.
But as in real life, there are also jerks.
These are the stupid people out there in the field who do a lot of stupid things.
*They will leave the trail, like the lady in this photo taken a few years ago in Massachusetts.
I was on the trail when I photographed her. She was walking alongside some deep water, likely the Concord River or a tributary. She was walking over a lot of downed tree limbs. We watched her to see how far she’d go, and whether she’d fall into the water. Luckily, she didn’t fall in and ran into enough brush that she was forced back to the trail.
Recently, at Sandy Hook’s Plum Island, my husband and I saw two guys with cameras - huge, gunlike lenses - walking ahead of us. One of them left the trail and was walking in the long marsh grass, in the mud, looking for something to photograph.
I don’t know what he was looking for when he was trampling the marsh but he spooked two black ducks out of hiding into the water. That didn’t interest them enough to use their cameras. Maybe they didn't even see them.
I’m sure the ducks were relieved the peregrine falcon that had been flying over the area most of the afternoon wasn‘t around at the time.
*They use recorded devices.
If you play a recording of a singing male bird, there is a great likelihood a real bird of the same species will fly in to defend his territory. It will get stressed. It may even attack you. That’s bad enough when it’s something small, like a Bicknell’s thrush.
But if it’s an owl, watch out. In bird etiquette, you do not stress out a roosting owl during the day. In my book, you don’t use tapes to draw owls even at night.
*They will do anything for a picture.
Some people use their big lenses to stay in the background and get the picture, blowing it up in the editing. Some, however, will trample the ground like elephants, rush the bird, push you out of the way for that picture.
I’ve written before about the people who put their lenses practically in the faces of the roosting long-earred owls found by others a few years ago. When a rare boreal owl was found roosting near Tavern on the Green in New York City's Central Park during the 2004 Christmas Bird Count, many people came to photograph it. They stood a respectful distance from the base of the tree, used their long lenses and took their pictures.
But when a guy showed up early in 2005 with his camera, he wanted a perfect shot. Boreal owls are hard to see sometimes. So this guy used a bright flash for his pictures, despite the birders yelling at him to stop.
The next day, the owl was gone, either to another part of the park or another part of the state. Maybe it was coincidence. I hope it survived the trip. It left behind a lot of angry birders.
A lot of owls have been found in Central Park since then, but not boreal owls.
These jerks will also trespass. There are many stories. If you look on the birding lists you’ll frequently see the complaints from other birders as well as exhortations not to block roads, to respect private property, not to cross fences, etc.
There’s a reason for these exhortations. A lot of birders simply don’t respect private property. Maybe it’s because they consider themselves photographers rather than birders. With smartphone cameras and mini-SLR cameras, everyone think they're a world-class photographer, a paparazzi of birds.
The town of Piermont, NY, was overwhelmed by people coming from hundreds of miles around one winter when a juvenile snowy owl took up residence on a post in the town harbor. Same for the town of Montgomery, NY, when the grasses in a particular park field were trampled after a sedge wren was found.
If I was a homeowner and I had something extraordinary at my feeders, I would tell no one. My little lawn and my little street in my little town would be overwhelmed.
*They won’t tell you what they are seeing.
You see people with their binoculars focused on something. Birding etiquette says you walk up, focus your binoculars on the general area, try to see what they’re seeing, then ask.
Sometimes you see what they see, and you mention it for confirmation. Sometimes you can’t see what they see and when you ask they answer, even if they are thinking “I had to work for this. So should you.”
The jerks put down their binoculars and walk away.
That’s ok. It only makes me work harder to find what they saw, and more.
So when we meet in the field, let's be friendly. Let us bird in fellowship. Let us share stories and information and, most important, respect the birds and each other.
Otherwise, I'll be flipping you the bird and notifying the authorities.
If they have a spotting scope, they offer to let me look through it. One couple - at an industrial area in Salisbury, Md., that was drawing a lot of grassland birds one recent September - not only let us look through the scope but identified the birds we were seeing (I’m as bad identifying grassland birds as I am shorebirds).
When we are standing and looking at birds - whether at Sandy Hook’s Spermacetti Cove or Scherman Hoffman’s hawk platform - there are people who are friendly and who enhance the birdwatching experience.
But as in real life, there are also jerks.
These are the stupid people out there in the field who do a lot of stupid things.
I was on the trail when I photographed her. She was walking alongside some deep water, likely the Concord River or a tributary. She was walking over a lot of downed tree limbs. We watched her to see how far she’d go, and whether she’d fall into the water. Luckily, she didn’t fall in and ran into enough brush that she was forced back to the trail.
Recently, at Sandy Hook’s Plum Island, my husband and I saw two guys with cameras - huge, gunlike lenses - walking ahead of us. One of them left the trail and was walking in the long marsh grass, in the mud, looking for something to photograph.
I don’t know what he was looking for when he was trampling the marsh but he spooked two black ducks out of hiding into the water. That didn’t interest them enough to use their cameras. Maybe they didn't even see them.
I’m sure the ducks were relieved the peregrine falcon that had been flying over the area most of the afternoon wasn‘t around at the time.
*They use recorded devices.
If you play a recording of a singing male bird, there is a great likelihood a real bird of the same species will fly in to defend his territory. It will get stressed. It may even attack you. That’s bad enough when it’s something small, like a Bicknell’s thrush.
But if it’s an owl, watch out. In bird etiquette, you do not stress out a roosting owl during the day. In my book, you don’t use tapes to draw owls even at night.
*They will do anything for a picture.
Some people use their big lenses to stay in the background and get the picture, blowing it up in the editing. Some, however, will trample the ground like elephants, rush the bird, push you out of the way for that picture.
I’ve written before about the people who put their lenses practically in the faces of the roosting long-earred owls found by others a few years ago. When a rare boreal owl was found roosting near Tavern on the Green in New York City's Central Park during the 2004 Christmas Bird Count, many people came to photograph it. They stood a respectful distance from the base of the tree, used their long lenses and took their pictures.
But when a guy showed up early in 2005 with his camera, he wanted a perfect shot. Boreal owls are hard to see sometimes. So this guy used a bright flash for his pictures, despite the birders yelling at him to stop.
The next day, the owl was gone, either to another part of the park or another part of the state. Maybe it was coincidence. I hope it survived the trip. It left behind a lot of angry birders.
A lot of owls have been found in Central Park since then, but not boreal owls.
These jerks will also trespass. There are many stories. If you look on the birding lists you’ll frequently see the complaints from other birders as well as exhortations not to block roads, to respect private property, not to cross fences, etc.
There’s a reason for these exhortations. A lot of birders simply don’t respect private property. Maybe it’s because they consider themselves photographers rather than birders. With smartphone cameras and mini-SLR cameras, everyone think they're a world-class photographer, a paparazzi of birds.
The town of Piermont, NY, was overwhelmed by people coming from hundreds of miles around one winter when a juvenile snowy owl took up residence on a post in the town harbor. Same for the town of Montgomery, NY, when the grasses in a particular park field were trampled after a sedge wren was found.
If I was a homeowner and I had something extraordinary at my feeders, I would tell no one. My little lawn and my little street in my little town would be overwhelmed.
*They won’t tell you what they are seeing.
You see people with their binoculars focused on something. Birding etiquette says you walk up, focus your binoculars on the general area, try to see what they’re seeing, then ask.
Sometimes you see what they see, and you mention it for confirmation. Sometimes you can’t see what they see and when you ask they answer, even if they are thinking “I had to work for this. So should you.”
The jerks put down their binoculars and walk away.
That’s ok. It only makes me work harder to find what they saw, and more.
So when we meet in the field, let's be friendly. Let us bird in fellowship. Let us share stories and information and, most important, respect the birds and each other.
Otherwise, I'll be flipping you the bird and notifying the authorities.
Monday, October 1, 2012
A Study in Contrasts
Outside the town of Hamburg, Pa., sits a Cabela’s, part of a retail chain, on a hill overlooking a shopping mall, restaurants and the motel where my husband and I recently stayed.
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| Hamburg, Pa. |
A few miles north is a mountain top, part of the Blue Mountain chain, on which anywhere from 10 to 100 people can sit from late August through November. The way the mountain ridges are situated, raptors follow the warm thermals (rising air) down the ridges. If there is a north wind pushing them, so much the better.
This particular mountain, then and now known as Hawk Mountain, was where early in the last century farmers and sportsmen - who now might’ve gone to Cabela’s had it been around - lugged their guns and their gear and their liquid refreshments up the steep, rocky slope to the top to take advantage of those flying conditions to shoot the eagles, ospreys, buteos, accipiters, falcons and harriers out of the sky, just for the fun of it.
In the center of the Cabela’s in Hamburg there is a two-story pyramid. There are multiple ledges on this “mountain” on which stuffed animals are in various poses suggesting what they looked like before they were “bagged.” This was some prodigious hunter, and some of the animals include a card with his name and the date of the shooting. The animals range from the smallest hare to a polar bear, with plenty of elk, foxes and sheep in between.
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| Broadwing hawk, September, 2012 |
This may seem counterintuitive. Killing animals to save them?
But as Cabela’s points out, hunters have to pay for licenses. They buy duck stamps when they go after wild ducks. The money from these licenses and stamps help pay for state and federal conservation efforts, including enforcing hunting laws and buying land for wildlife refuges that prohibit hunting.
When the Hawk Mountain sportsmen were shooting the raptors for the hell of it, they had no licenses. They had no rules telling them what they could shoot, at what time of year and how many they could “bag.” It was just something they’d always done, and local guides could make money off it.
When some concerned citizens disgusted by the slaughter bought the mountain (and later much of the surrounding property), it took many years and quite a few confrontations before the hunting stopped. The passage and enforcement of federal law protecting all migratory birds - especially raptors - from being hunted helped a great deal - once it was enforced.
Now, you can argue that all these rules and regulations - the duck stamps, licenses, etc. - are an infringement on your “constitutional” (although it is nowhere stated in the U.S. Constitution) right to kill whatever the hell you want, wherever, etc. Too many rules! Too much government interference!
We all know there are still too many people who break the rules because no one is going to stop them from doing what they’ve always done.
These are not the people Cabela’s has in mind, I think. Those hunters are the ones who know when to quit, who enjoy the sport but don’t break the rules and get nonhunters pissed off at them. If you look at a map of Pennsylvania you’ll see Hawk Mountain Sanctuary is surrounded by state game lands, where a licensed hunter can legally hunt every day but Sunday. Hunting and fishing draw as many people to the state as Hawk Mountain does, perhaps more, and the state does its best to promote both.
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| Enjoying, not hunting, the raptors on Hawk Mountain. |
It’s already the season for cross-bow hunting of deer in New Jersey, and shooting with shotgun is not far away. Many of the hunters give the meat to local kitchens to feed the homeless, if they don't take it for themselves. Suburban yards aside, there are too many deer eating the understory plants in our forests, which has a very great effect on birds and other animals in those forests. A hunt is needed.
There will be another bear hunt this year n NJ. Like the deer, the bear population has gotten out of control in the most populated state in the nation thanks to rules prohibiting their shooting and suburban sprawl into areas where once were woods.
This is one case when the rules do not help. Unlike raptors, bears are increasingly unafraid of humans and will do a lot of damage to you, your pets and your property, unless it becomes a large piece of roadkill, which is becoming more common.
And while it isn’t the animals’ fault developers have put people in areas they had no business being in, no one is going to suggest the town of Morris Plains, for example, exile all people and let the animals go where they want.
(I know there are some people who would love this. These are the people who feed bear, or dismantle the traps the state puts out for them. At a recent Christmas party I met one person who went from meek little man to snarling, angry bear and threatened me for suggesting that a short bear hunt might be a good thing to minimize dangerous confrontations.)
The hunters on Hawk Mountain were not responsible people. Those who participate in New Jersey’s deer and bear hunts are responsible, if only because by buying those permits they are committed to following the rules. Those who don’t follow the rules should be caught and punished.
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| An all-too-common scene. |
I can’t, unfortunately, say the same for the deer or the bear.
When I moved to my home nearly 20 years ago the deer would scatter when you came up the driveway. No longer, although I‘ve figured out some tactics to move them off my yard and I keep all my plants behind netting to minimize the damage I‘ve learned they inflict.
As far as I know I have never had a bear pass through my yard and go after my bird feeders. I can’t say it will never happen. I don’t want to come face to face with a black bear, and I hope this year’s hunt is successful.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Earthbound
There comes a time every September when a cold front pushes through, the wind comes out of the north and the sky clears to a cloudless, brilliant blue.
Sept. 11, 2001 was one such day, unfortunately.
But so was this past Saturday, Sept. 15. It was a day many of us in the birding community were awaiting because it means many of the birds that migrate south to Central and South America in fall would be on the move, that north wind giving them a big push and allowing them to conserve their energy in flight.
Mid-September is when broadwing hawks, the smallest of the buteos (a group that include redtails), travel south in the greatest numbers. Having a cold front pass through in mid-September and on a Saturday made it ideal for people like me to travel to one of the many hawk platforms in New Jersey and hope for a good show.
It was by dumb luck that I found out Pete Dunne - NJ Audubon official, prolific author and hawk identification master - was going to be at Scherman Hoffman in Bernardsville, NJ, at the sanctuary’s platform to watch for hawks, and hawk his newly revised second edition of his 1988 book “Hawks in Flight: The Field Identification of North American Migrant Raptors,” written with David Allen Sibley and Clay Sutton.
Scherman Hoffman, a New Jersey Audubon sanctuary, has one of the easier hawk platforms to get to - you take an elevator to the third floor. No climbing unless you take the stairs.
Having Dunne up there was both fascinating and depressing. He knows his stuff and his enthusiasm is contagious. Somehow, he always saw the incoming raptors. He’d be autographing books, or talking to people about their birding experiences or imparting wisdom on the way to tell the difference between a turkey vulture and an eagle in flight (the vulture looks like a man walking a tightrope) and suddenly he’d call out, “There are birds by that comma to the left of the cloud, about to come into the blue!”
What? Which cloud? What comma? What birds?
You would think something big like an eagle would be easy to see high up on a clear day, but you’d be wrong. Broadwings, despite the distinctive white stripe in the tail and black border on the wings, are even harder to ID when they are way up there unless, like Dunne, you can tell it by its shape.
(Broadwings are compact and more elegant than the larger redtail, which Dunne considers “lumpy.” The fans of Pale Male would likely disagree.)
What we were waiting for here on terra firma are the kettles, those groups of anywhere from a few to a few hundred broadwings that circle in a group on a rising warm current of air and then circle around (as tho’ being stirred in a kettle) and use the centrifugal force to give them more speed when they stream out.
As we mere mortals started getting frustrated - where ARE they? - Dunne talked us through, at one point standing behind a woman and literally raising her binoculars until she could see them.
OOOH.
“Thousands of people would kill to have what we have right now,” he said of watching hawks in the sunshine, the birds more easily visible as the clouds increased.
The hardest part was standing for hours, desperately looking for a speck (at one point looking straight up), straining eyes, neck and back - especially the back - while trying to figure out what kind of bird we were seeing. After all, that's why we were there. I envied the couple who not only brought chairs but lunch in a cooler bag. They were in for the long haul and they were going to be comfortable.
The birds, meanwhile, soar above you, untethered to the land, seemingly weightless. For the moments I watch them I forget I am heavy, earthbound, as “lumpy“ as one of those redtails Pete Dunne made fun of.
Everyone needs to look up once in a while. Too often we go about our daily lives, in a rut, moving from point A to point B, and fail to see what’s flying over as we drive the highway or sit in the house with a videogame.
People need to learn. They need to get a book - maybe one of Dunne’s or one of the thousands of books now out there to help you find, identify or bring to your garden just about every type of bird out there - and learn something about birds and, by extension, something of the world around us.
At one point on the increasingly crowded platform, a young man of 16 started peppering Dunne with questions about the redtails he’d been seeing in his yard. As Dunne patiently answered his questions, looked at his photos and made approving noises about his illustrations of birds, I asked the teenager’s father about him.
His son has been birding since he was very small. They are always traveling around, the father driving and the son taking pictures. The father travels a lot for work, he said, and it is not unusual for him to take the red-eye flight home, get his son and go birding.
“So one day I’m in Singapore and the next I’m in Great Swamp,” he said with a smile, watching his hyperactive son.
It is good to see someone young and interested. Too often my husband and I are among the younger people in a crowd of birders. Interested young people won't sit by and do nothing when stupid people try to "overdevelop" the land or pollute the water or air.
Older people, if they have grown children and are lucky enough to have the time and be comfortable financially so they can afford the books and cameras and binoculars, will likely make up the bulk of those attending the conference Dunne is spearheading for New Jersey Audubon out of Cape May Oct. 26-28, a major money maker.
He’ll be charging people for the same tutorial he gave for free in Bernardsville.
Too often we are earthbound in our thinking. We are not the only species around. We are all interconnected.
That’s why we who are fascinated by birds stand or sit on the tops of mountains or man-made platforms and watch the hawks. We are all trying to survive. They are moving high above life’s constant turmoil from breeding grounds to below the equator where it will be summer while we have winter. We walk the Earth, also trying to get from point A to point B as well as we can.
While they face more danger, I think the birds do it with more style.
Sept. 11, 2001 was one such day, unfortunately.
But so was this past Saturday, Sept. 15. It was a day many of us in the birding community were awaiting because it means many of the birds that migrate south to Central and South America in fall would be on the move, that north wind giving them a big push and allowing them to conserve their energy in flight.
Mid-September is when broadwing hawks, the smallest of the buteos (a group that include redtails), travel south in the greatest numbers. Having a cold front pass through in mid-September and on a Saturday made it ideal for people like me to travel to one of the many hawk platforms in New Jersey and hope for a good show.
 |
| Pete Dunne |
Scherman Hoffman, a New Jersey Audubon sanctuary, has one of the easier hawk platforms to get to - you take an elevator to the third floor. No climbing unless you take the stairs.
Having Dunne up there was both fascinating and depressing. He knows his stuff and his enthusiasm is contagious. Somehow, he always saw the incoming raptors. He’d be autographing books, or talking to people about their birding experiences or imparting wisdom on the way to tell the difference between a turkey vulture and an eagle in flight (the vulture looks like a man walking a tightrope) and suddenly he’d call out, “There are birds by that comma to the left of the cloud, about to come into the blue!”
What? Which cloud? What comma? What birds?
You would think something big like an eagle would be easy to see high up on a clear day, but you’d be wrong. Broadwings, despite the distinctive white stripe in the tail and black border on the wings, are even harder to ID when they are way up there unless, like Dunne, you can tell it by its shape.
(Broadwings are compact and more elegant than the larger redtail, which Dunne considers “lumpy.” The fans of Pale Male would likely disagree.)
What we were waiting for here on terra firma are the kettles, those groups of anywhere from a few to a few hundred broadwings that circle in a group on a rising warm current of air and then circle around (as tho’ being stirred in a kettle) and use the centrifugal force to give them more speed when they stream out.
As we mere mortals started getting frustrated - where ARE they? - Dunne talked us through, at one point standing behind a woman and literally raising her binoculars until she could see them.
OOOH.
“Thousands of people would kill to have what we have right now,” he said of watching hawks in the sunshine, the birds more easily visible as the clouds increased.
 |
| A local "lumpy" redtail, hanging out watching the hawk watchers. |
The birds, meanwhile, soar above you, untethered to the land, seemingly weightless. For the moments I watch them I forget I am heavy, earthbound, as “lumpy“ as one of those redtails Pete Dunne made fun of.
Everyone needs to look up once in a while. Too often we go about our daily lives, in a rut, moving from point A to point B, and fail to see what’s flying over as we drive the highway or sit in the house with a videogame.
People need to learn. They need to get a book - maybe one of Dunne’s or one of the thousands of books now out there to help you find, identify or bring to your garden just about every type of bird out there - and learn something about birds and, by extension, something of the world around us.
At one point on the increasingly crowded platform, a young man of 16 started peppering Dunne with questions about the redtails he’d been seeing in his yard. As Dunne patiently answered his questions, looked at his photos and made approving noises about his illustrations of birds, I asked the teenager’s father about him.
His son has been birding since he was very small. They are always traveling around, the father driving and the son taking pictures. The father travels a lot for work, he said, and it is not unusual for him to take the red-eye flight home, get his son and go birding.
“So one day I’m in Singapore and the next I’m in Great Swamp,” he said with a smile, watching his hyperactive son.
It is good to see someone young and interested. Too often my husband and I are among the younger people in a crowd of birders. Interested young people won't sit by and do nothing when stupid people try to "overdevelop" the land or pollute the water or air.
Older people, if they have grown children and are lucky enough to have the time and be comfortable financially so they can afford the books and cameras and binoculars, will likely make up the bulk of those attending the conference Dunne is spearheading for New Jersey Audubon out of Cape May Oct. 26-28, a major money maker.
He’ll be charging people for the same tutorial he gave for free in Bernardsville.
Too often we are earthbound in our thinking. We are not the only species around. We are all interconnected.
That’s why we who are fascinated by birds stand or sit on the tops of mountains or man-made platforms and watch the hawks. We are all trying to survive. They are moving high above life’s constant turmoil from breeding grounds to below the equator where it will be summer while we have winter. We walk the Earth, also trying to get from point A to point B as well as we can.
While they face more danger, I think the birds do it with more style.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Seeing the Forest for the Tax-Ratables
I may be wrong, but I believe in the office of every New Jersey county, town or state person in charge of creating or maintaining a park there is a manual.
Its title is something like “How to Get State Funding.”
Somewhere in the first chapter it probably says the following:
“To be able to maximize the greatest number of limited resources, the park shall be created to have the broadest number of uses.”
That means, if you want a park it can’t just have trees and perhaps a path or two. It must have an area for ball fields or a playground or a basketball court or soccer area.
It must be a “multi-use facility.”
That brings me to the Central Park of Morris County, and the clear-cutting of the trees.
Ever since the county (for $1) bought the land New Jersey no longer needed when the state was forced (by bad publicity) to close the old, hulking Greystone mental hospital and build a smaller, modern facility at the western-most end of the property, the county has been making improvements.
One of the first things the county did was take down the abandoned stone buildings that used to house the inmates on either side of Central Avenue.
That was good. Those hulking buildings were dark and creepy, ghosts watching from the barred windows of the upper floors.
The buildings down and with all this land at its disposal, and all the time, effort and money expended to prevent trespassing, Morris County couldn’t just leave fields full of trees.
It started with a dog park, or “canine center“ as the county parks commission website calls it. I understand -- when you have a townhouse or condo or even one of the McMansions that have sprung up in the 20 years I've lived out here and your dog doesn’t have a big, fenced yard, you want a place to bring it.
Here’s what else is there, according to the website:
Two lighted, regulation-size, in-line skating rinks (that can be converted in summer for other sports). A baseball field for wheelchair activities. A 5K cross-country course.
That’s a lot of noisy activity on the south side of Central Ave., or “multi-use facility,” as it would be called in my hypothetical book. Not exactly the advertised “passive recreation” -- or hiking, as I call it.
Now the trees are down on the north side of Central Ave.
Now the trees are gone. The county has been cutting the trees for weeks. I’ve heard the sawing. I’ve seen the mountain of mulch.
Why?
What could the county NOW possibly be putting on that land between Cottage Rd. (the one that runs in front of the old administration building, which is state land) and the old hospital (currently under development; you can see it in the back of my photo)?
Soccer fields? A swimming pool? Maybe a condo village?
Who knows? I saw no notice of the county’s intentions anywhere.
I get it -- money is tight. If Morris County, one of the most built up in the most congested state in America, is going to create a park, it wants to get more bang for its buck. I think it did so.
I also think it should’ve created more hiking trails and left the trees alone.
But trees don’t pay taxes. Neither do the birds that nest and feed in them. It’s the same thinking that allows Parsippany to approve Whole Foods tearing down woods for a new store when there are half-empty storefronts throughout Morris County. In Livingston (Essex County) there is a completely deserted mall where the Borders used to be. Whole Foods could’ve had the whole thing to itself. But it wouldn’t have been paying taxes in Parsippany.
Or take Hanover, which allowed a developer to clear-cut property along Hanover Ave. for a shopping center, even though the nearby Cedar Knolls Plaza (formerly the Morris County Mall) and the Pine Plaza Shopping Center along Route 10, both also in Hanover, are half-empty.
You get the idea. Leaving woods alone is considered a “waste” of resources. Even my small borough is allowing 70 town homes to go up where a school used to be, which will make the Route 202 rush-hour traffic even worse since no one put in a traffic light for the residents to get into or out of the site.
Those park planners think they are giving us breathing room, and I suppose they are if you look at the over-development going on around us.
For those of us who think trees are important, there are still places to go. Some of these places are called National Wildlife Refuges.
They were created by the federal government with your tax dollars to protect the birds and animals that would otherwise be hunted to extinction.
To my thinking, they are also protectorates for trees, which in Morris County are also an endangered species.
Its title is something like “How to Get State Funding.”
Somewhere in the first chapter it probably says the following:
“To be able to maximize the greatest number of limited resources, the park shall be created to have the broadest number of uses.”
That means, if you want a park it can’t just have trees and perhaps a path or two. It must have an area for ball fields or a playground or a basketball court or soccer area.
It must be a “multi-use facility.”
That brings me to the Central Park of Morris County, and the clear-cutting of the trees.
Ever since the county (for $1) bought the land New Jersey no longer needed when the state was forced (by bad publicity) to close the old, hulking Greystone mental hospital and build a smaller, modern facility at the western-most end of the property, the county has been making improvements.
One of the first things the county did was take down the abandoned stone buildings that used to house the inmates on either side of Central Avenue.
That was good. Those hulking buildings were dark and creepy, ghosts watching from the barred windows of the upper floors.
The buildings down and with all this land at its disposal, and all the time, effort and money expended to prevent trespassing, Morris County couldn’t just leave fields full of trees.
It started with a dog park, or “canine center“ as the county parks commission website calls it. I understand -- when you have a townhouse or condo or even one of the McMansions that have sprung up in the 20 years I've lived out here and your dog doesn’t have a big, fenced yard, you want a place to bring it.
Here’s what else is there, according to the website:
Two lighted, regulation-size, in-line skating rinks (that can be converted in summer for other sports). A baseball field for wheelchair activities. A 5K cross-country course.
That’s a lot of noisy activity on the south side of Central Ave., or “multi-use facility,” as it would be called in my hypothetical book. Not exactly the advertised “passive recreation” -- or hiking, as I call it.
Now the trees are down on the north side of Central Ave.
 |
| The north side of Central Ave. seen from Cottage Rd. The old hospital can be seen at the back. |
I had hoped, fool that I am, the land would be left alone. The long grasses and very old trees had drawn wild turkeys, redtailed hawks, chipping sparrows, bluebirds, goldfinches, Eastern kingbird and others. I know because I hiked through that land and found them.
Now the trees are gone. The county has been cutting the trees for weeks. I’ve heard the sawing. I’ve seen the mountain of mulch.
Why?
What could the county NOW possibly be putting on that land between Cottage Rd. (the one that runs in front of the old administration building, which is state land) and the old hospital (currently under development; you can see it in the back of my photo)?
Soccer fields? A swimming pool? Maybe a condo village?
Who knows? I saw no notice of the county’s intentions anywhere.
I get it -- money is tight. If Morris County, one of the most built up in the most congested state in America, is going to create a park, it wants to get more bang for its buck. I think it did so.
I also think it should’ve created more hiking trails and left the trees alone.
But trees don’t pay taxes. Neither do the birds that nest and feed in them. It’s the same thinking that allows Parsippany to approve Whole Foods tearing down woods for a new store when there are half-empty storefronts throughout Morris County. In Livingston (Essex County) there is a completely deserted mall where the Borders used to be. Whole Foods could’ve had the whole thing to itself. But it wouldn’t have been paying taxes in Parsippany.
Or take Hanover, which allowed a developer to clear-cut property along Hanover Ave. for a shopping center, even though the nearby Cedar Knolls Plaza (formerly the Morris County Mall) and the Pine Plaza Shopping Center along Route 10, both also in Hanover, are half-empty.
You get the idea. Leaving woods alone is considered a “waste” of resources. Even my small borough is allowing 70 town homes to go up where a school used to be, which will make the Route 202 rush-hour traffic even worse since no one put in a traffic light for the residents to get into or out of the site.
Those park planners think they are giving us breathing room, and I suppose they are if you look at the over-development going on around us.
For those of us who think trees are important, there are still places to go. Some of these places are called National Wildlife Refuges.
They were created by the federal government with your tax dollars to protect the birds and animals that would otherwise be hunted to extinction.
To my thinking, they are also protectorates for trees, which in Morris County are also an endangered species.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
On the Move
After the better part of a month visiting my feeder, the ruby-throated hummingbird (or birds; at one point there were two) has not been by. I put out fresh sugar water and if there is no activity in the next day or two I will be forced to conclude she is on the move southward.
The nights have been cooler this month, for the most part, and many of the flowering perennials have that tired look, as if they know summer is coming to a close and they want to rest. For now the butterflies - swallowtails, viceroys, cabbage whites and the mighty monarch among others - are all over the butterfly bush and the bees love the rose of sharon, joe-pye weed and the late-blooming sage.
They know summer is ending, too, and they have to get moving.
There has been a lot of goldfinch activity. Goldfinches breed later than other birds, needing the late-summer seeds for their young to survive. Suddenly, there are flocks of young birds of all types noisily investigating the plants and the water dish in my backyard. Because the thistle plants are now seeding in those (increasingly fewer) areas where wildflowers and weeds are allowed to grow, I have put out two thistle feeders. Some goldfinches have come, joined by chickadees and titmice.
At Duke Farms the other day, the compost pile at the community gardens was covered with over 100 cowbirds, another sign summer is ending. Cowbirds, starlings, grackles, blackbirds form large winter flocks once mating and young-rearing are over. It always amazes me that cowbirds can create such large groups considering female cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of others. Somehow these young, growing up with surrogate parents of a different species, know to leave the nest and meet up with other cowbirds.
My peppers are finally growing but are slow to go red. My tomatoes, once again, are a disaster - no more! Most of the tomatoes I’ve used have been from farm markets and that will continue. I can only hope the peppers ripen before it gets cold. A friend has shown me how to keep basil going and I look forward, I hope, to having more herbs in winter.
There will be a lot of outdoor plants that will be on the move indoors soon.
Birds are on the move. There have already been reports of warblers seen in Central Park, and the hawk watch at Hawk Mountain has been open since mid-August. As of Aug. 25, the month’s total is 333!
Some people I know are already taking their college kids back to school, and soon their younger children will be heading back to classes, too. Vacation time is over.
The June bugs are gone and the cicadas, crickets and katydids are becoming more fervent in their mating calls. They can sense the days are getting shorter and their time is short.
Trees also sense the days are shorter. The leaves have been falling from my apple tree and the locusts for weeks, The dogwood’s leaves have red mixed in with the green. Soon enough the yellow will come to the elms, the red to the maples and the brown to the oaks.
Unlike those who want to live forever in their shorts and flip-flops, I don’t mourn the passage of summer. I like my weather cooler. It keeps me alert. It is easier to walk farther when I'm not weighed down by heat and humidity. I like looking for birds but it sure is easier watching them at the feeders than stomping through hot, muddy swamps and bug-filled woods.
But I must admit it is a shock to suddenly see it getting dark at 8pm, to wake to a darker 6 a.m., to hear my husband announce he just has to get in one last barbeque before Labor Day, and to realize I haven’t seen a hummingbird at the feeder in days.
August has been comfortable after July’s intense heat. September will be cooler still, and the hawks will soon be riding the winds out of the north along the ridgelines. I look forward to seeing some of them during this year’s southbound migration.
But sitting still on my porch in the dusk, I am also enjoying today.
The nights have been cooler this month, for the most part, and many of the flowering perennials have that tired look, as if they know summer is coming to a close and they want to rest. For now the butterflies - swallowtails, viceroys, cabbage whites and the mighty monarch among others - are all over the butterfly bush and the bees love the rose of sharon, joe-pye weed and the late-blooming sage.
They know summer is ending, too, and they have to get moving.
There has been a lot of goldfinch activity. Goldfinches breed later than other birds, needing the late-summer seeds for their young to survive. Suddenly, there are flocks of young birds of all types noisily investigating the plants and the water dish in my backyard. Because the thistle plants are now seeding in those (increasingly fewer) areas where wildflowers and weeds are allowed to grow, I have put out two thistle feeders. Some goldfinches have come, joined by chickadees and titmice.
 |
| Tiger swallowtail, a late summer visitor to the butterfly bush. |
At Duke Farms the other day, the compost pile at the community gardens was covered with over 100 cowbirds, another sign summer is ending. Cowbirds, starlings, grackles, blackbirds form large winter flocks once mating and young-rearing are over. It always amazes me that cowbirds can create such large groups considering female cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of others. Somehow these young, growing up with surrogate parents of a different species, know to leave the nest and meet up with other cowbirds.
My peppers are finally growing but are slow to go red. My tomatoes, once again, are a disaster - no more! Most of the tomatoes I’ve used have been from farm markets and that will continue. I can only hope the peppers ripen before it gets cold. A friend has shown me how to keep basil going and I look forward, I hope, to having more herbs in winter.
There will be a lot of outdoor plants that will be on the move indoors soon.
Birds are on the move. There have already been reports of warblers seen in Central Park, and the hawk watch at Hawk Mountain has been open since mid-August. As of Aug. 25, the month’s total is 333!
Some people I know are already taking their college kids back to school, and soon their younger children will be heading back to classes, too. Vacation time is over.
The June bugs are gone and the cicadas, crickets and katydids are becoming more fervent in their mating calls. They can sense the days are getting shorter and their time is short.
Trees also sense the days are shorter. The leaves have been falling from my apple tree and the locusts for weeks, The dogwood’s leaves have red mixed in with the green. Soon enough the yellow will come to the elms, the red to the maples and the brown to the oaks.
Unlike those who want to live forever in their shorts and flip-flops, I don’t mourn the passage of summer. I like my weather cooler. It keeps me alert. It is easier to walk farther when I'm not weighed down by heat and humidity. I like looking for birds but it sure is easier watching them at the feeders than stomping through hot, muddy swamps and bug-filled woods.
But I must admit it is a shock to suddenly see it getting dark at 8pm, to wake to a darker 6 a.m., to hear my husband announce he just has to get in one last barbeque before Labor Day, and to realize I haven’t seen a hummingbird at the feeder in days.
August has been comfortable after July’s intense heat. September will be cooler still, and the hawks will soon be riding the winds out of the north along the ridgelines. I look forward to seeing some of them during this year’s southbound migration.
But sitting still on my porch in the dusk, I am also enjoying today.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
If Only...
It took over 10 years of stopping, looking and listening; walking in federal, state and local parks, wildlife sanctuaries, wildlife management areas and swamps; listening to CDS of songs and thumbing through shelves of books, both my own and from libraries, to get myself even comfortably proficient with identifying land birds by sight and sound.
I learned by walking around, keeping my eyes open and not being afraid to stand very still (to the dismay of my husband) until what I was hearing popped into view so I could note a few field marks and then look them up later.
I am what I call an enlightened intermediate. There are birds that I don’t see often enough to be able to immediately identify, and I am still not good enough to be able to identify which little birds are flying overhead, tho’ I am better on the bigger birds.
But I am woefully bad when it comes to sea and shore birds, and it didn't have to be that way had I known what I had when I had it.
I grew up along the southern coast of Brooklyn, not far from Coney Island. Living in a coastal area is different from being inland, as I am now. The light is different. The summer temperatures are cooler. The thunderstorms are more intense.
At the time I was growing up in this part of Brooklyn, the only birds I knew were robins, jays, cardinals, pigeons and “sparrow,” most likely house sparrow.
At the same time, the areas along the coast were not exactly inviting.
What is now Gateway National Recreation Area was only in the planning stages. Plumb Beach, along what was once the Shore Parkway (now the Belt Parkway) was a small, dirty beach, a place my mother drove us to but warned us not to go into the water. Official signs had the same warning.
The area across the road from nearby Marine Park, where I‘d ride my bike, was a garbage dump. So was the area near the Kings Plaza Shopping Center off Flatbush Ave. The huge landfill across the Belt Parkway from the huge apartment complex known as Starrett City a few miles farther away stunk at all times of the year.
But when it stunk, gulls would hover looking for food. What kind? I couldn't tell you then. Gulls were gulls. NOW I could tell you but the landfill has been capped and is becoming a grassland. No more gulls. (It has only been with the help of a few photographs that I can say the predominant gull along the Sheepshead Bay waterfront when I was growing up was the herring gull.)
I left Brooklyn for college, marriage and a house in a New Jersey town far from the shore.
Meanwhile, the Brooklyn waterfront was changing. Gateway, the national park, stretches from Sandy Hook in New Jersey to the eastern coast of Staten Island, to the Brooklyn south shore to Jamaica Bay in Queens. Plumb Beach is part of it and was cleaned as a result of my federal tax dollars at work. Even the dump across from Marine Park is now a protected salt marsh.
People started noticing all the interesting birds passing through or staying to breed. After years of not thinking about that part of Brooklyn I was suddenly seeing mentions of great birding in the New York bird list.
I went back to Plumb Beach a few years ago en route to the larger Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge farther east, and saw many least terns, an endangered species in New Jersey, hovering, seemingly not bothered by the people windsurfing or laying there.
Least terns? At Plumb Beach?
I am very glad people recognized the importance of a clean waterfront and worked to create habitats where birds can feed and breed. People need to get away from the harshness of urban life and should be able to enjoy a natural area where they can find other creatures than mankind.
But I also wish it could've been so clean when I was actually living in the area, and had more of an interest in birding. That way I'd now be as proficient on shore birds, gulls and sea birds as those I must now turn to for help when I see something I can't identify.
Live and learn.
Maybe in another decade of birding I'll be able to finally stop kicking myself.
I learned by walking around, keeping my eyes open and not being afraid to stand very still (to the dismay of my husband) until what I was hearing popped into view so I could note a few field marks and then look them up later.
I am what I call an enlightened intermediate. There are birds that I don’t see often enough to be able to immediately identify, and I am still not good enough to be able to identify which little birds are flying overhead, tho’ I am better on the bigger birds.
But I am woefully bad when it comes to sea and shore birds, and it didn't have to be that way had I known what I had when I had it.
I grew up along the southern coast of Brooklyn, not far from Coney Island. Living in a coastal area is different from being inland, as I am now. The light is different. The summer temperatures are cooler. The thunderstorms are more intense.
At the time I was growing up in this part of Brooklyn, the only birds I knew were robins, jays, cardinals, pigeons and “sparrow,” most likely house sparrow.
At the same time, the areas along the coast were not exactly inviting.
 |
| Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. The Manhattan skyline is farther away than it looks. |
What is now Gateway National Recreation Area was only in the planning stages. Plumb Beach, along what was once the Shore Parkway (now the Belt Parkway) was a small, dirty beach, a place my mother drove us to but warned us not to go into the water. Official signs had the same warning.
The area across the road from nearby Marine Park, where I‘d ride my bike, was a garbage dump. So was the area near the Kings Plaza Shopping Center off Flatbush Ave. The huge landfill across the Belt Parkway from the huge apartment complex known as Starrett City a few miles farther away stunk at all times of the year.
But when it stunk, gulls would hover looking for food. What kind? I couldn't tell you then. Gulls were gulls. NOW I could tell you but the landfill has been capped and is becoming a grassland. No more gulls. (It has only been with the help of a few photographs that I can say the predominant gull along the Sheepshead Bay waterfront when I was growing up was the herring gull.)
I left Brooklyn for college, marriage and a house in a New Jersey town far from the shore.
Meanwhile, the Brooklyn waterfront was changing. Gateway, the national park, stretches from Sandy Hook in New Jersey to the eastern coast of Staten Island, to the Brooklyn south shore to Jamaica Bay in Queens. Plumb Beach is part of it and was cleaned as a result of my federal tax dollars at work. Even the dump across from Marine Park is now a protected salt marsh.
People started noticing all the interesting birds passing through or staying to breed. After years of not thinking about that part of Brooklyn I was suddenly seeing mentions of great birding in the New York bird list.
I went back to Plumb Beach a few years ago en route to the larger Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge farther east, and saw many least terns, an endangered species in New Jersey, hovering, seemingly not bothered by the people windsurfing or laying there.
Least terns? At Plumb Beach?
I am very glad people recognized the importance of a clean waterfront and worked to create habitats where birds can feed and breed. People need to get away from the harshness of urban life and should be able to enjoy a natural area where they can find other creatures than mankind.
But I also wish it could've been so clean when I was actually living in the area, and had more of an interest in birding. That way I'd now be as proficient on shore birds, gulls and sea birds as those I must now turn to for help when I see something I can't identify.
Live and learn.
Maybe in another decade of birding I'll be able to finally stop kicking myself.
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