Resurgence

Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans.

  -- John Lennon

The blue iris that suddenly appeared. (Margo D. Beller)

Hello! It has been a while. Time has a way of running away when you're not paying attention. In my case a combination of Covid prevention, cancer treatments and work stress had kept me occupied and not in the best state of mind. But today, Memorial Day, I have gotten my weekend chores out of the way and I'm not working - perfect for gathering my thoughts and catching up.

Azaleas 2022
(Margo D. Beller)

Since I last wrote we had a less snowy but very cold winter followed by a bit of spring when the trees started to bud and the grass started to go green. Then, in late April into early May, it was damp and chilly, which was good for the outdoor plants but not for me, who was itching to put out my pepper pots before the little flies killed them. The same with my canna pots, covered in the garage. The cannas went out first - a month late - while it was still in the 40s overnight. Finally, around the time we went to visit family for Mother's Day, I put out the peppers, two types of basil I had bought at the local Agway and the pot of coleus I kept over the winter. All are enclosed in a wire cage, of course, because we still have plenty of deer. 

What we didn't have were migrating birds. By the time I took the feeders in for the summer, the migration radar I look at showed the strong winds out of the north and northeast that brought the cold and rain had detoured the birds coming up on the southerly  winds into the midwest. Then, many of them hung a right and flew over the mid-Atlantic region where I live and, eventually, into New England and beyond. 

Columbine, behind the deer netting. 
(Margo D. Beller)

Once we returned from New Hampshire (where we didn't have much in the way of warblers except for the pine, one of the earliest migrants) the heat came at us - midsummer heat in May with strong thunderstorms. The weeds started to grow in the front walkway and in the garden beds. If I wanted to walk it had to be early. One such weekday morning I went to Greystone as the sun was hitting a tree near the back path where I walk. It was filled with calling birds. I had a few such mornings, when I could force myself out of bed at first light so I would have time before work. 

The day after I should have put up the wren box, a house wren appeared at the water dish when we happened to be sitting on the porch, and then it flew off. The box went up (my husband spotting me as I went up the ladder at the dogwood tree) but no bird has come. Same with the hummingbirds - nothing, despite my feeder and the pink flowers of the geranium and coral bells in back, the red azeleas in front and the purple columbine everywhere. (Usually I start seeing hummers in June but I start putting sugar water out in May because, as they say, you never know.)   

By the time we took our annual trip to Old Mine Road to listen for the territorial calls of breeding birds (in the ridges near the Delaware Water Gap) I knew migration was just about over. This was the point when I started doing garden chores, including using my edger around the ornamental grass garden and lugging soil and mulch to the area behind the porch where the heavy rains had eroded the dirt and left it muddy when I'd go out with the feeders. Now, no more mud (but no more feeders either, until maybe Labor Day).

Lenten rose 2022 (Margo D. Beller)

There have been birds around my yard, singing as I have worked or sat on my porch - red-eyed vireo, titmouse, chickadee, cedar waxwings, various woodpeckers and what I call the Big Four of robin, catbird, cardinal and song sparrow. (The juncos and white-throated sparrows are long gone.) There has also been a mockingbird that does a very good imitation of a Carolina wren, so good that when a real wren was singing I had to listen hard to make sure of it. We even had some warblers passing through including an orange-crowned that spent the day calling from a neighbor's bush, a Nashville (my 100th yard bird) whose large eye ring makes identification simple and a few blackpolls, whose call I associate with the end of migration (this bird has one of the longest migration routes).

Peonies, again behind deer netting.
(Margo D. Beller)

The snowdrops, crocus and glory of the snow started the growing season. Then the daffodils, which did very well this year, as did the azaleas, the irises and the hyacinth. The columbines in front and back decided to flower, the peony finally opened its big, red flowers and the rhododendron is tall and healthy with pink flowers that bloomed as the azaleas were fading. As usual, I was relieved when the sedums, the coneflower, the rose of Sharon and the liriope started growing again and now the peppers (including one I bought to hedge my bets) are showing signs of life.

There were also some surprises. For the first time in many years, a blue iris appeared in one of my garden plots, in the same spot as last time. I still don't know where it came from but I welcome it. I also discovered a jack in the pulpit under my hedge among the usual weeds - this is one plant I am not touching as I yank out the others. One sunny day I found a garter snake in one plot, and I am hoping it sticks around to keep down the chipmunks. The Lenten rose, which at one point I thought had been killed by the cold, bloomed profusely and only now those flowers have faded and been covered by large, green leaves. 

Another surprise: Last year there were three milkweed plants that suddenly appeared near the lilacs. This year there are eight. I am hoping that this year they bloom and help the endangered monarch butterfly population.

The area behind the porch where 
I put down heavy buckets
of soil and mulch.
(Margo D. Beller)

There have also been weeds, of course. One early morning I took out the lopper to get at the ones I could not reach because of the deer netting. The bigger ones I could reach over and pull out. I could easily identify ragweed and garlic mustard but another one looked like it could be a wild sunflower. However, when it is in the wrong bed it is still a weed. I found more of them in other areas and pulled them out, except for one in a place where it doesn't threaten anything so I can leave it and see what it becomes. 

The weeds made me despair, as usual, but this year I've decided to put down sheets of black garden fabric (weed block) to kill those near the compost pile (which finally got turned and the rich soil removed), in an area erroneously known as the "dead area" but is anything but. We now have someone to cut and edge our lawn regularly, and that not only makes the grass look better while keeping down the ubiquitous ground ivy but it makes me determined to do something with those areas not mowed.

Also sprouting: fences. Neighbors on either side of me decided to put in solid, white, vinyl privacy fences. To do that, one neighbor cut down the bush that worked very well as a privacy fence and also fed the local deer. (I can only wish I had a fence to block the goings-on of the neighbor along the long side of my yard, who hacked down the forsythia and other plants that had obscured our yards a few years ago.)

The fence replacing the bush: vinyl on 3 sides, wood in back.
The wood has since been painted white.
(Margo D. Beller)

This need for privacy comes out of the violent times we live in, and perhaps the lingering coronavirus. The younger people now living on my street want to keep their families contained and thus "safe" from the outside world. They do not seek me out; nor do I seek them out. I keep to myself. I try to be friendly but I frankly do not understand a lot of what is considered "modern" nowadays, and perhaps that showed. When my cancer treatment was at its worse during the summer I stayed indoors and the weeds ran rampant, including along our front walkway. This year, I am well enough to regularly spray my walkways with a cocktail of vinegar and salt - easy to make and not lethal to birds while it kills the weeds. 

There is much more that needs to be done - gutter cleaning, power washing, cutting back some overgrown trees - but not today. For today, at least, I can enjoy the early coolness (before the expected July-like heat) and the quiet (before the inevitable suburban cookout gatherings) that come with a work holiday. 

 

Time Passing

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

-- John Steinbeck

When I am walking in a familiar place in one season, I can't help remembering the birds I saw in the same place in another season, usually in another year.

So when I took a winter walk the other weekend in the Central Park of Morris County (but what I still call Greystone for the mental hospital that once stood there), I saw what is and what was.

Greystone administration building, razed not long
after this picture in 2015 (Margo D. Beller)

Let's start with the symbol of Greystone, the Kirkbride administration building. There was a battle over the abandoned building, which was ultimately torn down because that was cheaper than preserving it. Plans included turning it into apartments, which would've greatly changed this area with increased traffic. Now it is a wide-open field over which I've seen swallows and other birds hunting insects.

Conversely, there is an area at the outer edge of the property that was once a working farm. The structures were removed decades ago and the field became overgrown. When this area was turned into a county park a number of trees were cut down and the land cleared. Paths were cut through, intended for cross-country competitions but also used for walkers and joggers. Now the area has been replanted with different types of saplings in protective wrappings. In a decade, maybe less, this open space will become a forest.

As I walk this path in December it is cold and gray and the trees are bare, so I am thinking of what I have seen here in other seasons. Over here, a noise prompted me to look across the sapling field to find a herd of deer, including two bucks butting heads. Near the brook that runs through this field, a song sparrow was singing atop a downed tree. In yet another area, past a different field filled with blooming goldenrod and ragweed, a flock of migrating palm warblers. Here, in a tree over a field of milkweed, is a vesper sparrow, an autumn visitor, distinctive for its white eye ring.

The same area after the debris was removed, 2018.
(Margo D. Beller)

But today it is quiet and windy. I look at the tree where just a month ago I watched flocks of robins, cedar waxwings, starlings and bluebirds gorge on seeds, insects and the fruiting vines as white-throated sparrows called to each other from the field below. The tree is now bare, the birds laying low and quiet except for a couple of song sparrows alarmed by the guy running along the path with his dog. The dog wants to check me out but his owner calls to him and they continue on. Other walkers, some wearing headphones, ignore me so I am basically alone in this vast place.

I enjoy these winter walks and the solitude. Without the leaves the trees show their striking, sometimes grotesque, forms. I can see where past storms have sheared off limbs. It is easy to find the large nests of squirrels. 

Winter tree (Margo D. Beller)

But along with the starkness this time of year brings me a feeling of loss, of time passing, of death. The days are shorter, the nights longer and the year is ending. I think of friends and family no longer living. The darkness keeps me inside more than I'd like. These feelings come every year but they still hit me, sometimes in unexpected ways.

When I was here in November I noticed that many of the saplings had grown tall enough to be identifiable. This time, the leaves are down and I noticed several red cedars had also been planted. These conifers should grow much faster than the saplings, as well as provide little berries for the birds in winter. But at some point they will be overshadowed by the trees. I look at this field and try to imagine what it is going to look like. I know the landscape is going to look very different.

Saplings, November 2021 (Margo D. Beller)

For instance, the many types of sparrows I've seen in this open field are not found in deep woods and so will be moving elsewhere. This former mental hospital was altered to become a park to benefit county residents like me. But what about the birds and other creatures that were living here after the mental hospital closed but before the park was built? The wooded areas where I once found an assortment of birds are gone, cut down for soccer fields. Vultures that once roosted in trees along the main road have gone elsewhere because the area became too busy for them. 

There is good and bad to making massive changes. 

Both this area and I are changing, not necessarily for the better, and will continue to change as time goes on. Time can't be stopped. The year 2021 is ending. It has been filled with challenges, some pain but a lot of happiness. This year, in the midst of Covid-19, a lovely wedding. Next year offers the promise of a new grand-niece. Sometimes I dwell too much on the past and the future, so to stay sane I take these walks and try to stick to the present.

...And Through the Woods

When I met my husband (MH), his family was living in a town in Morris County, New Jersey. Over the years, the family has slowly migrated to central New Hampshire. 

First was MH's immediately younger brother, who had met a New Hampshire girl and eventually settled up there with her after college. Then MH's youngest brother migrated up there with his then-wife to look for a job. He also stayed and remarried after the first marriage ended. Once the grandchildren started coming, my in-laws moved to New Hampshire, too, leaving MH and me the only members of the family still in New Jersey, from which we had migrated from the city to a town not far from where his parents had lived..

Thus we've gone to New Hampshire for Thanksgiving for years as the children have grown and had children of their own. Coming from a suburb of New York City to a rural area gives me a chance to get away from work and observe a different area. I've seen the changes in this part of the state over several decades as other people have migrated up there to live either part time or full time. And, of course, I've watched the birds for ones I can't find at home.

A black-capped chickadee (Margo D. Beller)

MH's brother knows I am a serious birder and, considering he works at teaching people to look at, enjoy and protect nature, he always likes to test my knowledge.

So this year he asked me to guess which birds were currently coming to his yard, including his one seed and two suet feeders. One of them, the red-breasted nuthatch, is a rare visitor to my yard because I don't have the pine trees this bird prefers. I also don't get bluebirds (he has nest boxes for them). Aside from that, his visitors are what I typically get in suburban New Jersey: cardinal, chickadees, titmice, white-breasted nuthatch, song sparrows, juncos, downy and hairy woodpeckers, mourning dove, jays, robins.

But more recently he has also been visited by a Carolina wren, and after we left he told us a redbellied woodpecker came to the suet and he saw a redtailed hawk looking down from one of the trees on his property.

These were not visitors to this part of the state even 10 years ago, I believe, but, like the year-round human population here, that has been slowly changing.

Carolina wren, common to my feeder
but now appearing to the
north. (Margo D. Beller)

I recently read an interesting book, by the biologist Thor Hanson, about the effects of climate change and how plants and animals react to it. The sections of the book cover the four possibilities: adjust, evolve, move or die. When it comes to the birds, as the planet warms many species have expanded their territories northward into previously inhospitable areas. (The increase in the number of people putting out feeders when winter comes doesn't hurt either.) The birds already in those areas are faced with increasing competition for limited resources. Those birds, in turn, have to move or change the way they live in order to survive.

The appearance of a redtail near his property interests me in particular. In all our visits I've never seen a redtail in his part of the state. The more urbanized part of New Hampshire to the south, yes, particularly near the interstates where the hawks sit in a tree or on a lamp post and wait for a meal to appear below so they can swoop down and grab it. In my brother-in-law's area the more usual are redshouldered and broadwinged hawks.These birds usually fly south for the winter. What happens when they return to find redtails in their midst? Or what if this area warms enough that these birds fly south later than usual, or not at all?

Redtailed hawk (Margo D. Beller)

There are now more people on my brother-in-law's road who have either built new houses or converted their summer houses to year-end living. These people tend to be older, with children or visiting grandchildren, and are driving more luxury vehicles and trucks. As they come to the area, the forest disappears. The climate changes in subtle ways. If they put out feeders, the birds come during the winter. So do the hawks that feed on them.

Many of the common birds I see in my yard were once exclusively from south of my area: cardinal, mockingbird, Carolina wren, redbellied woodpecker. Now they are common in New Jersey. We don't think anything of it. But, as Hanson points out, climate change has slowly been prompting the flowers to bloom earlier than usual and bring out the insects, affecting what the migrating birds find when they are passing through during their long journeys from winter to breeding territories. Meanwhile, the yard birds benefit so why should they leave?

Male bobolink (RE Berg-Andersson)

The national Audubon Society believes there are nearly 400 bird species threatened by climate change and habitat devastation including 53 types of coastal birds, 69 types of Eastern forest birds and 39 types of grassland birds including the bobolink - a bird I once saw and heard in a field not far from the N.H. town where my in-laws moved. But that was many years ago. As people have migrated into areas once dominated by woods or grasslands, they have pushed out the birds that can't adapt or are forced to leave when humanity cuts down the forests, paves the dirt roads and generally warms the planet with car exhaust.

I don't know what we can do to hold back this tide, and that bothers me.

Space Invaders

Another gray morning. On my enclosed porch, my chair in the corner faces east to catch the rays of the rising sun. But the day is starting cloudy once again, with a stiff, cold wind out of the north-northwest.

As I stare out, sipping my coffee, the sky turns black. Thousands of dark birds, all heading norttheast, fill the sky, a veritable river of birds, more and then more still. I think of Audubon's description of the now-extinct passenger pigeon blackening the sky: "The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse..."

These birds, however, were common grackles.

You see them in small flocks for most of the year, but in winter these shiny, long-tailed birds mass in flocks of thousands.

Grackle flock, February 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Why certain types of birds do this is not known. Safety in numbers? A need to keep warm? Easier to find food? All of the above?

In my area of the country, the common grackle predominates. The much larger, aptly named great-tailed grackle is a bird of the southwest. I have never seen one, but I have seen the shore-loving boat-tailed grackles when I've been on one of the New Jersey or Delaware beaches. An easy way to tell the boat-tails from the common grackles is by looking for the smaller females. If she is brown, she's a boat-tail. If she's black, she's a common.

What they all have in common, besides their genus, is they can be pests, especially when they arrive in a cornfield, at a yard or mass along a boardwalk in large numbers. 

Female boat-tailed grackle (RE Berg-Andersson)

I've written before about the sudden arrival of literally a thousand common grackles on my lawn back in 2020, a year where we did not get much snow to keep these birds away. (As opposed to 2021, when we got too much snow.) I am fascinated by these extravagantly large flocks that appear out of nowhere, stay for a while and then leave for the next food source.

Grackles breed in northern New England, a healthy swath of Canada and into the U.S. midwest, according to the Cornell Ornithology Lab's range map. But they are found year-round throughout the eastern U.S., and that's where my New Jersey yard fits in.

These invasions in my yard generally take place in late autumn or early spring, before and after snow  covers the lawn. Grackles mass in fields and eat certain crops like corn, but in my area they can mass in parks and will eat just about anything including garbage or, in my case, bird seed. When I look through my open office shade and see one of these flocks showing up in my vicinity, the first thing I do is rush out to pull in my feeders. 

Once the feeders and I are safely back on the enclosed porch, I watch. The birds stalk the ground poking for worms, or fly into the corners (or my compost pile) where they can turn over leaves and search for insect larvae or other food. There is a loud chatter of "chuk chuk chuk" as dozens, hundreds or even thousands of birds call to family members. Then they fly to the next yard or, if I come outside, rise into the trees, continuing their chorus of "chuk" before flying off in small groups until suddenly the rest of the flock leaves.

Robin (Margo D. Beller)

Sometimes, I see fellow travelers. Robins also poke at the ground and turn over leaves for food and so join the grackle flocks, and then hang around after the bigger birds have left to find what is left over. I have seen grackle flocks include cowbirds, starlings or, rare for my yard, rusty blackbirds (named for a call that sounds like a swinging metal gate needing lubrication).

Starlings are interesting. At this time of year they also mass and you will see them flying and moving like a giant organism in the sky, almost like watching synchronized swimmers in the way they undulate as one. (Do a search for "starlings massing" and watch some of the videos to see what I mean.)  How do these individuals know to do that? I don't know.

What I do know is these invasions are another sign of approaching winter, and just as inevitable.

The Season of Quiet

During the summer I sit on the enclosed porch, look around the colorful and leafy yard and try to imagine the winter scene of bareness and gray. Now it's the opposite. I sit on my porch wearing a down coat and warm hat, my legs covered by a blanket, and try to imagine the leaves are still on the trees.

I am finally at the point in the year where the lawn services are done for the season, the town is no longer collecting leaves (which doesn't stop some neighbors from putting to the curb whatever last leaves may have fallen) and the majority of the trees and shrubs are bare. I am happy to have the quiet, but the continuing cold and grayness of many days plus the darkness at 5 p.m. make me restless, tired and, sometimes, down because my gardening is done and migration is long over. I feel shut in, and it does not help that we are close to the end of another year and there is a more contagious form of COVID-19 that affects even fully vaccinated people like me. That means another winter of avoiding people in the streets and not visiting friends or family. 

But at least there is no snow, at least not yet.

New Hampshire, November 2021 (Margo D. Beller)

To some it is soothing to have a blanket of snow on the ground, the white providing a nice contrast with the gray skies. Those who depend on snow for revenue from winter activities are very happy to have the snow. Those with the strength and energy to snowshoe, ski or snowmobile are also very glad to see the white stuff.

Not me.

It is when the snow falls that I feel my age and am at my most vulnerable. I think of last year when we had two feet of snow on our property. Will that next shovelful of snow from the back path make me breathless or have some sort of attack? How long will it take my husband (MH) to find me if I keeled over? My neighbors look after their own properties and are not inclined to help the people next door they don't know so well. We have no children or grandchildren so we hire someone to plow our long driveway. We do the rest, carefully, on the off-chance someone would want to visit. That has yet to happen.

Cardinal in winter (Margo D. Beller)

It has not been the best year for me. I look back on my health issues and am thankful I survived them and the subsequent treatments, and that MH has been here to watch over me and chauffeur me to medical appointments. I have been regaining my strength, trying to make up for lost time. But I can never be 100% again. I can't go back in time, much as I'd like to do.

So I sit bundled on the porch, refusing to confine myself to the house, watching the feeder birds, enjoying the quiet and looking ahead to the return of spring.

 

Sunday Silence

Once again I'm going old-school, attacking the autumn leaves with broom for my compost pile and the locust pods with rake for the town to take away.

Locust pods, a constant part of the autumn landscape.
(Margo D. Beller)

"Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection," according to Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau knew that wood ensured surviving a cold winter. However, eventually the woodpile would have to be replenished. It is an annual ritual, as expected as the seasons themselves.

I do not look at the locust pods I must rake every year with anything resembling affection.

It is that time again. I am outside in the early morning cool on a Sunday, enjoying some rare quiet, where the only things I hear are the scraping of my rake, the screams of the jay and the tapping of leaves and pods falling to the street in the breeze. It is rare because at this time of year the air is usually filled with the roar of leaf blowers and the stench of the gasoline that fuels them. But not at this hour on a Sunday. At least, not yet.

As sure as the sun rises in the east, during the weekdays the lawn services have been blowing every last leaf off my neighbors' properties. Those who don't use a service do the same on evenings and weekends. Also like clockwork, the articles have come out either directly blasting the use of blowers or making fun of them. But that makes no difference to those in suburbia who equate success with a neatly cropped, leafless lawn.

White-throated sparrows have come south to New Jersey.
(Margo D. Beller)

(Two anti-blower articles, as it happens, were sent to me by my brother-in-law, the teaching naturalist. He lets the wind takes care of what leaves fall on his rural NH property. His son, by contrast, uses a gas-powered, backpack-enabled blower on his property. He must wear ear coverings.)

I have a blower, an old, electric-powered model. I find that unless I am blowing leaves into a rough pile for my husband (MH) and me to rake into tarps, it is useless on the heavier pods. So I have been using a broom on the leaves matting the patio and a rake on the pods littering the driveway and the lawn. MH plans to do one last mowing soon to cut the grass he recently fed and mulch the leaves, and I want the pods out of the grass.

As in past years, I silently curse the person who, 40-plus years ago, thought locust trees would be a fine street tree. The locust leaves are very small but their stems fall and clump when raked. The dark brown pod contains the seeds the birds and squirrels and possibly deer eat and then spread through their poop or their digging. 

I recently finished reading a very interesting book on seeds and the lengths plants go to protect the seeds until they are ready to be expelled into the world and create more plants. During the summer the female locust put out greenish pods, some of which dried out and fell to the ground. But the pods didn't start falling in large numbers until they had developed the familiar tough brown casing to protect the seeds. Now, opening one of the pods, my hand was filled with small brown seeds. If I threw them on the lawn I might have a forest before too long.

Part of the fairy ring. (Margo D. Beller)

As I work I see all the ground ivy taking up space, happily fed along with MH's grass. In one area, a strange circle of mushrooms has sprung up, a "fairy ring." I'm not bothering to pick them because they are likely poisonous. The mower will do the work for me. 

There is always some good in doing this raking. It is another thing I do to prepare for the winter when I won't be working in the garden (except for possibly shoveling snow). When I stopped to straighten my back I could enjoy the increasing color of the leaves in my trees - red maple, brownish-yellow oak, yellow elm. The dogwood tree's red leaves haven't fallen but the fruit is long gone, and with it the catbirds. Now I hear the "old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody" of the white-throated sparrow, which finds my part of New Jersey just fine for winter roosting. I am hearing woodpeckers, including a pileated flying over the trees beyond my neighbor's house across the street. The air is cool, the exercise healthy. I've needed exercise after a summer spent mainly indoors due to heat, humidity and illness.

Now I am making up for lost time.  

Black vulture, a southern bird becoming more common
in the north. (RE Berg-Andersson)

At one point something casts a shadow and I look up to see nine or so black vultures circling, Black vulture is a southern species but, like the red-headed woodpecker, it is slowly extending its range northward as the U.S. continues to warm. These birds might be heading south, but maybe not. I also hear Canada geese honking from the nearby community garden. Canada geese migrate but some found suburban yards, parks and office lawns so pleasant they have stayed, bred and become as much of a pest as the deer.

I hear other birds, including a mockingbird making its rasping "this is mine!" call, no doubt guarding a fruiting tree or bush. Smaller birds are flying between the trees looking for insects to pry out of the bark, including the gold-crowned kinglet, another winter bird that typically doesn't hang around my yard. (It prefers pine forests.)

For now, I'm done. Have I removed every pod? No, but most of them. Did I get every leaf off the patio? Not by a long shot. There are plenty more in the trees to come down. They always come down, as sure as day follows night and autumn follows summer.

And, as expected, now I hear a distant leaf blower. By the time I get to the top of my driveway to put the rake in the garage, a second, louder, blower is going nearby. 

So much for Sunday silence.

Christmas in October

Red and green are the traditional colors of Christmas. There are differing reasons why. According to one site I looked at, use of these colors dates back to the 1300s. As the site puts it, many believe the green represents the eternal life of Jesus while red symbolizes his shed blood. 

Viburnum and berries, 2021 (Margo D. Beller)

However, a different site ties the red to advertising, specifically the suit Santa wore in Coca-Cola's first Christmas-themed print ad, which was extremely successful. The green is thought to be related to holly and other evergreens as part of the holiday's pagan past.

Right now, in October, you could say Christmas has come early for the birds.

The leaves of the viburnum in my backyard are a bright green, contrasting with the clusters of red berries that formed once the spring flowers faded. The same was true for the dogwood.

These fruits are important in the lives of the birds migrating south for the winter. When birds finish their overnight flights, they are very hungry and need food for the energy to continue their journeys. When it gets cold, insects are hard to come by unless they are pried out from under tree bark, as woodpeckers can do with their long, hard bills.

But for other birds, particularly fruit eaters such as robins, catbirds and cedar waxwings, my fruit-laden dogwood was like a big neon sign at a rest stop.

Dogwood berries and reddening leaves.
(Margo D. Beller)

The overabundance of rain we've had for most of this year has been very good to the trees and shrubs. This year a black cherry tree at the edge of my property was laden with fruit. At a certain point in the late summer, robins would fly out from the nearby yew hedge and pick off the cherries, sometimes being very acrobatic in the process.

These cherries are long gone. Several weeks ago I noticed the dogwood was covered with red berries. I also noticed red was coming into the green leaves. Nothing much happened except for the leaves getting redder each day. 

And then, boom: A catbird appeared from a nearby shrub and flew into the tree and moved throughout, eating. So did cardinals and house finches that didn't feel like eating my sunflower seeds. One weekday morning, as I was finishing my coffee on the porch, I saw movement in the tree and saw a small bird flitting around that turned out to be a very special guest, a Tennessee warbler - a first for my yard! It was a one-day wonder. Soon flocks of robins started hitting the tree and now just about all the berries are gone.

How did the birds know when the dogwood berries were ripe enough to eat? I don't know but I do know when the leaves had turned completely red, that is when the most birds showed up. So there may be a connection.

Black cherries before the robins got to them.
(Margo D. Beller)

Many plants fruit at this time of year. The yew hedge was filled with soft red berries eaten by birds and squirrels. The squirrels also seem partial to the small black berries that form in the privet shrubs. Crab apples are particularly prized by mockingbirds, robins and cedar waxwings.These are just a small sampling of plants whose fruits help birds during migration.  

And, of course, they also feed those birds that stick around for the winter, or those that stop their southbound flight in my area. So when the red berries of the viburnum ripen, perhaps after a few frosts, there will be food for the chickadees, titmice and other yard birds.

So these berry-producing plants (like the food from seed heads of spent flowers and weeds) are the gift that keeps on giving, both for the birds and me watching them.