Survival Strategies

Canada Geese

While walking into the local Stop & Shop, I noticed the motionless body of a bird lying on the sidewalk in front of the plate glass window advertising Memorial Day sales. Another window strike, I thought, checking to be sure the bird was dead and not just stunned.
It was dead, but its brown back, buffy eyebrow stripe, striped yellowish underparts and striped throat told me it was a male Northern Waterthrush, a warbler that prefers swamps and wet woods, and whose song adorns spring’s dawn chorus with its "sweet sweet sweet chew chew chew" notes. I contemplated this bird’s recent migration route from the mangroves of Central and South America, braving wind and weather, pesticides and predators, just to smash its brains in on a grocery store window.
I found myself wanting to trade off the life of the Waterthrush for another, more ubiquitous and undesirable bird, say, a House Sparrow, an invasive species you never see crumpled in front of a window but chirping madly while feeding another batch of fledglings in the arborvitae. Guilt sets in as I realize I am placing greater value on one life than another, simply because there are more of them. Lots more. We denigrate what we have many of and place a higher value on the few. But you don’t have to think past the Passenger Pigeon, whose numbers once darkened the skies with the passing of their flocks, and for that reason, humans took for granted there would always be Passenger Pigeons and shot them for fun, killed them for the pleasure of seeing them rain down from the sky, never dreaming a day would come when there would be none left.

House Sparrow

We eschew House Sparrows, Starlings, Canada Geese, Cowbirds. We call them air rats and waste birds. But when you think about it, they have developed strategies that have enabled them to thrive despite our endless meddling. And since the number of birds worldwide is plummeting with no end in sight, there might well be a day when the only birdsong we hear will be the honking of Canada geese as they land on the golf course, and we will be grateful for the last of the House Sparrows trembling in the arborvitae.

Wordless Wednesday

Skinnydipping in Time

Ah. Today, Memorial Day, is my last day of vacation. It is officially a holiday, but since it was attached to five days off work from last week, it served as a bonus.
But as The Return to Work edges closer, I am picking up the reins of self discipline, especially when it comes to writing. You can only let yourself get away with so much lack of it before you go brain-dead. Let’s face it; there is a place for structuring your time, and a place for letting it go, like dropping your clothes to go skinnydipping in a secret pond. You have to come out and get dressed sooner or later or risk getting water-logged, or in this case, time-logged. Too much time, like too much water, can leave you soggy and heavy and aimless, though I confess never to have gotten to that point in my entire lifetime. But I know of others who have, either through retirement or unemployment, when the initial flush of being released from the harness becomes wandering lost in the fields of unstructured hours.
In this, I intend to be like my mother, who has remained active in one way or another throughout her retirement years in sunny Florida. She and Dad have been happy because of their innate curiosity about things they have not yet figured out in their 85 years on this earth.
Someday, somehow, I hope to follow them, not to Florida, but in the freedom of time to invest myself. In fact, I have a growing list:

• Learn to quilt. Since I don’t know how to sew, this might be interesting.
• Volunteer at an animal shelter.
• Learn more about Linda Tellington Jones TTouch training and interspecies communication, and then use it.
  
• Volunteer at a food pantry.
• Work in the yard on cool summer mornings.
• Go birding.
• Ride a nice slow horse when kids are in school and the barn is quiet.
• Volunteer at the barn once or twice a week.
• Bake my own bread. Not with a bread-making machine either.
  
• Assist Nina at Red Barn Farm with her organic vegetable farm.
• Write. A lot.
  
• Take a photography class or two, or three.
  
• Exercise.
• Go birding.
• Learn Html
  
• Attend another BlogHer conference.
• Visit friends and family in other states.
• Learn how to do wallpapering.
• Go birding.
• To be continued….

What would your list look like?

Memorial Day 2009

Do not forget.

Returning to the Blogosphere

My apologies for dropping out of the blogosphere for so long. I thought about posting, but did not feel like sitting down to write anything, so allowed myself the luxury of free-rein writing in my notebook instead. But even that was sporadic.
I started a personal journal in 1969. Months would go by without a single entry, and then there would be a flurry of writing while the next life decision would be figured out. While my consistency has improved these past five years, I still wander off occasionally but have learned to accept it as part of the process of living. Eventually I come back to the barn on my own.
I enjoyed a trip to Vermont last week to visit family but had to cut my visit short to return home to see a chiropractor. Turns out phase 2 of my “involuntary dismount” off a horse two months ago kicked in with the growing pain of sciatica. The doc took x-rays and showed me what was going on in my lower back, and pointing out that a slightly displaced vertebra in my neck that was causing a kind of pulling sensation was the “same one that sliced through Christopher Reeve’s spinal cord.” Which unnerved me a bit, if you will excuse the pun. He was quick to point out; however, that it is better to ride a horse than to sit on the sofa (which I never do anyway).

But enough of that. I don’t like to dwell on health issues.

Here is why I love going to Vermont:

My sister with her granddaughterEd putting up the new bat house.

Red-winged Blackbirds (male at top of reed on right, female below)

Tree Swallow without firearms

Bobolink!

View from the deck.

World Series of Birding Passaic County Peewee Team

Sorry not to give more detail about the World Series of Birding yesterday but I am whipped. If anyone tells you birding is easy, do not believe them. It is hard on the body and the mind, but mighty good for the soul.

Meet NJ Audubon World Series of Birding Team:
Passaic County Peewees at Garrett Mountain

Red-tailed Hawk

Black Vultures

Bird of the Day: Resting Common Nighthawk

NJ Audubon World Series of Birding

This Saturday is the NJ Audubon World Series of Birding, a major fund-raiser for this worthy and hard-working NFP organization. Teams come from all over the world to participate in this 24-hour, bird-all-over-the-state competition, and the group with the most species seen and heard gets an awesome prize, and NJ Audubon gets a big chunk of change. Win-Win.

You are supposed to get family, friends and co-workers to pledge a certain amount of money per species (the suggested pledge is $1.00 per). My team, the Passaic County Peewees, is doing a Century Run, which means we will work (play?) for 12 hours nonstop and will probably tally over one hundred species by the end of the day. Many of my friends and family are struggling and/or have lost their jobs, so I will just write my own check and hope that will help a little.

I have not participated for two years and am looking forward to spending dawn to dusk wandering the woods and trails, parking lots and reservoirs, to get sweaty, dirty, muddy and gooey with a bunch of other people who want to do the same thing, just to look at birds. “How many do we have now?” will be the mantra of the day.

The hardest part will be climbing out of bed in the middle of the night to search for owls. If I don’t do this I will regret it when the others carry on about the Great Horned Owl on the pine branch, or the Screech peering out of a hole or hearing the Barred Owl cooking for you. So on Friday night, I will get myself organized, put the scope and the binoculars and the bird guide in the car along with the sunscreen, Deep Woods Off, water, snacks and camera. I hate to forget anything.

If you are planning on driving ANYWHERE in New Jersey this Saturday, keep an eye out for a lot of crazy birders motoring around with eyes akimbo. Maybe count them, and donate a dollar per birder to NJ Audubon….

Will let you know how we fare!

Birding by Ear

I have spent these last couple of weeks on my daily work commute listening to the calls of migrating birds. New Jersey is a major migratory flyway, so many of these birds stop to rest and feed before completing their incredible journeys. Wherever the birds stop to rest, you will find someone looking at them, especially during the most exciting month of the year: May. Like, NOW.
The point of birding, of course, is to see it, but there could be any number of obstructions preventing that, including distance, physical obstacles (fully leafed-out trees) property boundaries, or if a species is secretive, you can identify it by its song. Nonbirders roll their eyes at this, but I will bet you can identify some birds by ear yourself: the raucous call of a Crow, the tweedle-tweedle of a Blue Jay, the cheery-ay, cheery—ee of a Robin. Add to that the dee-dee-dee of a Chickadee, the honking of Canada geese overhead, and there you go: You can identify almost half a dozen birds by sound alone!
Some birdsongs are easier than others because their songs sound like actual words or phrases. Nmnemonics are priceless in helping me remember.

“Pleased, pleased, pleased to meetcha!” Chestnut-sided Warbler.
“Fire! Fire! Where! Where! Here! Here!” Indigo Bunting.
One of my favorites is the Warbling Vireo, a plain looking bird with a complicated song: “When I see you I will seize you and I’ll squeeze you till you squirt!” This is a great imitation trick to do at parties. You will amaze your friends, if they don’t also think you a little odd.
“Maids, maids, maids, put on your tea kettle kettle kettle:” Song Sparrow.
“Chick-burr!” Call note of the Scarlet Tanager.
Some will tell you their names:
“Killdeer, killdeer, killdeer!” Strangely, the bird that sings this is a….Killdeer.
Fee-bee! Fee-bee! The Phoebe, one of the first of the Flycatcher family to return in spring.
I drive with the windows open, especially going past wooded areas and tick the birds off by song alone. I know when the Ovenbird has arrived and is skulking through the forest understory: “Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!” When I hear “Trees, trees, murmuring trees,” that tells me the first wave of Black-throated Green Warblers have returned, soon to be followed by the Black-throated BLUE Warblers: “Meer, Meer, beer, MEEEEEE!”
Another favorite is the song of the Olive-sided Flycatcher: “Quick! Three beers!”
Which is a mighty good idea after a good day of birding….