Peek-a-boo, I see you!

According to the Audubon website, the Black and White Warbler, Mniotilta varia, is a great bird for beginning birders because it is so easy to see and identify.  That’s what happened with me when I joined Leslie Day’s bird identification and bird walking class at the New York Botanical Garden last Wednesday, April 27.  I had my binoculars, and I walked through the forest area of the NYBG looking for birds.  We saw lots of red-winged blackbirds, a catbird, American robins, and house sparrows, but the prize for me was the Black and White Warbler.  

What made it so special was that it kind of put on a little peek-a-boo show as it made its way down a tree trunk.  It would come to one part of the trunk where it was visible and then disappear only to reappear on the other side.  Our group of ten or so adults stood in rapt attention watching this little bird make its way around and down the tree in its search for insects in the bark crevices.  Even though it was far away, I could swear it looked at us and made eye contact as it circled the trunk, and I tried to show that tiny catch of the eye in my quick sketch of the little warbler.  

I drew this on Dura-Lar, a vellum-like film.  I rarely draw on translucent paper like this, but I found it fun because it is smooth and it is possible to color on both sides to make the colors deeper and the whites stronger.  I’ll be experimenting with this more.  Meanwhile, I am looking around to play peek-a-boo with another one of these warblers.  But take note, the behavior of the black and white warbler is unlike that of other warblers and more like that of the nuthatch or creeper. 

Bats to you!

I’ve been reading about the beginning of baseball season and thinking about my dad and my brother and my brother-in-law and their relationship and love of the game.  All men, but baseball is not only for men as we know—remember “League of Their Own” and the amazing Mo’ne Davis, the teenage female baseball sensation a couple of years back.  Anyway thinking of baseball season, my thoughts turn to mitts, balls, and of course bats and that draws me back to nature.

Bats, especially those used by professional players, are usually made of white ash Fraxinus americana, a wood known for its clean grain and strength—to get technical white ash is called “ring-porous,” which means that for every year of growth there are concentrations of large earlywood cells and then there is a transition to smaller latewood cells.  So there are lower rings per inch, which makes for stronger bats.  Here’s another fact—bat manufacturers put their logo on the flat-grain face of the baseball bat and baseball players know to hit with the logo up.  That way the baseball, if it makes contact (as it did not when I played the game),  hits the edge-grain of the white ash bat.  This is analogized to hitting the edge of a deck of cards and doing that keeps the bat strong and intact. 

Anyway all this might be moot because white ash is a threatened species of tree.  Fraxinus americana is threatened by the insect you can see in my drawing—the emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis, sad to say a rather pretty insect that was first found in the US in Michigan in 2002 probably in a shipping crate arriving from its native Asia.  Since 2002, the EAB has killed hundred of millions of ash trees in North America.  It doesn’t kill the trees by eating the leaves although it does that; what is the killer is that its larvae feed on the inner bark of the tree.  That disrupts the tree’s ability to transport water and nutrients.  The Emerald Ash Borer website has lots of information about what to do to prevent further damage to the white ash trees, certainly not because of baseballs bats, but because these trees are a treasure; their fruit is a source of nutrients for small mammals, song birds, and ground birds.  To help you recognize these beautiful trees, they have pinnately (feather-shaped) compound leaves that are green on top and whitish underneath, hence the name.  So next time, you go to a baseball game and hear that crack of the speeding ball hitting the bat, think about white ash and what we can do to keep it alive and thriving. 

Spring Awakening

Drawing of Saucer Magnolia

    I was awakened last night when my dog started barking at the thunder and lightning that lit up our room while the hurricane strength winds blew through the apartment.  Spring is a wild season—days in the 70s, days in the 30s follow one another.   This morning I walked out to Broadway to see if they were still in bloom-the magnolia flowers on Broadway malls from the 80’s to the 90’s.  Although debris from overturned garbage cans and limbs of other trees littered the streets, the blossoms of the Saucer Magnolia, Magnolia x soulangeana, hung on.  Saucer magnolias, like most magnolias, have flowers before leaves.  The big 6”-9” wide pink and white flowers are an early sign of spring and one that is appreciated by the many who sit on benches on Broadway when the sun is out and the days are warmer.  Saucer Magnolias are a hybrid of two Chinese magnolias, the Yulan magnolia, Magnolia denudata, and the Mulan magnolia, Magnolia liliiflora,  A French horticulturist, Étienne Soulange-Bodin, crossed the two popular Chinese magnolias in 1820 and was pleased with the result of his work, the tree named after him, the Magnolia soulangiana , or Saucer Magnolia that first bloomed in 1826.  It is now one of the most popular types of magnolias for street and urban plantings.

   In the warmer days last week, I saw little kids sitting on the Broadway benches in the medians with their various caretakers, pointing at and talking about the “flower” trees.  A few were drawing them.  There were also the older people who year after year sit on benches in the medians, chatting, enjoying the sun, and adding their own life energy to the urban world in which they live.  Street trees, flowering and in leaf are a source of color, a source of food for wildlife, and a source of beauty for a neighborhood of brick buildings and concrete sidewalks. 

   For me, seeing the saucer magnolias inspires me to draw again.  I have waited through the winter for the spring buds, flowers, new green leaves, and birds to get out my pencils, colors, and paper and start to draw.  I encourage anyone who reads this to do the same.  

Duck Greetings

Sienna Muscovy Duck Beth Bergman photo

How many times does a talk start with a standing ovation?  Well, it happened on Wednesday, March 23, 2016 when Leslie Day, Beth Bergman, and I gave a talk about The Field Guide to the Neighborhood Birds ofNew York City at the Wild Bird Fund on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  We walked in the door and who greeted us but Sienna, a full-grown beautiful Muscovy duck, Cairina moschata,  as you see in Beth Bergman’s great photo shown here.  Sienna, like all the birds at the Wild Bird Fund (WBF from now on) is a rescue bird.  Rita McMahon, founder of this incredible site of daily miracles, told us that the WBF takes in more than 3,500 injured, sick, or abandoned birds a year and when possible, helps them get strong and healthy so they can be released to the wild again.  A few years ago, Alan and I put into the WBF's care two baby pigeons, Columba livia domestic, birds we had found in Riverside Park (and by the way, despite what most people say, there are baby pigeons. They just grow very fast and look more grown up than they are).  The babies had been left in a cardboard box with an old pillow for a bed—no water, no food, and no ability to fend for themselves.  Rita found that they were buggy but healthy and with the WBF’s fine care, they grew into exquisite adult pigeons. 

Back to Sienna—this people-friendly duck happily went from person to person.  Then when she was helped onto a chair she stood there and gave us our ovation before we said a word.  We petted her and talked with her while listening to the cooing pigeons in the background.  When more people arrived and the door was open, Rita wrapped a towel around Sienna and put her in her cage.  No one wanted Sienna to walk out onto Columbus Avenue and suffer any kind of mishap.  As it is, it is hard to tell how much walking out on the sidewalk she can do.  Sienna was found in the snow after someone left her there; perhaps she had been someone’s pet and they had let her go.  Her toes were frozen and as Rita informed me, “They self amputate.”  Oh my this beautiful duck has blackened ends on her toeless feet, but she still trusts and wants to get near to the humans she meets.  It is heartening to know that thanks to the excellent care that Sienna got, this friendly duck will be moving to a nature sanctuary sometime later this year.    

The room filled up until there was not an empty seat, so perhaps it was good that Sienna had gone to her private cage-home.  We began our talk to the sounds of pigeons and peahens, to the arrival of a box filled with an injured red tailed hawk, to the good vibes of the WBF members, as well as to the smiles and warmth of Rita and the rest of the staff at the WBF--an amazing staff totally dedicated to the needy wildlife in our big bustling city.  The Wild Bird Fund is a treasure found right on Columbus Avenue between 87 and 88th Streets. 

First day of Spring - March 19 or 20 ???

Wood Duck Egg drawing

I was in the elevator holding my bag of laundry when a little girl asked me why spring was on the 20th and not the 21st.  Her mother raised her eyebrows and shoulders and shook her head.  I said that it was something to do with the vernal equinox. I realized that I had been wondering about this too.  When I was that little girl's age, spring used to arrive on March 21, but that was back then.  Now with atomic clocks, better calculations, the equinox, and leap year day, in 2016 it is arriving either on the 19^th or 20^th depending on your time zone.  In the EDT zone of New York, spring came in at 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 20, but in other times zones in the U.S. it occurred late on Saturday -- in CDT zone it was 11:30 p.m.; MDT zone, 10:30 p.m.; and PDT zone as in California and Oregon, 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 19.  That is really early. Keep in mind that no matter what our clock time says, the equinox itself happens at the same moment worldwide.  

Okay, let’s take a closer look.  As we know a year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds long.  It’s kind of like the Olympics where every second counts.  Part of the reason for the early spring goes back to 2000 when there was a leap year even though we know that years divisible by 100 do not have February 29, but those divisible by 400 do. (see my February 29 post).  So rather unusually 2000 was a leap year.  This made a difference in the calendars to come and equinoxes and solstices will occur earlier.  Bob Berman’s great column for The Old Farmer's Almanac explains this in even more detail.  But getting back to the vernal equinox:  Equinox, a lovely word that comes from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night).  Vernal is from the Latin vernalis and refers to spring.  I knew a man named Vernal once; he told me he was born on the first day of spring.  Anyway on the equinox, Earth’s two hemispheres receive close to an equal amount of sunlight, but in actual fact they are not totally equal. Oh dear.  What are we to believe?  

So this year we have a very early spring, the earliest ever in our lifetimes, and I’m here to say, let’s celebrate it.  And to do that, maybe we should try to test out the ancient folklore that you can stand a raw egg on its end on the equinox.  I’ve read a few different findings on this one, so I decided to try it in my kitchen.  One egg did stand for about a second; the others rolled right over.  It may be that my kitchen was not the best place to try this.  But it is cold out today; they are even predicting snow.  Yuck!  So I thought I’d just put a wood duck egg that I drew for the Field Guide on the blog where I know for sure it’ll stand nice and tall, equinox or not. Perhaps a glass of champagne is a better way to welcome spring in anyway.  

The Red, Red Robin bob, bob, bobbing into spring

American Robin drawing

We are at the time of year when we start to see the American Robin, Turdus migratorius, and I make a point of saying American because the European Robin Erithacus rubecula, is a different bird in a different species.  But we’ll stick with the American Robins, medium-sized birds in the thrush family, known to many because of their rusty reddish breasts, their worm-eating habits, and their beautiful blue- green eggs.  Robins are such a part of spring  and worms are such a part of robins that it makes sense that the March Moon is called "The Full Worm Moon,"  the time when worms start to emerge from the earth.

Although some American Robins stick around through the winter, we usually do not see much of them until early spring and then they are a harbinger of what’s to come—flowers, green leaves, baby robins, and lots of other spring births.  Robins are generally early risers.  Some researchers think they wake up and sing in the morning because they have more energy then.  Others think they get up to eat.  After all, they are worm eaters, and we all know “the early bird catches the worm.”  Those of us who like to take early morning walks often see robins pecking at the ground for a delightful raw wriggling protein-rich breakfast.  Robins actually have a somewhat varied diet; in addition to worms, they also enjoy a ripe piece of fruit, a juicy insect, and they are especially fond of tasty berries. 

If you see a muddy looking robin, it is probably a female building her multi-layered nest: first layer grasses, middle layer mud, and top layer more grasses, strings, and even hair.  Sounds rather cozy. They have as many as three broods a year.  Each clutch has 3-7 eggs (see the video of robin emerging from egg) that are incubated for about two weeks. Both parents feed the young and in about two or so weeks they leave the nest.  By the way, they often leave the nest unable to fly or fend for themselves.  They may move to different branches in the nest tree to try out life on their own, but some fall to the ground.  Good-hearted people sometimes pick them up and try to care for them, but most bird researchers suggest leaving them alone or maybe moving them to a nearby safer shrub.  Their parents are usually not that far away, and they come back.  They want to see what the little ones will do with some freedom.  Alas, many baby robins do not make it to adulthood; they are easy prey in the food chain. 

Robins come back; they often return to the same territory year after year.  Sometimes they build a new nest on top of the last year’s old one—not a bad solution to the housing crisis.  But for now, we look at them and to quote from Barbara Crooker’s poem:
“The robins. They come back. They pull the sun on the silver thread of their song.”