Retiring NJ Observer

Hi all,

I am retiring this blog and continuing on J.E.A. Journal.

Counting and Listing Birds

CBC - GBBC - magic birding acronyms - these are all about counting birds. One is formal and full of requirements: The CBC is the Christmas Bird Count, a program of the National Audubon Society. According to their website "it's an early-winter bird census." Volunteers are grouped into regions and count birds for 24 hours on Christmas Day.

The GBBC - aka the Great Backyard Bird Count - was last weekend. I'm writing about it instead of doing it because I was home in New Jersey for one of the days and then flew to Illinois to visit my mom and dad and some sibs for the rest of the weekend. Maybe next year...



White-winged crossbill male in our yard in March 2009

 I love birding - I'm a more-than-casual observer but less than "life list" maker. We have several bird identifying books:  National Audubon Socity Field Guide to North American Birds - Eastern Region groups the pictures of birds by their color of the bird. Our new book is our Sibley's: The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North American (called Sibley's because it is written and illustrated by David Allen Sibley).  We can refer to both for more information about behavior, calls, habitat, migration and identification.

I also bought two "cheat sheets," that is, Peterson Flash Guides, laminated multi-panel bird identifiers that sit all year on the small round table by the windows that look out on our bird feeders. One is more than 100 species of commonly seen birds along hiking trails of the Eastern U.S. The other is all the "day-flying birds of prey seen in North America."

My intention is to create a list of birds that we see regularly in our feeders and another list of birds we see regularly in the fields and forests around our house - like the white-winged crossbill (we saw the female too) in the picture. I wanted to prepare these lists BEFORE the GBBC but time got away from me and then, when I realized I wouldn't be able to participate anyway, it got put on the back burner (but not too far back).

Wait - I do have a "life list" that I started in 2007 - so maybe I am a life-lister after all. We've seen a great variety of birds, ducks and hawks either at home or on our trips. In 2010 we visited Barnegat Bay and Lighthouse State Park, Cape May Point State Park and Hawkwatch, The Wetlands Institute (Wildwood), Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge and Sandy Hook/Gateway National Recreation Area (all but Cape May were firsts).

(For me the bonus was that I got to see the Barnegat and Cape May lighthouses along the way. Now that's a life list I'll have to make: lighthouses I have seen. But that's another subject. We also saw Fort Hancock in the Sandy Hook/Gateway area - but that's another subject too.)

Traveling and Not Posting

To my readers: I've been traveling lately and missed my Saturday (Feb 19)  post and will miss my Wednesday (Feb 23) post. But I'll be back next Saturday (Feb 26) with a new post.

I have great respect for bloggers who stick to a schedule. That is something for me to work on. I'm now sure that's why my instructor suggested that I post every day for a month - I'm learning about how to get pictures from the public domain. I don't know how to answer comments. I like learning though so ... I'll get it eventually.

Thanks for your patience.

Growing Our Own Watermelons and Pumpkins

Late last summer my 7-year-old granddaughter informed me that her mom (my daughter-in-law) told her that next summer she could be in charge of the family garden. “That’s great,” I said and didn’t think much more about it until I started looking for pumpkins for my front walk. They were expensive!

“I’ve got it,” I thought. Maybe my granddaughter and I can grow our own next year. When I told her my idea, she didn’t say a word. She just came over and hugged me. I interpreted that to mean she loved the idea.

Some days later this thought popped into my head: She and my husband, her Baba, love watermelon. Maybe we could grow our own watermelon too. After all, just pumpkins in our garden made it seem too lonely.

Now it’s February and I have begun to wonder what we need to do to “grow our own.” I asked my questions online: “growing your own …” fill in the blank. And I got a lot of options. I picked three and printed them.

Here’s some of what I learned:

• Watermelon require 70-85 growing days; pumpkins require 110-114 growing days.
• Both are planted on a small hill – watermelon about 6 feet apart and pumpkins about 3 feet apart
• Both need lots of sun
• Watermelon have about 5 melons per plant; pumpkins have 3-5 vegetables per plant.
• Pumpkins can be planted with companion plants like nasturiums, marigold or petunias (to help prevent bugs)

Question: Where do we get seeds?

Next up is for my granddaughter to read these. She’s in second grade and reads everything she can get her hands on. She has some trouble with comprehension of big words. I’ll help her with that. Plus we will discuss where to put the garden and how big to make it. My goal is to keep the garden manageable for weeding (which may be my challenge to keep her expectations realistic).

I’m excited. Pretty soon we’ll go shopping for seeds.

I’ll keep you posted (literally) as we go along.

Musings About Deer and Hunting

Yesterday was the last day of deer hunting season in New Jersey. I breathe a sigh of relief.

The park where I walk my dogs allows deer hunting from September to February 11th. Posters warn walkers to wear blaze orange or stay out of the park except on Sunday, when hunting is not allowed. So I invested in a blaze orange vest big enough to fit over my winter coat and a blaze orange baseball cap. Yet even with blaze orange clothing, when I hear frequent gunshots from the park I fear walking there that day. And I resent feeling unsafe.

Here’s what else bothers me: using the word “harvesting” when referring to killing deer; calling killing deer a sport; hearing that hunters spread corn and other goodies to draw hungry deer to a location where the hunter is waiting to shoot them; and hearing that hunters want to kill the buck with the biggest rack of antlers – a trophy, not necessarily meat for their family’s dinner table.

I cringe when I see the apparently obligatory annual photo printed in the local paper of someone “posing” with a deer he or she has just killed.

I admit I’m annoyed when deer eat all my daylilies just before they open. They feasted on the buds of two new lilacs we planted last year so we didn’t get any flowers this spring; they nipped off the chrysanthemum blossoms so perfectly last fall it looked like they had been scissored off.

My solution: I’ve become more selective picking plants. All the gardening catalogs identify deer-resistant plants – there are lots of choices. And the deer don’t eat our daffodils, rhododendron, holly, butterfly bushes or roses.

In the spring I love seeing the babies chase each other as their mothers graze nearby. After our last snowfall I watched from my bedroom window as two fully-antlered bucks – one smaller followed by a larger one – easily waded through the foot-deep snowdrifts along a small stream in our yard. Gorgeous.

A buck in summer

It saddens me to see deer lying dead on the side of the roads as I drive around my county doing errands and to hear that because of overpopulation weaker deer die of starvation each winter.

Early in the season, I read an article titled Hunting Deer is Necessary to Keep Herds Healthy (no longer available on the Farm and Dairy website) that raises several issues worth considering. The author writes, “killing a buck has little to do with limiting total numbers. However, the harvest of a single doe effectively removes three deer from the herd,” because, he says, most healthy does have twins every spring. He also reports that Ohio encourages hunters to share “the bounty” by donating deer to the Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry Program.

I believe reasonable people will eventually reach a balanced solution on this issue. As for me, I live on 100 acres in western New Jersey; I love seeing deer every day and would miss them terribly if I didn’t.

Going to Glacier National Park - Part 1

I love planning trips. I love anticipating what we’ll do and where we’ll go. And I love when something comes up while we’re there so we do something totally unanticipated. I’ve already written about the sandhill cranes and Rowe Sanctuary in Nebraska in March. Next up: Glacier National Park in Montana in August.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

1. Booking accommodations at Glacier was a revelation. I thought January this year would be soon enough to get the place and dates we wanted. When I called however I was informed in no uncertain terms that people begin booking in March of 2010 – nearly a year and half in advance!

We didn’t get our first choice. We got what they had: Rising Sun Motor Lodge in St. Mary on the east side of the park. The cabins are duplexes and I’ve booked three rooms – requesting one whole duplex and another half we hope is somewhat nearby. I’ll let you know what we got after the trip.

I have since found out that the first week of August is the biggest week of summer travel: because most of the children’s summer sports conclude at the end of July. Families then may have only three weeks to take a vacation together before “back-to-school” planning and shopping begins or, in fact, school itself starts. That’s certainly true for us. Our two older grandsons both have soccer every weekend until the end of July.

What's good about the Rising Sun is that it will be a new place for all of us. My husband and I visited Glacier in the summer of 2004. We stayed at the Village Inn on the west side of Glacier. We liked the place and the view so we wanted to show it to our family. Instead we will all have a new experience of the park. And, I repeat, that's a good thing.



2. When using credit card points for plane tickets, choose the desired flights before calling to redeem the points and book the flights. In our case, we need five tickets from Newark to and from Great Falls, Montana, via Salt Lake City. Then find the right person at the company who can book the flights and redeem the points. In our case the fourth person was the right one (thank you, Nicole).

Nicole and I spent about 40 minutes together on the phone booking the flights, spelling the five names (for example, Jean: Jump Echo Apple Nancy), inputting birthdates and repeating information, as needed, so we were both certain we had everything exactly right. That’s crucial now because it costs a lot of money to change plane tickets and for security issues, the names and birthdates on the reservation and on the “government-issued” ID must match exactly. Nicole even had me check my email to review the confirmation before we disconnected. Better to check too often than not enough.

We don’t need five tickets for ourselves. My husband and I are driving from New Jersey via Canada. We will spend some time in Banff and Waterton before meeting his son (my stepson), daughter-in-law and three grandchildren in St. Mary for a week of hiking, rafting and who knows what all.

All seven of us are already excited.

Product Re-calls and Us

Gus (right) and Belleville

For the first time that I remember I am experiencing the absence of three re-called items – items that we use regularly:

The first product that “went missing” was Eukanuba’s lamb and rice dog food that we feed our two Miniature Schnauzers. I found out years ago that lamb and rice was good for dogs with sensitive skin – no more dry, flaky, itchy skin. I bought a 30 lb bag last fall (I prefer 16 lbs bags) but the store owner had received word from the company that it expected to get its product back on the shelves in December. Not so. I bought another 30 lb bag in January. My conversation with the store owner went differently this time. He said “I don’t know when or if they will start providing this food again. Give them a call. But in case they don’t, I can recommend a better, cheaper food for your dogs.”

This wouldn’t be that touchy if our younger Schnauzer Gus hadn’t had liver problems as a 4 month old puppy. He’s now three. We’ve had his liver function tested over these years and are getting normal functioning results with the Eukanuba lamb and rice diet. When/if this food is no longer available we will have to gradually switch him and our other doggie onto a new food and begin testing again.

The second product we noticed missing was the Tylenol cold medicines. Signs on the shelves apologize for any inconvenience. Then I noticed empty shelves and more signs apologizing appeared the Mylanta antacid should be (the third missing product).

A few weeks later we read an article on about Johnson & Johnson in the NY Times. It was about upgrading their plants and quality assurance personnel. Maybe by the end of the year we would see their products show up on the shelves again. Will consumers buy them again? I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it – depending somewhat on whether we find replacement products.

We like all three of these products because they are effective for us. Not being able to purchase them forces us to purchase and try other brands in hopes we can find effective replacement products. (Ah change – such a pain at times).

Staunch & Flexible

Eats, Shoots & Leaves – do you know this book? Last fall I was looking for a new daily calendar for 2011 – I have at least one and usually more daily calendars – one by the phone that my husband and I both like (the last two years it has been The Book Lover’s Calendar). And I have two upstairs for me.

It’s probably not a coincidence that this year I picked Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a calendar based on a 2003 book about punctuation. It's perfect for the year I resolve to have an article published.

Here’s today's entry: "I want us to end up staunch because we understand the advantages of being staunch; flexible because we understand the rational and historical necessity to be flexible."

Staunch means "loyal and committed in attitude" in the Dictionary – and I am that about writing. I probably will never write c u l8r (that’s probably not even how it’s done) or anything else like that. Fine for others but not for me. Flexible means "ready and able to change so as to adapt to different circumstances." And I am that too (or at least try to be) when I choose to use, rather than utilize, proper English.

Although the author is referring to writing and punctuation, this thought certainly has a broader meaning.

Thumb Holes

Approximately half a million (yep 500,000) sandhill cranes stop over for approximately five weeks on the Platte River Basin on their way north from their wintering grounds to their summer breeding grounds. The National Audubon Society's Rowe Sanctuary in central Nebraska offers space in viewing blinds twice a day for five weeks - in 2011 that will be from March 5 through April 10.

And we're going this year. We want to see the cranes, the millions of ducks and geese plus the bald eagles that also winter or stop over in this river basin. My husband and I are meeting my sister and her husband in Kearney, Nebraska. (We're coming from New Jersey and they're coming from the Chicago area.) We've reserved four spots in the blinds for both the dawn and dusk viewings ($25 per person per viewing) in late March.

And now finally to the thumb holes: The website tells visitors what to wear: "the warmest boots you have, very warm mittens, stocking cap, the warmest jacket and clothing you have, including long underwear, and dark clothing to blend in with our surroundings when walking to and from the blinds."

I've been walking our dogs in my warmest coat and mittens and my wrists have been getting cold. The solution is thumb holes! These are holes in the seams of shirt sleeves about an inch above the hem. My thumbs slip into the holes perfectly so when I pull on my coat sleeves my shirt sleeves stay in place and not only that: when I pull on my mittens my sleeves stay inside the gloves. Voila! No cold air on my wrists.

During our shopping trip yesterday I bought three thumb hole shirts. While browsing the gloves, I found "wrist gaiters." These are wonderful too - they are skin-tight fingerless gloves that have a separate thumb hole (kind of like bicycling gloves). They fit under both the sleeves of a sweater or sweatshirt and the gloves and also block out the cold air. I bought a pair of these too.

And finally after more browsing I found handwarmers and footwarmers. These come in pairs; they are adhesive and applied to the top or bottom of one's socks to keep the feet warm up to six hours. I selected several pairs of footwarmers and one set of handwarmers (my hands don't usually get cold).

I think I'm ready to go to Nebraska - whoops - I forgot about the long underwear. I still need to get that - another shopping trip.

Daylight Hours

Sunset on the Farm

I live on a former horse farm in western New Jersey. Since December 9th I have been tracking when we experience sunrises and sunsets (thank you, Weather Channel). I always assumed that the sunrises and sunsets lost the same amount of minutes as the daylight hours became fewer. Not so: While sunrises were getting later and later, sunsets were also getting later and later! How great is that?

So on December 9th, sunrise was at 7:12 AM and sunset was at 4:32 PM - 9 hours and 20 minutes of daylight.

On December 21st, Winter Solstice, we had 9 hours and 16 minutes of daylight - our shortest day of 2010. Sunrise was 8 minutes later (at 7:20 AM) but sunset was 4 minutes later (at 4:36 PM). I felt like the days were already "getting longer" but they really weren't - just sunsets were later.

I admit, January (and February and March) can get me down - it's cold and often cloudy and gray, the holidays are over and I can't get out and walk easily you know: big fat coats, cold wind, snow underfoot. This year though, I'm excited about writing. I've started - in fits and starts - but started nevertheless - this blog which is helping me with some discipline. So I'm "up" this winter and that feels great.
Back to longer days: Today sunrise was at 7:18 and sunset will be at 5:05 - 9 hours and 47 minutes of daylight - and 45 of those extra minutes of daylight will be in this evening. I love this because I can still sleep as late as I want in the morning and it's so much nicer to walk the dogs in daylight before dinner.

First Interviews



The father plays a Marblehead Mariner boat rower

 My writing assignment this week is to select a feature article subject and then figure out what will be in my article: what facts, what kind of people I might interview, what scenes to describe and then do some research on the subject. I'm considering a feature article on the Reenactment of Washington Crossing the Delaware River. I identified a family of five who all participate. I also know of a historian at Princeton Battlefield State Park who I could interview. I called one family member and left a message. I called Princeton and got an answering machine but did not leave a message.

Disappointing. Why? Because I'm leaving my comfort zone when I request help from people for "spec" articles that may never see print. Plus I have to get myself up into interview mode to make the phone calls - so when there's no answer, I have to let myself back down gently until the next phone call.

When my phone rang 4 or 5 hours later, it was the father of the family who was very willing to talk to me about his reenactment experience as well as some of the history of the Revolutionary War at the time of General George Washington's crossing - December 25, 1776.

Then I tried the historian's phone number again and he answered! He also was willing and very knowledgeable about both the War and about reenactors. A successful day.