We’ve been looking for a small tree or shrub to replace this old bridalwreath spirea for a few years now. I almost hate to yank it out because it’s been there forever and the mockingbirds sometimes like to nest in it. The center of the shrub is woody and it hardly blooms anymore, so today I went to the nursery around the corner hoping for a bargain. The nursery stock was all 25% off, but I didn’t find anything that grabbed me.

I asked one of the owner’s sons if he might recommend something; he’s always made good suggestions in the past so I trust his ideas. He suggested I consider this Common Ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) pictured at right. I liked the reddish purple foliage and the pinkish white late spring flowers sounded nice. I wasn’t sold on it though, so instead took a few pics to show my husband.

I checked my Manual of Woody Landcape Plants by Michael Dirr to see what he has to say about the Ninebark. From the section on landscape value: “Quite coarse and therefore difficult to use in the small home landscape; limited in usefulness because of rather meager ornamental assets; bark on older stems exfoliates into papery strips exposing a rich brown inner bark; unfortunately, this character is masked by the foliage and dense tangle of stems.” Also, “The Minnesota Landscape Aboretum has a large collection of ninebarks and after looking over the entire group, I still came away with the opinion that about anything is better than a Ninebark.“

Well… I guess that answers my question!

Do you have a favorite shrub or smallish tree? Can you suggest something that might be nice as a specimen for full sun in the middle of our back yard? I’d prefer something that blooms and has berries that the birds might find tasty. My husband is inclined to plant a pine, but I want something a bit more showy in such a prominent spot.

Who now in sundown glow
Of serious colour clad confront me with their show
As though resigned and sad,Trees, who unwhispering stand umber, bronze, gold;
Pavilioning the land for one grown tired and old;

Elm, chestnut, aspen and pine, I am merged in you
Who tell once more in tones of time,
Your foliaged farewell.

– Siegfried Sassoon, October Trees

I was able to see an impromptu monarch tagging demonstration on Sunday in Cape May. Their Monarch Monitoring Project has been conducted since 1991 and they’ve tagged tens of thousands of migrant monarchs in the 15 years since.
The butterflies are kept in an envelope in a cooler while waiting to be tagged. In this pic the naturalist is demonstrating how a small amount of the butterfly’s scales are removed (with a lovely painted fingernail) in order to make room for the tagging sticker to be attached.
She explained that each tag has a unique number and the address where to send the butterfly (or the tag) should it be recovered. 3M makes the stickers just for tagging and they don’t hinder the butterfly’s ability to fly at all.
Each butterfly is weighed and measured and a general assesment of its body condition is made. All of this info is recorded along with the tag number. With that, the butterfly is ready to be released and to resume its journey to Mexico. All that is needed is a cute little girl with nimble fingers.
The hand off. Ready…
Set…

The monarch lingered for a moment or two on the little girl’s palm before flying to the shrubbery nearby to warm in the sun.

Yearly counts and census info, as well as a brief history of the project, is available from NJ Audubon at this link. Certainly worth a read if you’re interested in more information.

Yesterday’s weather was gorgeous and I had just a few hours to wander around with my binoculars and camera. I arrived too late to see the Sandhill Crane (what is that doing on the East coast?) that went by the hawkwatch (pictured above), but I did get to see plenty of sharpies, a harrier or two, a few merlins, and two young bald eagles. The birds stream by overhead and disappear past the lighthouse and Delaware Bay to the south.
In addition to migrating hawks, yellow-rumps and tree swallows were everywhere, as were the monarchs. The goldenrod in the dunes surrounding Cape May Point State Park was covered with them. Dragonflies were also on the move yesterday, Black Saddlebags being the most visible.
One of my favorite places in Cape May are the fields and wet woods of Hidden Valley. Often I’m alone in my wanderings there and rather than watching the hawks swirling high overhead, can see them here hunting the migrant flocks of flickers and warblers and sparrows. They say that many of the hawks that fly past the lighthouse don’t necessarily head out over the bay immediately, instead they *circle back* and cross somewhere else. Hidden Valley and Higbee Beach provide the habitat and birds that fuel their journey. Pictured above is one of a few banding stations around Cape May where they lure in migrants to trap and band them. They were set up in the adjacent field and I spent a good deal of time peering over the hedgerow to see what they tempted into their nets.
I wasn’t able to decide if what I was seeing at the top of that pole in this really poor pic was a real bird or not. Its head moved like a real bird, but I couldn’t fugire out why a hawk would spend so much time so close to the banding station and the mist nets. I know sometimes a fake owl is used to lure hawks at a hawkwatch site, but not if they’re ever used that way at a banding set-up. Maybe Laura O. knows? At one point there was a bald eagle overhead and I was hoping it might come in for a closer look at the bait, but it didn’t.
Each step along the shrubby fields kicked up grasshoppers and small flocks of sparrows ahead of me. Monarchs and honey bees fed in the wildflowers and impossible-to-identify warblers teased me with their scolding notes. Buckeyes led the way along the path, flitting from patch to patch in the sunlight. I often hear Barred Owls calling from the woods here, but yesterday they were quiet.
My last stop for the afternoon was The Meadows just north of the lighthouse. The water levels were really high, so any hopes for lingering shorebirds (not that I could ID them anyway) were lost. The ponds had an awful lot of Mute Swans and many mallards. I also imagined a few Gadwall. The highlight there was a snowy egret doing its crazy dance as it hunted – such comical birds. I love to visit Cape May, but hate to leave. The weather in late September and early October is perfect and the crowds are gone from the beaches. I left around 5 pm, expecting an easy 2 hour drive home, but instead didn’t get in until nearly 9. Like any good trip to South Jersey, it had to end with an hour and a half traffic jam on the parkway because of an accident. A lousy end to an otherwise beautiful day.

This is how I embarrassed myself today: wandering around Cape May Bird Observatory’s bookstore I overheard a woman asking Pete Dunne to sign the book that she just bought. He doesn’t mind signing books and has signed a few of his books for me in the past. Pete’s a familiar face around Cape May and leads weekly bird walks and hangs out at the hawk watch. Easy to see famous author.

So.

I decide I’m going to buy that new shorebird guide he has out that I’ve been hearing so much about. It’s supposed to be a great book and I need all the help I can get with shorebirds. I figure I might as well buy it now, seeing as he’s here and can sign it for me.

Anyone sensing the problem yet?

Pete Dunne didn’t write the great new shorebird guide, only I didn’t realize that until after I asked him to sign it.

Duh!

I was kidding him about how tiresome it must be to be signing books all the time as I handed mine over. I honestly had no clue what he was talking about when he said, “But that isn’t my book!” Huh?

I can only imagine the multiple shades of red I turned. Good sport that he is, he signed it anyway and with a smile. I suppose I should have gone back and bought his book for him to sign, but I really wanted that shorebird guide!

Summer’s officially over – we took the awnings off the outside of the house today. We have them on the west side windows, and this year had them recovered for the first time in fifteen or so years and added awnings to the south-facing windows as well. Having awnings on the south side of the house kind of defeats the purpose of calling this a sunporch, but the room gets blazing hot in the summer and I worry for the bunnies who live out there without any AC. The awnings make the house feel dark like a cave, but at least it’s a somewhat cooler cave. I’m glad to see them go in the fall and welcome the sunlight, especially in the late afternoon when it streams into the kitchen and living room. The outside of the house looks very plain without the pretty blue and white striped awnings, though.

Unfortunately, all that light coming into the house makes the dust that much more visible. So today was window-cleaning day. I hate cleaning windows and would happily pay someone hundreds of dollars to not have to do it. Some women like cleaning, but there is no joy in it for me. I like a clean house, just wish I didn’t have to do the work to keep it that way. We’ve been avoiding doing it because of the expense, but finally bought new blinds to replace the ones we had on the porch. I’m not so sure I really like these white ones with the wood paneling in the room, but the *fake* wood grain ones won’t match and look really cheap. The real wood ones, like the ones we replaced, are so expensive that I wouldn’t even consider them! Anway, I’m glad now to have clean windows (on the porch at least; that’s as far as we got today) and new blinds that aren’t covered with dust. The bunnies ought to appreciate that, too. 😉

The next order of business for that room – not tomorrow, I’m heading to Cape May for the day – will be to scrub down the paneling and dust the bookshelves. My old computer desk needs to find a new home and we have to start thinking about replacing the front door and doing something with the ceiling tiles. Both are looking a bit tired. Speaking of tired, I’m off to bed, with the hope that I’ll drag myself up early enough to make it to Cape May by 10 am.

This park is not in my neighborhood, but I drive by it each day on my way to and from work. Rather than taking one of the state highways, I drive this *country* road past horse farms and apple orchards. Did you know that we grow racehorses in the Garden State, in addition to produce? One day soon I’m going to stop and take pics of the horses that I ogle each morning as I pass in my mad rush to get to work. Buddy and I visited this park last Saturday; it was raining, but I had wanted to have a look at the wildflower meadow and see what bugs I could find there. A large part of the park is given to athletic fields, and part is even set aside for model airplane flying, but the edges are mostly wild. Fall is a nice time for sparrows and the more deserted farm fields often have deer and northern harriers. The sunflowers in the pic above had been catching my eye for a few days as I drove past; I wonder if anyone can identify what type they are. All of the flowers in that pic are growing on one stem of the plant, most of the plants were still pointing straight to the sky, but this one had fallen to ground level. If you enlarge the pic you can also see these funny little fruits that look like tomatoes – would love to know what they are!
Buddy and I found three or four black and yellow spiders in the wet grass, and I’m certain that we walked through a few webs without realizing they were there. This one has a juicy skipper in its clutches.
The meadow was full of common milkweed gone to seed and goldenrod covered in monarchs, as well as lots of those pretty moths that Susan identified for me earlier in the week. There were also some purple coneflowers still blooming, but the goldenrod was the place to be, as far as the bugs were concerned.

A few other bloggers have posted some pics of their neighborhoods or will soon. Check out this post from Body, Soul, and Spirit. Lene at Counting Petals has posted many pics from her home base in Vermont. Also, Egret’s Nest is accepting requests here. Stop by and enjoy the tour.

No new bunny pics of my own to share this week, so instead I’ll share this one and a link (just click on the pic) to more like this one. I don’t know know the story behind the pics, only that these were passed around a few months back on PetBunny.