Pat O'Shea was nice enough to share this image of a Tree Swallow nesting box along DeKorte Park's Saw Mill Creek Trail.
She also wondered when the Tree Swallows start returning — the answer is late March.
Click here for an earlier post on Tree Swallow nesting boxes.
If the blog looks a bit different today, please bear with us — we are changing the look of the blog and tweaking some of the formatting and design.
In the coming days, we will be asking for your input on how to make the blog better.
Thanks!
Greg Gard got this shot of a Muskrat at Teal Pond earlier this month.
Amazingly, we occasionally get folks who think there aren't Muskrats in the meadowlands anymore.
Gary Gard reports: "I saw 'masked predator' perched on the tree by Disposal Road at 1 p.m. Right before first speed bump when coming down the hill towards Carillon."
The bird was seen several times during the day, including an instance where he was flying with a sparrow in his grasp.
When the good folks at Bergen County Audubon Society realized that the next bird walk they're doing with the NJMC is Super Bowl Sunday, they realized we needed to put some added pizzazz into our marketing.
So get ready for "Super Bird Sunday," on February 7, from 10 a.m. to noon — a way to get some fresh air and exercise on what has become National Couch Potato Day.
We'll look for Ravens, Eagles, Cardinals, Falcons and Seahawks — none of whom will be playing in the big game later in the day — as well as other super birds.
This free two-hour guided nature walk starts outside the Meadowlands Environment Center in DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst and runs from 10 a.m.
We’ll walk around the 110-acre park, looking for wintering waterfowl and other birds of interest.
The walk is run by the N.J. Meadowlands Commission and the Bergen County Audubon Society. To rsvp, contact Don Torino of the BCAS at greatauk4@aol.com or 201-636-4022.
For an update on the shrike, nifty photos and a wonderful blog post on DeKorte from the "New Jersey Outdoors" Blog, click here.
Wait till you see where the shrike was seen….
Ron Shields took these great Goldeneye shots earlier this week at DeKorte park.
More on GoldenEye here.
We had no sooner started our third-Tuesday-of-the-Month Walk at Laurel Hill when we saw the two Common Ravens hanging out and preening on a tree just below their usual nesting site.
We offered to end the walk there, but the dozen birders preferred to look for other species, which we did with some success — thanks in part to everyone who brought spotting scopes.
We had a lot of good but a tad distant birds, including Great Cormorants, Marsh Hawks, Common Mergs, a Great Blue Heron and 12 Black-crowned Night Herons.
We also had nine flavors of ducks at DeKorte and by Disposal Road.
Click "Continue reading…" below the scenic pic for the full list for Laurel Hill and DeKorte, courtesy of Beth Goldberg of the Bergen County Audubon Society.
We had a great walk on a gray morning at Laurel Hill County Park on Tuesday. Highlights on the NJMC/BCAS walk included Great Cormorants, a dozen Black-crowned Night Herons hanging out along the Hackensacxk River, and two Common Ravens perched just below last year's nest.
We'll post more pix and the full list tomorrow.
Ray Gilbert saw the Northern Shrike at 4:15 p.m. today by the first high-tension-wires tower on DeKorte's Saw Mill Creek Trail, coming from the carillon area.
Tomorrow is "No Shrike Wednesdays." The shrike put that clause in his contract when he signed on for another month.