Ray Duffy reports: "I was birding around DeKorte around 11:30 a.m.  A Least Bittern was hanging out on the edge of one of the phragmite islands viewable from the boardwalk around the Visitor's Center.

"I also noticed my first Laughing Gulls in Bergen Co of the year with about a dozen or so adult plummage birds hanging out on the mudflats of the Saw Mill Creek WMA impoundment.

"After leaving the park, I stopped at the Clay Avenue Marsh in Lyndhurst and found a Pectoral Sandpiper mixed in with some Semipalmated Sandpipers and Killdeer."

Link to one of Ray's Least Bittern pics from today is here. (Thanks, Ray!)

Last week, when we were checking on the Osprey nest at the Marsh Resources Inc. wetlands in Carlstadt, we pleasantly surprised to see a young Peregrine Falcon fly onto the site and perch on an adjacent tower.  The Ospreys did not seem bothered at all.

The falcon was unbanded, and it got us to thinking that it might be the same bird (below) that fledged last year from the successful nest on the Route 3 Bridge.