Can you guess what this is? Clue: It was photographed near the beginning of the Marsh Discovery Trail on a recent guided walk.

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In mid-July at the Clay Avenue wetlands in Lyndhurst, birder Chris Takacs saw a distant Semipalmated Sandpiper with a brightly colored tag on its wing.

Chris trained his spotting scope on the bird and jotted down the number. When he got home, he reported his sighting to http://www.bandedbirds.org/

Later in the month, he got word that the bird was tagged 18 months earlier in French Guiana, South America.

As it turns out, that bird had been tagged down there by a fellow New Jerseyan, David Mizrahi,vice president of research and monitoring for the New Jersey Audubon Society. Small world — especially if you are a migrating shorebird. Or not. French Guiana is 2800 miles away.

We had been hoping to see one of these little B-52 Bombers at DeKorte, and finally saw one on Thursday. It was buzzing around the side of the Environment Center by the drinking fountain, then flying into a gap in the wall.

The Cicada Killer Wasps are aptly named — not only do they kill Cicadas, but a female will lay an egg on a paralyzed Cicada. When the egg hatches, the grub lives off the dead Cicada. Yum.

More on Cicada Killers here.

Sorry for not getting a better photo above (it doesn't give you any idea of how big this thing is), but this Cicada Killer must have just had a Starbucks coffee — it simply would not sit still.  We have looked for it since then, with no luck, but we will keep our eyes out.

We realize that a lot of people with grassy lawns are not big fans of these insects, but they are amazing bugs.

If you just have to see a Least Bittern, one has been seen from the boardwalk cupola by the Environment Center in DeKorte Park the past couple of days.

We're not saying it's easy to see (look at the image above), but one has been making appearances on the phrag island beyong the cupola. A spotting scope is a huge help.

At right is a very enlarged image taken with a 400mm lens.

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.

NJ Urban Forests blog did a nice writeup on the Ridgefield Nature Center and Community Garden. The link is here.

Ray Duffy reports: "I did an evening walk at Mill Creek Marsh [Monday] evening.  I saw at least two male bobolinks getting flushed from the spartina and into a tree.

"They were chasing what I'm assuming where female bobolinks but there was also an immature/female baltimore oriole that was fighing with a mockingbird.

"I got a shot of one male, but he was not out in the open so it's not a great shot.  Definitely a male.  Big white spot on the head and on the butt.  He's starting to fade out of breeding colors, showing pathes of yellowish feathers."

Link to pix is here.

This is one of our banded birds this spring. Who is it?

Answer follows.

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One of the little surprises when we looked in on the Carlstadt Ospreys came when we looked at the photos we had taken.

At least one of the adult Ospreys had been banded.