A beautiful day for a relaxing bird walk — our first annual family-friendly Summer Bird Count at DeKorte.
Twenty of us visited the Marsh Discovery Trail and the Lyndhurst nature Reserve to see what we could see — 37 species in all.
I think we had our youngest-ever birder today — 2.5-year-old Riya Bherdwaj (above) of Secaucus.
We will post the full list during the week.
The Record did a nice roundup of area observatories, including the McDowell Observatory in DeKorte Park, in yesterday's editions.
Link is here.
As a friend pointed out, that is some spotting scope at DeKorte featured in the paper…
We went looking for the Seaside Sparrow at the Secaucus High School Marsh this morning and came away with fleeting looks at a Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow instead (above).
Also hanging out — plenty of Marsh Wrens and an Eastern Kingbird.
More on Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrows here.
This Sunday (July 31) we are holding our first annual Summer Bird Count for Families (and anyone who likes to look for birds).
We'll walk around the park and see how many species we can see — and how many of each species we can count. We'll try to have some "loaner" binoculars if you need to borrow a pair.
The low-keyed, 90-minute event is free. It starts at 10 a.m. Full listing follows.
This moth was found outside the MEC at DeKorte Park Tuesday morning. Can anyone help ID it?
We were over at a marsh in Carlstadt late Tuesday afternoon and spotted 
this young Peregrine perched on a utility pole.
It had a silver band on its right leg, and a black and green band on its left leg, reading "25 AW" — trying to get more info.
Will post anything we learn.
Don Torino, who is a leader the free twice monthly walks sponsored by the Meadowlands Commission and the Bergen County Audubon Society, has a new column on wildnewjersey.tv about the commission's pontoon boat rides.
Link is here
.
The mystery plant looks to be Wild Parsnip, an invasive species that can cause a skin rash in combination with direct sunlight.
More on this plant and other poisonous plants here.
Ron Shields writes:
Some stuff from the Kearny Marsh this past week. The hibiscus is in full bloom, resulting in some spectacular landscape images.
More and more shorebirds are arriving each day as the water level continues to drop. Some spots are now difficult to kayak as a result.
We just saw this Mourning Cloak fly into the Butterfly Bushes outside the Environment Center at DeKorte. This is the first one we've seen in the summer here. Had one in early April 2010, pretty beaten up.