Jim Wright of the Meadowlands Commission has walked and photographed several of the district's parks and natural areas in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and will present a short slide show on the various sites.

We now have tallies through October for the folks involved in the Meadowlands Big Year competition.

Congrats to all for competing. This will be the last monthly total count until year's end, just to build the suspense.

Congratulations to the two birders who now have seen more than 200 species in the Meadowlands this year. Not too shabby!

The leader board as of Oct. 31 follows below (just to heighten the suspense).  Also posting the standings as of Sept. 30 …

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Due to cleanup efforts at Mill Creek Marsh, we are moving November's Third Tuesday walk to Laurel Hill County Park in Secaucus.

The event runs from 10 a.m. to noon. We'll all park near the ballfields "under" the cliffs. Directions are in the left-hand column of this blog.

A quick scouting trip last week yielded 16 Brant, three Red-tails, a Northern Harrier, plenty of gulls and Double-crested Cormorants, and a zillion Grackles and dark-eyed Juncos.

(We thank the Hudson County Parks Department for letting us use the park on short notice!)

Details follow.

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Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 8 p.m., the Meadowlands Commission and the Bergen County Audubon Society are presenting a free talk and slide show on the new coffee-table book, "The Nature of the Meadowlands."

The event, in the Meadowlands Environment Center in DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst, features author/photographer Jim Wright and photographers Marco Van Brabant and Ron Shields.

The lavishly illustrated, 128-page coffee-table book illuminates the region's natural and unnatural history —  from its darkest days of a half-century ago to its environmental revival.

Wright's slide-show/talk features highlights from the book, which combines striking nature photography with rare archival images.

Nature photographers Marco Van Brabant and Ron Shields will also talk about some of their amazing images from the book.  

Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing.  The talk will begin at 8 p.m., following a BCAS meeting that starts at 7:30.

To RSVP, contact Don Torino of the BCAS at greatauk4@aol.com or 201-230-4983.

Meadowlands Marsh Hawk team member Mike Wolfe saw a Common Redpoll on Disposal Road yesterday and passed along the word.

Fellow Marsh Hawk Chris Takacs saw it later in the day and showed Roy Woodford, who shared these two pix.

According to Chris, “It was seen near the North Arlington chipped tree compost piles on Disposal Rd. feeding most of the time.”

(Thanks, Mike, Chris and Roy!)

Starting around Friday, Nov. 16, and continuing for approx. four days, there is a traffic alert for Valley Brook Ave. in the vicinity of the old ballfields just before DeKorte Park.

A pipe is being installed, and the road will be open for two-way traffic through the use of a flagger. Please drive extra carefully through this construction area.

Jeff Nicol, one of the photographers for our new book "The Nature of the Meadowlands," reports:

You would not believe what turned up Saturday night in the Mall parking lot in Kingston, N.Y., only a half hour from my house.

A Snowy Owl sat on top of an unlit light pole for 2 hours!

I raced up there and got to see it, along with several other birders, for over a half hour before it decided to move on.

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Marco Lips took this photo of this week's snowfall, with lower Manhattan on the horizon.  Took us a second to figure out where it was taken. (Click on the image for a better look.)

How about you?  (Thanks, Marco!)

We are working feverishly on an alternate locale for our Third Tuesday walk, on Nov. 20 at 10 a.m.  It should be a nifty walk, so please save the date!

Jaimie Winters, editor of the South Bergenite, posted some photos of the storm damage on the northjersey.com website.

The link is here.