Photo by Marie Longo

Don Torino’s latest column for wildnewjersey.tv is about waiting for spring to arrive.

Here’s a sample:

I am told that Spring is out there somewhere. I have heard that it is just one more turn of the page on the calendar, the sight of the return of the Red-winged Blackbirds to the marshes or maybe even just the anticipation of a few warm days in March that we, even though very disbelievingly, feel like Spring truly lies in our future.

Maybe it will be the first Robins feeding on your backyard Hollies or the visions of an Oriole weaving its intricate nest on a willow tree or the faith that the columbines and Milkweeds lie dormant waiting for the snow to melt and finally warm the ground that keeps us looking out our windows and dreaming of Spring’s arrival.

Link is here.

NJMC Emeritus Don Smith stopped by today to let us know a Brown Thrasher was rooting around in the leaves across from the Environment Center at DeKorte Park. Bird was seen this morning — along with a couple of Fox Sparrows. “X” marks the location in the map above. (The bird was seen over the weekend as well.)

The Meadowlands Commission is honoring Black History Month with a weekly post on this blog. Today the focus is on the Underground Railroad in Jersey City.  This series of four posts originally ran in 2009. That’s great thing about history — it never gets old.

Runaway slaves from the South took several routes through New Jersey before and during the Civil War, but those escape routes all had one thing in common: They converged at Jersey City.

By one estimate, as many as 70,000 runaway slaves escaped through Jersey City.

If you click on the map on the right (from the state of New Jersey’s Web site), you can see the major New Jersey stops on the Underground Railroad.

   More on Jersey City’s role in the Underground Railroad here.

    More about New Jersey’s role here.

   For a glimpse of slavery in late 18th Century Bergen County, click here.

And in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday tomorrow, here is a link to information on the Emancipation Proclamation.

Louis Balboa writes:

On Disposal Road last week, this bird was snatched out of the air by a Gray Ghost.  an you idenify the bird? (Thanks, Louis!)