Looking for a great way to beat the “Black Friday” day-after-Thanksgiving shopping crush and work off that turkey dinner?

Visit the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission’s DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst for a free “Green Friday” guided nature walk beginning at noon inside the Meadowlands Environment Center.

The Nov. 28 event, sponsored by the NJMC and the Bergen County Audubon Society, will include a walk on DeKorte Park’s Marsh Discovery Trail and Lyndhurst Nature Reserve.

The walk runs from noon to to 1:45 p.m. Bring a brownbag lunch if you like.

For more information, contact Jim Wright at jim.wright@njmeadowlands.gov or 201-460-2002, or go the NJMC nature blog, www.meadowblog.net.  Bad weather cancels.

DeKorte Park will close at 2 p.m. today due to the snow.

Weather permitting, DeKorte Park will be open on Thanksgiving but the MEC (and its restrooms) will be closed.

Saw this guy perched in a natural area near Disposal Road on Monday. It started to look for fish over an impoundment, but eventually gave up.

Did not see any leg bands. Clearly has a broken feather, which may be a way to ID it if seen again.

The state’s recently released, comprehensive 2014 Bald Eagle Report is here.

A pair of Wild Turkeys stopped by DeKorte Park on April 1 last year.

Bergen County Audubon Society president Don Torino’s latest column for wildnewjersey.tv is about his family’s tradition of a nature walk on Thanksgiving morning.

Here’s a sample:

My tradition of getting outdoors on Thanksgiving morning goes way back to my younger years when my brother and I would wander the woods and fields of the Meadowlands, taking in and enjoying all the wildlife that thrived around our urban wilderness home.

Thanksgiving morning was always a special time for my brother and I, it meant much more to us than having a big dinner and watching football.

Thanksgiving was a day we would look forward to weeks ahead of time, anticipating the birds we might see and the reminiscing of thanksgiving mornings gone by.

It was a special day we set aside each year to appreciate and give thanks to the natural places we had close to our home especially in and around the New Jersey Meadowlands.

The link is here.