“What’s inside that flower Mr. Don?” a little girl asked me as we walked around our butterfly garden. We both stared together into a large, white hibiscus with a pink center. I honestly could not remember when I last looked that long or closely into a flower. My fascination got the better of me and […]

All Photos By Chris Takacs Sometimes along life’s journey something very special happens to us, things that can’t always be explained and stay with us, become part of us and find a permanent place in our hearts forever. Things that we wish that someone might share the story in hopes it might be remembered. These […]

When daydreaming about our next trip to DeKorte Park or Mill Creek Marsh, pin oaks, azalea, clethra and Sassafras is not the first flora that comes to one’s mind. But for me, growing up in the Meadowlands, Teterboro Woods was where I first learned about the wonders of the natural world and where I found […]

 Not a single day goes by that I don’t get a phone call, text or email about how a bird is in some way enriching someone’s life. It may be that a bird they have never seen before shows up at a backyard feeder, or it may be about a family member that has passed […]

To be sure, we in the environmental movement have many battles to fight and countless challenges ahead. Issues from climate change to saving endangered species make our grass roots efforts more important than ever. But very often many of the people we ask for help feel they want to do more and sometimes feel powerless […]

Back in the early 1990s when the Bald Eagle began its dramatic comeback from the ravages of DDT it was the hope of New Jersey biologists that maybe one day, if everything went right, it might be possible to get back to the pre-DDT numbers of nesting Bald Eagles in the State, which was 20. […]

Lately some of my days out birding feels more like an old vaudeville routine than a day in the field. A good friend of mine has a problem hearing and I have a big problem seeing but together, as we jokingly like to put it, we equal one complete birder. He depends on me to […]

Our historical idea of the great American conservationist conjures up iconic images of John Muir Hiking in the High Sierras, Teddy Roosevelt on horseback on the western plains and Rachel Carson bringing attention to the environmental disaster of DDT. All those environmental heroes and many more still very much inspire, motivate, and at times give […]

Today the “conk-la-ree” call of the Red-winged blackbirds filled the marshes. Bald Eagles perched high in the trees watched the ice below begin to break apart. Belted Kingfishers rattled over the river and for a while, for at least a short time, a very special time, all was right in the world again.  It seems […]

I was a 12-year-old boy, riding my bicycle in a place and time as foreign to me as could ever be imagined. From just a few miles away my family and I entered a different culture, the Meadowlands. My first home was based in concrete and cars to my new one graced with tides, grasses […]