We spent our lunch hour on the side of a closed North Arlington landfill on Thursday, and so did this American Kestrel.

Our lunch was forgettable, but the kestrel's …  the falcon dined on a delicacy, in flight.

As the bird first came into view, we could see that it had something in its talons. We were so busy trying to photograph the bird that we did not make out what it was carrying.

It was only we downloaded the photos that we saw the meal  — a Praying Mantis.

Like humans, kestrels sometimes need to eat lunch on the fly. 

We saw this Wilson's Snipe earlier this week in North Arlington. We detected a little motion and discovered this fellow.

We have been trying to photograph one for the blog for more than a year. Sometimes you just get lucky.

More on Wilson's Snipes — and why they are no longer called Common Snipes — here.

John Soltes of The Leader did a bang-up job on an article about the growing problem of people releasing/abandoning pets in the Meadowlands. Story is in the latest edition. Link is here.

NJMC staffer Jim Wright wrote his latest column for The South Bergenite on the William D. McDowell Observatory at DeKorte Park, now hot off the presses. Here's the column:

Most visitors to the N.J. Meadowlands Commission’s DeKorte Park these days are here to go bird-watching, to enjoy the many walking trails, or just take in the park’s beautiful flowers and landscape on a crisp fall day.

What most of those visitors don’t realize is that on Monday and Wednesday nights, DeKorte offers a free attraction of an entirely different sort: the William D. McDowell Observatory’s research-grade telescope, capable of viewing objects millions of light years away.

The big draw at the observatory these days is the planet Jupiter, “It’s really putting on a nice show,” says Astronomer John Sloan, the observatory’s director. “And it’s going to get more and more spectacular as we progress into the fall and early winter, as the planet gets higher and higher in the night sky during our observing sessions.”

What’s more, the solar system’s biggest planet has a different look this fall.

Full story follows.

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We found this DeKorte Park report from Saturday in our Spam filter and thought we'd pass it along — including 13 birds species and 6 butterfly species. Tom Beattie provided the list. (Thanks, Tom!)

The full list and a link to his photos follow.

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Ron Shields reports that the Kearny Marsh was a great spot for raptor watching this past weekend, including the Bald Eagle above and the Northern Harrier below.

Robert Gill got this shot of an American Kestrel on Disposal Road on Sunday. (Thanks, Robert!)

This was the view from Laurel Hill County Park on Sunday on the NJMC/BCAS walk.

Hackensack River is in the foreground.  The marsh is the Saw Mill Creek Wildlife Management Area. The white buildings in the back are DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst — not all that far, as the Osprey flies. (and yes, the dot in the lower middle of the picture is a Great Blue Heron.)

Earlier post on the walk is here. Full list from our walk follows.

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This looks appealing, but it isn't.  What is it?

Answer follows.

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We'd like to thank Marco Lips for sending this shot of the rough surf on the Saw Mill Creek mud flats during last week's storm. To look at the photo, you'd think it were the Atlantic.

We're also sharing one of Marco's Osprey shots, below. Ospreys are in major migration these days, and a few locals are sticking around as well. (Thanks, Marco!)