Just getting caught up on a vacation's worth of e-mails. Sorry for not being more timely…
Patrick Carney writes:
"I saw a Black-and-White Warbler at DeKorte [Saturday]. He was near the entrance to what I believe is the Teal Pool, pulling bugs out from under the bark of the Paper Birches." (Thanks, Patrick!)
Here's your chance to attend a free screening of the acclaimed new documentary film, "The Lost Bird Project,"about the stories of five birds driven to extinction in modern times and sculptor Todd McGrain’s project to memorialize them.
The event is on Thursday, Sept. 13, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Meadowlands Environment Center in DeKorte Park, Lyndhurst, New Jersey.
The Meadowlands Commission, Bergen County Audubon Society, Ramapo College and the New Jersey chapter of The Nature Conservancy are proud to sponsor this special screening, along with a question-and-answer session afterward.
More information follows.
Things are looking up for this bird. What is it?
We had a great "Back to Football" walk at DeKorte Park on Sunday — 35 folks and 35 species.
Full list later in the week. (Thanks to Marie Longo for the photo!)
Kevin Bolton reports:
'Mill Creek Marsh Saturday had some nice migrants including 2 Cape May Warblers and Yellow Bellied Flycatcher." (Thanks, Kevin!)
Ray Duffy writes:
"I had a Stilt Sandpiper in the Shorebird Pool this a.m. milling around with some Lesser Yellowlegs. I found its easiest to pick him out by feeding style. He's the bird that sort of looks like the yellowlegs but feeds like a dowitcher.
"I also had a least bittern at the second channel bridge (the one past the Red-winged Blackbird blind with the view to the area that's usually a mud flat behind the north phragmite island). The bittern was standing on that little tire and then hopped into the phrags once he saw me." (Thanks, Ray!)
It's almost September, and we are asking for Meadowlands Big Year participants to e-mail us their totals so far if they have not done so already. Please send them to jim.wright (at) njmeadowlands.gov and include the words "Meadowlands Big Year" in the e-mail).
Much appreciated, and good luck to all. Thanks to those who have updated their numbers already!
Competition details are here.
Start the fall birding season with a free, NFL-themed “Back to Football” Nature Walk at DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst on Sunday, Sept. 2, at 10 a.m.
The guided, 90-minute walk, sponsored by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC) and the Bergen County Audubon Society, has a special National Football League theme – and nifty prizes.
To celebrate the opening game of the 2012 season between the Dallas Cowboys and Super Bowl Champion Giants at nearby MetLife Stadium on Wednesday, Sept. 5, the NFL is offering a prize to the first person on the walk to see any bird species with the same name as a pro-football team: Cardinal, Raven, Falcon, Eagle, Seahawk (osprey), Giant (great) egret (above) and Giant (great) blue heron.
All seven team bird species can be seen in DeKorte Park, the home of the NJMC.
The walk meets inside the one-square mile park’s Meadowlands Environment Center. Super Bowl XLVIII will be played at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford in February 2014.
You will have to sign a standard liability release that is good for NJMC/BCAS events throughout the year. To rsvp, contact Don Torino of the BCAS at greatauk4@aol.com or 201-230-4983. The Meadowlands Environment Center’s phone number is 201-777-2431.
Why is this Common Raven one of the key birds on our free guided walk this Sunday? The answer is on our latest post on the wildnewjeresy.tv blog.
The link is here.
This from eBird:
What if a computer could identify a Merlin by its photograph?
With recent advances in computer vision, this idea is no longer a pipe dream. The Cornell Lab is teaming up with computer vision researchers, the Visipedia team, at UC-San Diego, UC-Berkeley and Caltech to tackle this challenge.
To get this effort rolling, we are building a database of 70,000 correctly identified images to train our system to identify 550 North American birds, and we are looking for people to share their images of these species. Click here to contribute your photos!
(One of the birds they need pix of is a Least Bittern… Hmmm….)