Harrier Meadow is the site of next Tuesday's free nature walk, run by the Meadowlands Commission and the Bergen County Audubon Society.
The walk begins at 10 a.m. at Harrier and — if weather permits — includes a free bird-banding demo by NJMC Naturalist Mike Newhouse.
You'll need a sign a standard liability release to go into Harrier Meadow, which is usually closed to the public. Download it here: Download HARRIER Release.
Full details follow.
Kate Ruskin of the New Jersey Audubon Society reports that a banded Harbor Heron was spotted in the Meadowlands on Monday:
One of our NJAS volunteers, Mary Jo Marino, spotted a banded Snowy Egret in Mill Creek Marsh [Monday] morning. She spotted an individual with a blue band that read "2D" and after a volley of emails in a matter of hours (thanks Mary Jo for the prompt notification!), Susan Elbin of NYCA reports the following:
"SNEG tagged '2D' was banded on Hoffman Island on 8 June 2010. The bird was banded as a pre-fledgling, so it's a young of the year. According to Mary Jo, 2D spent quite a while foraging in OWA [open water above the knee]."
This is the second sighting of a SNEG banded on Hoffman in the Meadowlands this season. Also keep an eye out for yellow bands, which mark birds tagged on South Brother Island. (Thanks, Kate, Mary Jo and Susan!)
Note: We checked for the bird on our lunch hour Tuesday, when we took the photo above. We did not see the bird despite looking in several of the impoundments.
For future reference, we are posting a downloadable map of Mill Creek Marsh. If you see a great bird, like Kevin Bolton's American Golden Plover or Mary Jo's banded SNEG, you can download the map, denote digitally where you saw the bird, and then e-mail us here — we'll post it on the blog so others know where to start looking for it.
Download it here:
Click here and then click "save image as"
Previous posts on the Harbor Herons Project are here.
Dale Jankowski took this sweeping shot of the Saw Mill Creek Mud Flats at DeKorte just before 8 a.m. on Saturday. (Thanks, Dale!)
Chris Takacs managed to get this shot of the distant Whimbrel from a pontoon boat at Anderson Creek Marsh by the Hackensack River.
He got the shot in part because of the expert helmspersonship of the NJMC's Gabrielle Bennett-Meany. (Thanks, Chris and Gaby!)
According to an old NJMC bird list, the last Meadwolands sighting for a Whimbrel was in 1991, on the ponds at the 1-E Landfill by Don Smith.
More on Whimbrels here.
Scroll down for Complete Bird Fest list and more pix.
NJMC Naturalist Gabrielle Bennett-Meany took this photo. What are you looking at? And where was it taken? Clue is in the pic.
The Meadowlands Festival of Birding had a perfect alignment of the stars this weekend — great birds and great birders (and, on Saturday, great weather).
All of this combined for some great sightings, including Whimbrel, Clapper Rail, Sora Rail, Golden Plover and more.
(The Golden Plover pictured here was photographed at Mill Creek Marsh on Saturday by Kevin Bolton, using a digiscope. Thanks, Kevin!)
The full list of 107 species follows (click below if necessary), along with a rare banding photo. Please e-mail us if we missed any confirmed birds, and we will update.
During our morning Harrier Meadow walk for Bird Fest, we saw plenty of Black Saddlebags Dragonflies, which prompted several questions about this stunning insect — including whether it and its winged buddies were new arrivals.
We replied that they have been around Harrier and DeKorte Park for most of the summer, and promised to post a link to an earlier post and more info.
The link is here.
What can you say when the first pontoon boat cruise of the day turns up a Whimbrel and Am. Golden Plover?
When the first DeKorte walk turns up Soras and other great birds?
When the Harrier Meadow bird-banding demonstration includes Sacrlet Tanager, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher and warblers a-plenty?
The turnout was enthusiastic, and the weather was great.
We will post more pix and a full list in the coming week.
The event was run by Hackensack Riverkeeper and New Jersey Audubon Society and hosted by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.
A lunchtime walk turned up Northern Water Thrush (below), Spotted Sandpiper (above), Peregrine Falcon (left), Semipalmated Plover, and Killdeer.
We also had the ususal suspects, including peeps, yellowlegs, egrets and a few dowitchers.
No Sora sighted — perhaps tomorrow, for Bird Fest. 
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Julie McCall reports: Spent some time out on Disposal Road and at DeKorte Park today, and although it seemed at the time to be quieter than I expected, I still finished off the trip with around 40 species.
With water levels down in the Shorebird Pool in preparation for the
Festival of Birding this weekend, it was much easier than usual to find a Sora – I had one just wander out of the phrags about ten feet in front of me while I was trying to get a better look at a Northern Waterthrush. ull
The bird was seen on the Marsh Discovery Trail (MDT) after the second outdoor classroom. [See map above.] Soras have been spotted several times lately.
I also saw a good number of Northern Waterthrushes today – at least ten or twelve, along the MDT and near the Lyndhurst NatureReserve. I also had Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, Kestrel, Peregrine, and Northern Harrier.
Shorebirds included Dowitchers (Short-billed?), both Yellowlegs, and scattered groups of peeps. The wind kept a lot of the birds huddled near phrag islands. (Thanks, Julie!)
Full list follows.
DeKorte Park is home to the World Trade Center Memorial Cove, next to the NJMC Administration Building and facing a Manhattan
skyline that once prominently featured the Twin Towers.
(Photo at right is from the NJMC archives.)
The memorial features two wooden piers suggesting the fallen towers. Each pier is composed of 110 boards, each symbolizing a floor of the buildings.
Nearby, a steel silhouette of the pre-9/11 skyline recalls the view before the attacks.
A plaque with the follwoing quote accompanies the memorial:
"In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing." — Robert Ingersoll.
Click "Continue reading …" to see a time-lapse photo of the Memorial Cove at night, featured on the NJMC 2009 40th anniversary calendar.
