It’s prime time for dragonflies across the meadows… Some by landfills, others by marshes.
Click "Continue reading" for more dragonflies.
Tag Archives: NJMC
PEEP SHOW
Check out almost any mudflat in the Meadowlands these days and you’ll see hundreds of peeps and a yellowleg or dowitcher or two…
Click "Continue reading" to see more shots.
BIRDING: Harbor Herons Project
For the 
past few years, the Meadowlands Commission and a bunch of volunteers have been helping New Jersey Audubon and New York City Audubon with a project called the Harbor Herons Project.
The object is to study the foraging behavior of egrets and herons that roost on the East River and near Staten Island to see if the birds from different nesting colonies are foraging at different sites and to see how the birds use the metropolitan landscape, including the Meadowlands.
This year, researchers have banded several birds and put transmitters on some in an effort to keep track of their travels. 
Some of those birds — great egrets, and double-crested cormorants, have been seen in the Meadowlands — and the great egret’s radio signals have been picked up here.
You can help the research by keeping your eye out for banded/transmitter birds.
The photo on the left is of a great egret youngster with a silver band on its right leg and a transmitter on its left leg (image enlarged on right).
Kate Ruskin of NJ Audubon sums up the progress:
* 17 great egret fledglings radio-tagged (transmitter is below right:
– Black letters on white
– Positioned on the left leg, above the joint with the antenna pointing down (they’re small, less than 3% of their body weight, but visible)
Click "Continue reading" immediately below to learn more.
NORTH ARLINGTON: Mystery caterpillar
We took this shot of a mystery caterpillar last month by the AMVETS Carillon in North Arlington.
Can anyone help with an ID?
MARSH MADNESS: Fiddler crabs
If you’re in a boat by the Hackensack River’s marshes at low tide, keep your eye out along the banks for a tiny critter call
ed a fiddler crab.
One claw is oversized, to the point it almost looks like the crab is wielding a fiddle — hence the name.
Very strange. Very cool.
The fiddler crabs pictured here photographed at the Saw Mill Creek Wildlife Management Area.
More on fiddler crabs here.
BIRDS: Indigo bunting
We saw indigo buntings twice this morning, once on Disposal Road between Meadowlands Commission headquarters, then again on the Transco Trail between the Lyndhurst Nature Reserve and the Saw Mill Creek Trail in North Arlington.
We have seen them in the same area several times now.
SECAUCUS: Mill Creek Marsh birds
Birders Don Torino and Dick Engsberg did some birding along the Mill Creek Marsh Trail in Secaucus Monday morning.
They report they saw "a nice peregrine falcon, semipalmated plover, greater yellow legs, forsters terns, least and semipalmated sandpipers, snowy and great egrets and a good number of monarch butterflies."
ENVIRONMENT CENTER: Survival camp canoe race
Every year, Ramapo College and the Meadowlands Commission sponsor a survival camp for kids.
This was the big canoe race. All survived.
More on the camp here: Download students_survive_meadowlands_experience.pdf.
WHAT”S THAT: DeKorte Park, Lyndhurst
As you enter the Marsh Discovery Trail at DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst, you’ll see a tree with large leaves and strange green pods. And you may well wonder what it is.
"This is a Paulownia tomentosa: princesstree or Royal empress tree," says NJMC horticulturist Ian McDermott. "This tree has purple sweet smelling flowers in late May and June. Sticky seed pods."
LYNDHURST: Barn swallows
The tree swallows in the Meadowlands have been getting more publicity, but the barn swallows are making their presence known as well in DeKorte Park.
Walk in the parking lot and they’ll be whizzing past. Walk on the Marsh Discovery Trail or on the elevated boardwalk near the Environment Center, and they are zipping past everywhere.
In fact, they zip so fast they are next to impossible to photograph in flight.
Click "Continue Reading" below for more on barn swallows and a photo of an empty nest.