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Through Science Daily Environmental Headlines
Photos by Brenda Jones
‘bolds’ mine
Fish for Lunch, Lake Carnegie Cormorant — Brenda Jones
NJ WILD readers are accustomed to my deep concern and sometimes, frankly, rage, re humans’ destruction of the environment. This is particularly true in terms of CO2 emissions and the increasing warming of our climate and rising of our seas.
Now I learn yet another peril, due to too much carbon dioxide in our world. It’s driving fish crazy.
Great Egret Fishing, Brenda Jones
(Is this to become a scene from the past?)
Not only birds eat fish, remember…
Being the only state with three coastlines, this should really concern us:
Carbon Dioxide Is ‘Driving Fish Crazy’
ScienceDaily (Jan. 20, 2012) — Rising human carbon dioxide emissions may be affecting the brains and central nervous system of sea fishes with serious consequences for their survival, an international scientific team has found.
In their latest paper, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, Prof. Munday and colleagues report world-first evidence that high CO2 levels in sea water disrupts a key brain receptor in fish, causing marked changes in their behaviour and sensory ability.
“We’ve found that elevated CO2 in the oceans can directly interfere with fish neurotransmitter functions, which poses a direct and previously unknown threat to sea life,” Prof. Munday says.
Prof. Munday and his colleagues began by studying how baby clown and damsel fishes performed alongside their predators in CO2-enriched water. They found that, while the predators were somewhat affected, the immature fish suffered much higher rates of attrition.
“Our early work showed that the sense of smell of immature fish was harmed by higher CO2 in the water – meaning they found it harder to locate a reef to settle on or detect the warning smell of a predator fish. But we suspected there was much more to it than the loss of ability to smell.”
The team then examined whether fishes’ sense of hearing – used to locate and hone in on reefs at night, and avoid them during the day — was affected. “The answer is, yes it was. They were confused and no longer avoided reef sounds during the day. Being attracted to reefs during daylight would make them easy meat for predators.”
Other work showed the fish also tended to lose their natural instinct to turn left or right — an important factor in schooling behaviour which also makes them more vulnerable, as lone fish are easily eaten by predators.
“All this led us to suspect it wasn’t simply damage to their individual senses that was going on — but rather, that higher levels of carbon dioxide were affecting their whole central nervous system.”
The team’s latest research shows that high CO2 directly stimulates a receptor in the fish brain called GABA-A, leading to a reversal in its normal function and over-excitement of certain nerve signals.
While most animals with brains have GABA-A receptors, the team considers the effects of elevated CO2 are likely to be most felt by those living in water, as they have lower blood CO2 levels normally. The main impact is likely to be felt by some crustaceans and by most fishes, especially those which use a lot of oxygen.
Prof. Munday said that around 2.3 billion tonnes of human CO2 emissions dissolve into the world’s oceans every year, causing changes in the chemical environment of the water in which fish and other species live.
“We’ve now established it isn’t simply the acidification of the oceans that is causing disruption — as is the case with shellfish and plankton with chalky skeletons — but the actual dissolved CO2 itself is damaging the fishes’ nervous systems.”
The work shows that fish with high oxygen consumption are likely to be most affected, suggesting the effects of high CO2 may impair some species worse than others — possibly including important species targeted by the world’s fishing industries.
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Filed Under (Adventure, Amphibians, Animals of the Wild, Appreciation, Birds, Brenda Jones, Central Jersey, Climate Change, D&R Greenway Land Trust, David Allen Sibley, Discovery, Forests, Indians, NJ WILD, Native Americans, Nature, New Jersey, Outdoors, Preservation, floods) by Carolyn Foote Edelmann on 01-17-2012
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Sourlands Rocks and Water, Brenda Jones
NJ WILD readers know that an essential facet of my hip recovery is walks with friends in nature.
#1, I require nature. #2, doctors and physical therapists require “extension of the surgical leg.” #3 - my pilgrimage now focuses upon stamina.
My forever quest is beauty, but you KNOW that. NJ beauty in particular!
I can walk well, amazingly. However, lumpy trails require the arm of a friend. I told a friend recently, “I’m Shanghai-ing friends to walk trails in right weather.” She retorted, “I’m Shanghai-able.” Fay Lachmann is always “Shanghai-able,” so we made my first return to the Sourlands last week, on a cold and sunny day.
(As Fay helped me recreate this excursion for all of you, Google’s recent NJ WILD readership numbers astonished– 1600 page views a week ago, 1330 last week — I am grateful to each and every one…)
Sourlands Winter Palette, Brenda Jones
The Sourlands’ first winter gift was the richly sustaining palette of this season. Being but a spectator of, not a participant in art, I find myself limited in trying to recreate those tones for you:
What stands out is the array of artsy colors - taupe and puce. Food tones - toast, caramel, burnt toast. Chestnut and walnut and literal hickory nuts from the ragged grey shagbarks on either side. Some beech leaves had already paled to the Devonshire cream tones of April, just before they let go to fertilize themselves.
The most stirring experience remains the darkness of stark trees — jet black, even blue-black as in childhood ink, charcoal, obsidian… Their sculptural qualities were as thrilling as any blockbuster MOMA exhibit.
We were bathed in surprising roseate tones, drawn to various gildings. Of course, always and ever, evergreen bursts.
Alongside the trail, moss erupted in full springtime exuberance, — blinding, St. Paddy’s Day green. Dazzling, sparkling, sun somehow caught in every pouf, and I use that soft word deliberately. Winter not usually being connected with softness…
Brenda’s mosses were a little more subdued, in next-day light.
Moss Abundance, Sourlands, 2012 - Brenda Jones
To the left of our Sourlands trail we came upon a grove of Christmas fern. So named because it can be enjoyed in winter — not usually after Christmas, name or no name. But, January - this was impossible. Each cluster was larger than a peck, smaller than a bushel. Almost waist-high, tendril tips had not even been licked by Jack Frost.
That Christmas fern glen was full of life, –the way I’m always determined to stay in winter, not always succeeding. The ferns were cushiony, bountiful, cradling.
On our right, we came upon first ice miracles. Temperatures had dropped to single digits that week, without undue warming. (Well, NJ WILD readers know that to me, all winter warming is undue and dangerous.)
Due to gelid nights, what would otherwise be vernal (spring) ponds, were solid enough to support minuscule figure skaters. Pond rims were awash in scrolls, as though some master had etched the art of the ’20s and ’30’s onto fine crystal. In fact, Rene Lalique himself or Louis Comfort Tiffany must have spent hours adorning the pools of our Sourland woods. Think Chrysler Building or Empire State — particularly their interior artistry — we were given that level of scrollery.
In the middle of the first small pond, with its Lalique edges, some abstract artist had had his way with the center — it was harsh, yet endearing. Against water the color of patent leather pumps, star slashes created a starry starry night, in daytime. We couldn’t walk away from this beauty. I could almost hear Antiques Road Show experts raving about this rare mastery in winter woods.
Smiling Rock, Sourlands, in another season — Carolyn Foote Edelmann
(We have most photographs courtesy of our splendid fine-art photographer, Brenda Jones. I raved so about this hike that Brenda and her husband, Cliff, took to the trail first thing the next day. They did not come upon Lalique ice. But Brenda captures mood, design, palette, and hardy beauty of this region in her own sensitive/powerful way.
As you enjoy her scenes, remember that D&R Greenway Land Trust has been exceptionally active in preserving and linking Sourlands open space. Support your local land trusts!)
Our next nature delight, –in this season so many deem empty–, was a splendid array of turkey tail fungus on adorning a venerable log. Brenda was as stirred by this as we, without having been ‘tipped off’. I wanted to see what would speak to her.
Brenda Jones’ Turkey Tail Fungus on Downed Log
The trees on this Sourlands trail do not form a monoculture. However, beeches were the stars of our day. Elephant-toned trunks even sported knobby circularities, evocative of elephant legs. I never understand why people are disposed to carve into that silk-satin skin of large beeches. One tree had been particularly scarred. The cynic in me snaps, “The tree will outlive the relationships!”
I frankly hugged that beech, apologizing for human heedlessness.
But someone else had been working over the beech trunk– someone who’s supposed to: the yellow-bellied sapsucker.
No, we didn’t see the bird. But his or her tiny holes ringed the trunk at several levels. Were this insect-season, [which it soon well may be, at the rate we're going, climate-wise], winged protein would be attracted to sap that rises to these beak-sized openings. Attracted and doomed, insects would provide two forms of nourishment to other birds, not limited to sapsuckers.
Distant Woodpecker, Brenda Jones
Brenda and Cliff probably heard, as well as found, this member of the woodpecker family, to send along to you. This is the red-bellied woodpecker, in my experience more often heard than seen; — and, if seen, in woods far more dense than this.
The yellow-bellied sapsucker was not to be viewed by Brenda nor by us - Sibley describes them as “long-winged, rather delicate, quiet and inconspicuous.” Indeed. Fay and I do not remember having heard nor seen any birds, not even vultures on high on that luminous day.
We met few other hikers, all as stunned as we by downed mature trees on all sides, –trees beyond counting. The October snowstorm, Hurricane Irene and who else, Lee?; well, nowadays, virtually any rain or wind, had swooped through this stretch (in Fay’s words, “as though a giant’s huge hand had swept them all to the ground.” If so, those giants had been seriously enraged, as though crashing all dishes off a table after an insuperable quarrel. Humans have warmed climate to such a degree that the ‘water table’ never returns to normal. Soaked ground does not hold trees well, even without wind. If nature is the giant, She has every reason for rage at those who will not slow CO2 emissions while there’s still time, IF there’s still time…
Unabraded Sourlands Trail, Brenda Jones
The trail under our feet, also, had been abraded and even in some cases washed away. At some points I had to walk over rocks — something we hadn’t covered in physical therapy. Nor had I been taught to balance on grey drainage tubes, that until 2011 had always been deep beneath the trail - not in place of the trail, as now.
Even so, being on that road was high privilege.
“There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding…”, Brenda Jones
Normally, I’d've gone off to the right on the streamside trail, for the crossing of which I had bought my treasured trekking poles long long ago. And beside which, deep in the forest, I’d come upon my first ever (terrestrial) box turtle. The brook trail loops back in a leisurely manner, around to join our road. The waterside walk would, however, be too rough for me, eight weeks post-op.
Another place I turn off, normally, is to the left, farther along, which takes us to enormous Sourlands boulders. I feel Indians in council among those Stonehenge impersonators, predecessors… And wish that I were among them…
Retracing steps, back to the car, we were bowled over anew by swathes of Lalique ice on either side. Silenced by such elegance in the midst of this hardy woods, we became increasingly aware of the hush on all sides. You would never know that highways, commerce and hunters lurk on all sides of this high haven. Thank our lucky stars for local preservationists, individuals, groups, and the Hopewell Community.
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Dappled Sourlands, in another season, Carolyn Foote Edelmann
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Finishing my return to the Sourlands, I realized that it is for this, as much as for kayaking, that I had asked Dr. Thomas Gutowski to replace my crippled hip November 9.
Birthday, Christmas and New Year, rolled into one, I can be, anew, a pilgrim in nature.
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(Find Sourlands Mountains Preserve sign and some parking to the right, off Greenwood Avenue, a right turn from #518, at Hopewell’s Dana Building)
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Filed Under (Adventure, Amphibians, Animals of the Wild, Birds, Brigantine Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge, Chatsworth, Edward B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge, Kingston, Migration, Migratory Flocks, NJ WILD, Nature, New Jersey Pine Barrens, Pine Barrens, Preservation, cranberry, habitat) by Carolyn Foote Edelmann on 01-09-2012
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Pied-Billed Grebe Swallowing Frog, January 3, 2012, by Anne Zeman
NJ WILD readers know that my favorite non-Princeton excursion is to the Brigantine Wildlife Refuge (a.k.a. Forsythe), near Smithville and (arrgghh!) Atlantic City. ‘The Brig’ has served as my own wild refuge since I discovered it somewhere in the 1990’s.
Bays and impoundments are threaded by firm sand roads (actually dikes), so drivers may bird in all seasons, in all weathers. Differing salinities allow different plants to grow, providing nourishment and shelter for wild birds. The refuge is supported by duck stamps.
I’ve literally been at ‘the Brig’ in fire and in ice. Fire being controlled burns, to keep dread phragmites (towering blinding reeds that destroy foods and shelter required by wild birds); and ice which sometimes even closes ‘the Brig.’ So I go over to Scott’s Landing and up to Tuckerton, off the Garden State Parkway, but there is nothing like ‘the Brig’.
On the first Monday of 2012, I was given my first post-hip-op trip to this haven with dear friend and consummate birder, (co-founder and co-sustainer of Kingston Christmas Bird Count), Anne Zeman. Her astounding picture opens this post.
No one can ever declare “best local birding day”, but it was definitely a contender. In terms of quality and quantity of sightings, that day was as though we had taken seven trips ’round, instead of the single one my recent surgery dictated.
Great Blue Heron in Snow, Brenda Jones
Before we even reached the Gull Pond Tower, we had a first. We became aware of three great blue herons in water, and one perched overhead (that tree in other seasons holds black-crowned night herons). This primordial scene was right across Gull Pond after our turn. Suddenly, all birds took off as one, arrowing over our car as though shot by Hiawatha. Something significant had spooked these birds who are usually the essence of calm.
With her superb optics, Anne found the reason - a fox, in daytime, prancing toward the pond among shrubs and some debris of fallen trees. Anne has never seen a fox at the Brig - though they sip from her Kingston pond… When I’d stay overnight down there, to be first car in before dawn, and/or last car out, I could follow foxes down woods-enclosed roadways. But, even for me, it’s been a long time between foxes.
Fox Close-Up, Brenda Jones
Anne Zeman, and her husband Mark Peel, are the type of birders who travel avidly to other states and other lands in search of new species. Even so, they remain super-loyal to New Jersey, in particularly their own Kingston, and ‘the Brig’.
Looking back on our day, Mark and Anne remain most amazed by our having found ten species of winter ducks. But this is a contest we cannot call, what was the most astounding.
Our immediate next bird was a pied-billed grebe. This tiny member of the duck family, in water beside the car, [and we still weren't even at the tower], was calmly swallowing an enormous frog. Its prey seemed quite alive - legs kicking and all that. Anne hopes frog was ’still in winter torpor.’ I remain astonished that any cold-blooded creature was ‘findable’ on the second day of January. That saucy little elegant grebe was as matter-of-fact about his brunch as though it were a mere canape. He sailed immediately off, afterwards, in quest of other delicacies.
I’m not going to be able to recreate that day for NJ WILD. It would take seven posts. So I’ll just list our species in order. And you can go see for yourself.
Here’s my secret route, upon which even on major holidays, we are mostly the only car on Pine Barrens roads. US 1 South to 295 South to the Columbus Exit. Go toward town, take 206 (left jughandle) exit (South) and proceed past Contes Farm Market at 70 Traffic Circle. Left (south) on Carranza Road. Left (east) at Russo’s Farm Market onto 532. Right (south) in Chatsworth onto 563. Left (east) onto 679 into New Gretna. South (right) onto 9 which takes you onto Garden State Parkway over Mullica River for moments. Off at exit 48 for Smithville. Back onto 9 South, to Lily Lake Road and Forsythe Wildlife Refuge. Keep these directions for Fourth of July and Labor Day - you won’t believe your solitude, as you meander through the heart of cranberry country to the heart of New Jersey birding in all seasons.
Species list, January 2, 2012 [bolds are duck species]
Buffleheads
Bufflehead, Brenda Jones
Red-winged blackbirds, first-year
Red-Winged Blackbird in Usual Season, Brenda Jones
Great blue herons and Anne says yellow-crowned but I couldn’t see crown
FOX
Mallards
PIED-GILLED GREBE EATING FROG
Shovelers - when tipped, legs bright breeding orange
Coots - not only in water but walking on grasses like guinea hens
Black ducks
Northern pintails
(notes in here re slate-blue water, opened window allows ‘eau de fox’ to bless us)
oh, yes, American Bald Eagle soaring flapless over Absecon Bay, never moving a feather, out of sight
Northern harrier, harrying grasses with Atlantic City in background
(note - window open, duck laughter makes me jump!)
Green-winged teal — green blindingly vivid as they turned toward eastern light
(window open - familiar cherished sound… could it be… YES!)
Snow geese, like mounds of snow, all over grasses between us and bay and casinos. Their half murmur, half bark alerted us to a few on high. Then more, and more, until the sky was FULL of snow geese. Possibly tens of thousands of them. Muttering, almost meowing, their communication blessed every moment of the rest of our circuit. Overhead, they seemed to be asking of their myriad of relatives on the grass, “Request permission to come ashore.”
Hooded Mergansers
Common Mergansers
Hundreds of shorebirds, doing their flying-as-one-creature routine, then settling and settling onto water - probably dowitchers. Very very far from us, no matter which turn of the road we might be on.
Ring-billed gulls
Great black-backed gulls
oh, yes, and robins beyond counting back in woods and lawns at the gate
As we reluctantly finished our exploration, we recounted our day - starting with fox/heron and grebe before even reaching Gull Pond Tower.
“spit full of snow geese.” quipped Anne.
“The queens of today — female mergansers.”
“All those shorebirds”
I, on doctor’s orders, had to walk every thirty minutes. So “walking with the coots was a first.”
“A preponderance of coots” - perhaps most we’ve seen in entire lives…
“A day of shoveler legs”
“Benediction of herons”
“The eagle — a thousand thousand times more important than Atlantic City”
At which point, of all things, on the last bridge between two waters, a fox came prancing right along the side of the road, all dappled in shrub shadow, bright-eyed and literally bushy-tailed, and not at all upset by these human visitors. Anne either saw one fox twice, or two in one day. I saw this one - he seemed to be there for formal farewell.
We called the fox our finale.
Fox Listening for Winter Prey, Brenda Jones
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Filed Under (Agriculture, Appreciation, Barns, D&R Greenway Land Trust, Farm Markets, Farmers, Farmland, Farms, Flemer Family, Food, Harvest, Healthy Food, Jersey Fresh, NJ WILD, New Jersey, Preservation) by Carolyn Foote Edelmann on 01-02-2012
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Winter’s Fruits from Farm Markets cfe
NJ WILD readers know I have been ‘hors de combat’ for some months now, recently remedied with hip/femur replacement. Beginning walks in nature — so glad to have feet on green growing matter and real earth after all those hospital and rehab strolls.
One of the first events I’ll be visiting, of course, will be Indoor Winter Farm Markets - always a treasure to me, as NJ WILD readers know.
Bill Flemer’s Riverside Bluegrass Band at D&R Greenway Johnson Education Center cfe
January 14, D&R Greenway, where I work, will host this constellation of foods, hand-made items, homemade music, and the like.
Brilliantly Crafted and Named Cherry Grove Cheeses at D&R Greenway cfe
Our barn is always a convivial setting for parties - usually art (new exhibit, Textures and Trails, awaits on its weathered walls.) Music reverberates among the ancient beams, most from 1900, some from the 1800’s. Horses, cows, chickens, pigs and eggs once filled the stalls where we now work and you enjoy art and science to further preservation.
Home from Indoor Winter Farm Market - Slow Food/D&R Greenway cfe
This from Jim Weaver, Founder/Chef of Tre Piani Restaurant at Forrestal as well as co-founder of Slow Food Central Jersey. Enjoy and join us! You’ll not only be happier for it, you’ll be healthier, And so will New Jersey land, farmland and her farmers.
New Jersey Farm Market Produce - grown and sold the ‘Slow’ Way… cfe
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PRESS RELEASE
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Contact: Beth Feehan, 609 577-5113, bfeehan@comcast.net
Stockton, NJ: Slow Food Central New Jersey presents an indoor winter farm market at the Johnson Education Center, a beautifully restored barn from 1900, on the grounds of the D&R Greenway in Princeton. D&R Greenway is located at One Preservation Place off of Rosedale Road in Princeton. This market will run from 10am-2pm. Visit www.drgreenway.org for directions.
Why NJ Farmstands, cfe
On February 19th, Tre Piani Restaurant in Forrestal Village in Princeton hosts the Market from 11am-3pm. Tre Piani is the original site where the Markets started seven years ago with Slow Food Central New Jersey. For directions to Tre Piani, visit www.trepiani.com.
Terhune Orchards at Slow Food/D&R Greenway Indoor Winter Farm Market cfe
Saturday, January 14
10am-2pm
D&R Greenway Land Trust, Princeton
609 924-4646 www.drgreenway.org
For more information, call 609 577-5113. For up to date information on vendors, visit Slow Food Central New Jersey on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/groups/279661868722992/.
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Jasmine, of the Lakota Wolf Preserve, New Jersey
Do you ever think about what animals were really at the Nativity? Of course, we have pre- and Renaissance images, with the ox and the ass and so forth. But who was really there, and what did they do?
This thought has come to me recurrently on recent country rides past farm fields between here and the Delaware River. On grass and in barnyards, I’ve been treated to everything from a donkey through horses to sheep and goats; keeping on until I could find a few cows. These presences made that long-ago stable very real.
My rides made me particularly aware of the depth of darkness that would have surrounded Mary and Joseph in their quest for a room. When they were finally led out back by the grudging Innkeeper, we have to hope he had a lantern or two to light their way in night thick as folded velvet. I picture the Innkeeper leaving one lantern for the young couple, after helping them through straw to the manger.
I sense the breath of farm animals warming that humble place, I’m sure of a donkey and a cow. Probably not goats. Surely chickens and a rooster or two scratching about on the earthen floor in search of nourishment. Perhaps the Innkeeper would share some of their eggs with the hungry couple in the morning after the Event.
Because of Delaware Valley night rides, I picture surrounding Bethlehem hills as darker yet, as the Miracle begins to unfold. Stars, however, would therefore have been exaggerated in brilliance. Even that ‘new’ one soon to guide three kings, waxing and waning to direct the monarchs upon their essential journey.
I feel that curtain of stars served as heavenly comfort to Mary and Joseph, probably neither knowing how to preside at any birth, –let alone such a one. And she, so far from her mother.
I’m ‘hearing’ the breath of the ass, lowing of the cow, scratching of hens as blessed natural sounds, –soothing and enduring as a cat’s purr-, as the world changed forever.
The darkness in and around that stable is intense. The Innkeeper and certain guests learn that Something had Happened because of golden rays rising from the depth of that straw-lined manger. I ’see’ Mary as bare-headed now, her mantle, — woven by her mother–, securely wrapped about Mary’s newborn.
Joseph, though shadowed, remains a solid protecting figure. Acceptance is written in every muscle of these two obedient servants of the Divine. How, from earliest days, those two trusted outcomes when all must have seemed so perilous in that strange land.
Radiance rises along each tendril of straw, as though a small fire burns where a Child lies.
These rays that wake sheep on the hillside, magnetizing flock after flock. In a reversal of roles, shepherds follow their animals to the Source.
These movements are not wasted upon the watchers upon the hill. Where there are sheep, wolves are never far.
Their large forms echo the soft and powerful Bethlehem’s hills. Some of these magnificent creatures are blackas night itself. All wolf eyes are riveted upon the power and light emanating from the stable below.
The wolves, this night, however, give up vigilance.
Their response to events below, –unlike that of humans soon to gather–, is not wonder, but knowing.
There is a legend that the animals speak upon what is now Christmas Eve. What they speak is their own certainty about the coming of this Child, known since before time.
“So.”
“It has come.”
“That for which we have been waiting.”
“It is time…”
The wolves, in their wisdom, need not leave the heights.
The Child, in His wisdom, is alertly aware of the watchers on the hill, for He has come for all creatures.
As the glow from the manger, strengthens, the wolves lift their voices in song.
A tiny hand rises from the straw, gestures toward that sound.
His first Christmas Carol, the song of the wolves…
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Filed Under (Adventure, Animals of the Wild, Bordentown, Brenda Jones, D&R Greenway Land Trust, David Allen Sibley, Environment, Friends for the Marsh, Hamilton Trenton Bordentown Marsh, NJ WILD, floods) by Carolyn Foote Edelmann on 12-22-2011
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Coot Couple, by Brenda Jones
Swan Lake — Swans of Spring Lake, by Brenda Jones
Brenda Jones’ Images of Recent Gifts of Hamilton/Trenton/Bordentown Marsh
Picture a person who requires regular doses of nature. See that person’s right leg gradually stop working, because of a sudden inexplicable departure of cartilage. Watch her finally face the inevitable hip replacement, after which she must work with professionals to use that restored right leg, to cooperate with that new femur. Be aware that all she ever wants is to be, as the orthopedist promised, “Out on the trails and back in the kayak.”
It won’t surprise NJ WILD readers that this former and future hiker/kayaker longed throughout her incarceration in hospital and rehab, and now at home, for trails in general and the Hamilton / Trenton / Bordentown Marsh in particular.
NJ WILD readers might suspect that many of your author’s friends are hikers/kayakers. One, Fay Lachmann, leads a weekly group on explorations throughout New Jersey (and sometimes Pennsylvania), a gathering of lively women known as the Hip Hikers.
The good news is, Fay would be taking her group to the Marsh for the first time, on a December Saturday. The challenge was that she didn’t exactly know how negotiate Route 1 South onto South Broad Street at the Arena and on down to Sewell, so she could share this paradise with her group. Guess who does know the way, who was eager to ride along familiar roadways with this most sustaining friend.
What your NJ WILD blogger was hoping was that she could walk the firm earthen road alongside Spring Lake. What I wasn’t admitting was fear that I’d get partway along and not be able to continue.
Amazingly, despite its being almost December dusk when we arrived, the Marsh was shimmery and welcoming. No one else was there. It was as though this tidal freshwater wetlands had been created just for us. Alongside Spring Lake, the road was, indeed, firm, smooth, and mercifully dry.
A scrim of willows intervenes between road and lake, named by Lenni Lenapes because spring-fed. Most likely, it is/was also beaver created, eons ago. The willows kiss their own reflection in all seasons. There is something so calming about their languid branches. You would never guess our state capitol is a few yards away… The willows were particularly stunning on the cusp of winter, –all other trees being bare. Willow branches were Monet-rich in leaves, all of them tinted the wild gold of March, or of canvases we once saw at the Met, “Monet, The Late Years.”
Fay has birder’s eyes and other senses. It was she found the raft of minuscule ducks afloat on a far stretch of the lake. We moved swiftly toward the migrant waterfowl, darkly silhouetted, occasionally bobbing merrily underwater in quest of nourishment. Only two kinds of ducks win the word ‘adorable’ from me, (usually only in private)– buffleheads and coots.
Against the setting sun, I couldn’t discover whether or not these birds showed ‘diagnostic’ white beaks. Still, something about their ‘rubber ducky’ yet dignified behavior simply said ‘coot’. Sure enough, we could approach clearly enough to confirm the guess. It will give NJ WILD readers a sense of how askew I was on that first Marsh walk – I had left my ‘birding glass’ in my own car, back in Princeton.
No optics were needed to see and identify the mute swan, presiding near the small peninsula that usually holds the lake’s swan nest. With full regality, this white wonder sailed out, lifting both wings like Boston’s swan boats. So long as we walked and watched, he kept those ‘arms akimbo’. Swan Lake, indeed. All the beauty and none of the tragedy…
If we’d turned left and circled the lake, I could’ve shown Fay where the wild rice grows. This annual grass attains 8 – 10 feet each autumn, delighting the red-winged blackbirds, staging for migration. I merely waved in the wild rice direction, knowing that this intrepid explorer, –who delights in “Firsts!”–, would find that site on her own with her group.
In water to the right of the lake road, we discovered a new beaver lodge, practically quivering with the energy of recent construction. I told Fay of other lodges that would be to their left, once well upon the woodland trails. And another out, of course, at Beaver Point.
The miracle of beaver lodges is that, when waters are iced, beavers keep water open. Therefore, rarest wild ducks congregate nearby. One might not see (nocturnal) beavers, although we were late enough that we might have. But one will be treated to spectacular waterfowl throughout the Marsh in winter.
Mary and Charles Leck, botanist and ornithologist extraordinaire, have taught me all I know about the Marsh. Their favorite time there is winter, because, “We can see the beavers’ breath.”
My favorite time there is after fresh snowfall. Signatures of raptor wings will decorate a downed log. A long trail of rose-like footprints reveals where the fox strolls and when he changes to hunting mode. The Marsh is always hushed, as it was on our evening stroll. But never more so than when fresh crystals have descended all through the night. That whiteness becomes a newspaper, –night’s headlines inscribed at every turn.
We reached the bridge over troubled waters. I needed to stay dry-shod and stable, but Fay skipped across, as I have so many times. It was as though she were Alice, entering Wonderland. I feel, when I cross that bridge into the woods, as I did when I first saw Wizard of Oz, and the scene changed from black and white to color.
Deep in the Marsh, I have watched a springtime snake bask in new warmth. It was nearly invisible, absolutely matching winter weeds all along an tiny island in one of the first watery stretches. Charles and Mary did not proceed until everyone on that trek could find that snake. There, alone, I’ve heard and watched crows mob the great horned owl who nests in the Marsh. I’ve witnessed scruffed sand revealing the many entries and exits of a fox den.
Charlie Leck showed me my first brown creeper, creeping, up a lakeside trunk. Mary revealed my first hummingbird moth. Apart from being ripe pumpkin orange (against royal purple blooms of pickerel weed), this moth did, indeed, masquerade as a hummingbird. Charlie taught us to rejoice in some sort of caterpillar infestation, for it brought cuckoos beyond counting, to feed and to breed.
The Marsh can be Heron Central in all seasons. Once one walked along the lake trail ahead of my sister and me for almost a half hour. Swans nest at a number of sites. Recently, American bald eagles have made a part of the Marsh their home. Owls drop lacy pellets in the deepest woods. Turtles lay eggs right in the lake road. Clyde Quin and Warren Liebensperger taught us to see turtle noses among the lily pads of the lake. Mary Leck explains that turtles hatch invisibly – if we see shells, that means a predator has been successful.
One memorable fall, from the (under development) Marsh Nature Center, David Allen Sibley took us on an autumnal birdwalk at key migration time. Throughout, David was humble, lively, and always the natural teacher. Interestingly, he seemed most excited about all the redwings – thanks to the Marsh’s wild rice crop.
As Fay and I reluctantly (sundown) retraced the lakeside road, a skein of Canada geese sang their evening song. To our right, migrant birds staged and restaged, as though an invisible senora were trailing her black mantilla along first the treetops, then lake waters, then up against the apricot sky.
The Marsh is always a treasure trove. That sundown walk with Fay turned out to be a naturalist’s Christmas. There are no finer gifts than the natural!
Remember, as always, NJ WILD readers, the preservation and stewardship mission of D&R Greenway Land Trust. Without its vision and vigilance over the decades, this paradise in the middle of Hamilton, Trenton and Bordentown, would not only not exist. It wouldn’t be moderating temperature and floods, removing pollutants, breathing, breeding, serving the multitudinous functions that make wetlands so vital to humans everywhere in the world.
Without preservation and stewardship, the Marsh also wouldn’t be walkable. By those whose two legs work perfectly well, all of the time. Nor by this very grateful convalescent.
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Filed Under (Adventure, Animals of the Wild, Appreciation, Cape May, Cape May Bird Observatory, David Allen Sibley, Discovery, Holidays, NJ WILD, Nature, Oceans, Outdoors, Poetry, Solitude, South Jersey, Timelessness, Tranquillity, Winter) by Carolyn Foote Edelmann on 12-15-2011
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Cape May Lighthouse, NJ
Titmouse in Snowstorm, Brenda Jones
NJ WILD readers know, my favorite time to be anywhere is off-season. In 2009 I had chosen to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at Cape May.
My key birding/hiking/art and travel buddy, Janet Black, and I had this urgent need to flee the commercial madness which had come to overwhelm this once sacred season. The fiercest concern, on all channels during this week’s blizzard, was not health or safety - but o, dear! — people can’t get to the malls! Christ was not born to turn balance sheets from red to black.
We went to seek the elemental, even the primal.
I, personally was starved for limitlessness.
We both needed birds, — handsome birds, large birds, unexpected birds, birds dealing boldly and successfully with elements, putting humans to shame. Birds making us catch our breath over their beauty, their fearlessness, their deft way with the wind. Somewhere out beyond the first lines of waves, long-tailed ducks were bobbing and feeding. Sometimes, if we were very lucky, elegant gannets arrowed right over our heads, or threaded their way above the crests.
Yes, we knew the trails, the hot spots, from Sunset Beach to Cape May Point to Higbee Beach. We’ve put in our time on and near the hawk watch platform, normally abuzz - it would be still for Christmas.
Cape May Bird Observatory post captures their Hawk Watch Platform post-blizzard
We knew where to hike (from the jetty to the light) in a benevolent season, when we were sometimes accompanied by ruddy turnstones, living mosaics hopping along beside us as we stride.
We knew where the peregrine stooped (’stooped’ is the birder’s word) upon tasty prey, from an anachronistic bunker to a freshwater pond, as sedate mute swans ignore the entire drama.
Killdeer and Snow
from Cape May Bird Observatory post, post-storm
We knew where monarchs clustered in autumn, on a shrub called “high tide plant.” We had favorite dune trails where we’d seen loons visibly change their plumage before our eyes.
But neither of us knew what Christmas meant at New Jersey’s Cape, let alone what it means to the birds.
We packed foul weather gear - we’ve used it before for Cape May Birding Weekends of 20 mile an hour winds and I swear 20 degrees, although it couldn’t have been - it was the end of May…
We packed our binoculars and our Sibleys - well, they’re always in the trunk. Being writers, books and notepads went first into those suitcases. Janet’s memoir vied with her poetry. My NJ WILD held pride of place - no competition for it, these days, not even from the poetry muse.
We both fled the Victorian, sought out the rustic, the local, and above all, the maritime and the avian.
Down at the southernmost tip of New Jersey, at the birds’ jumping-off place to cross the Delaware Bay, the prime activity would neither be shopping til you drop, nor counting down to Christmas.
Out on the windswept beaches, spirit would be near at hand. Shore birds would do their Holy Ghost thing.
Though we did not see the Christmas star, something was being born. I called it Hope.
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Filed Under (ART, Adventure, Food, Founding Fathers, Holidays, NJ WILD, Peace, Preservation, Restoration, Revolutionary War, Winter, courage, protection) by Carolyn Foote Edelmann on 12-12-2011
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SEEKING CHRISTMAS IN NEW JERSEY
Little Caboose That Could, Bordentown, (from the Christmas of 2009)
With rain pelting down, highways clogged, people on either side of cash registers surly, I cannot help but ask, “But, where is Christmas?” One thing I have always known - Christmas is not at the malls. This time of year, we can change that spelling to ‘The Mauls’. I must go searching for Christmas, and right now, in NJ:
Baubles of Yesterday - Mystery Destination, NJ
I have searched for Christmas before: Married, with daughters, my Swiss husband and I would travel in quest of Christmas, seeking to evade the mercantile, to recapture sweet, even tender Christmases of his childhood and mine. Some of the most memorable:
Carolers in sleighs at Waterville Valley. Snow sifting down upon their down jackets. Swiss chocolates and quaint gilt-trimmed, native-Swiss-scened Christmas cards upon our pillows when we came in from Midnight Mass. Snow and sweetness everywhere.
Walking Aspen streets to the scent of woodsmoke, mountain stream singing that year’s carols outside our town condominium. Red and gold vintage popcorn wagon, spilling white kernels, while an ink-sky spilled the next day’s powder. In restaurants , firelight on copper, warmth in every welcome.
“Froeliche Weinachten!” – the (non-written) Swiss language wish for a blessed Christmas, mingling with “Au Guri” in Italian and Happy St. Stephen’s Day, (more important than New Year’s) in the Christmas-card town of Zermatt, [where Werner was right at home at last, but which he'd never visited until we found it in 1964.]
But this is New Jersey. Where do we go to find Christmas here? (Not to celebrate Christmas - that’s another story, to be told), but to feel it?
Where better than a town whose residents helped give us two Trenton and one Princeton victories for Christmas in 1776 and 1777, whose residents gave us and continued to nourish Independence?
My simple nearby answer - Bordentown. Where everything still breathes of long ago.
My Christmas recipe calls for a very large dose of history; an aura of peace; warmth of welcome; and sparkly diversions I find nowhere else. It is enhanced by vintage bookstores, and art galleries and purveyors of jewelry of other days. My Christmas always involves feasting, — easy, relaxed, memorable, casual or opulent, even reasonable, in Bordentown.
Bordentown’s Bon Appetit - The Storied Farnsworth House
In Bordentown, history peals forth like Christmas bells.
Bell of Bordentown
NJ Wild readers know, I crave above all Revolutionary history. Thomas Paine is the Revolutionary of choice in Bordentown. This is the only place anywhere in the world, in which the man whom the Founding Fathers credited with forging the Spirit of ‘76 ever owned property.
Thomas Paine Statue, High on a Bordentown Hill, where we lost a Revolutionary Battle
Rights of Man - Jefferson Credits This Book with The Spirit of ‘76
Patience Wright - Sculptress - Lived Here
America’s first sculptress, who took her 1700’s fame and sailed to London where she perpetuated her fame, increased her skill and success. Her son, Joseph, became a renowned painter. One Patience Wright sign suggests she may have been a spy… In which case, she, also, secured the rights of man.
Bordentown’s Restorations are Stunning, Even When Trees are Bare
Cleaved Bonaparte Tree and Architectural Dig, Point Breeze
Strolling Bordentown’s brick sidewalks (I convince myself each brick came from the brickworks at the nearby Hamilton/Trenton/Bordentown Marsh, where I love to hike and bird, especially after new snowfall.) Charles Lucien Bonaparte, –when he lived on the Bluffs above the Hamilton-Trenton-Bordentown Marsh–, discovered and named new species in the Marsh. He would send news of such creatures as the mourning dove, named for his wife, Zenaide, and the Cooper’s hawk to scientific colleagues all over Europe. His species discoveries, and who knows what from that consummate politician, his Uncle Joseph, traveled under sail, from the confluence of the Delaware River and the Crosswicks Creek, at Bordentown.
View of the Confluence of our Delaware River and the Crosswicks Creek
From Bordentown’s River Line Train Station
Here lived a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Frances Hopkinson, who also created the Great Seal of New Jersey, and his son, Joseph, who wrote Hail Columbia.
Frances and Joseph Hopkinson House
Here Clara Barton founded her free school, the tiny building still crowning a triangle of land not far from Jester’s Cafe.
Clara Barton’s School
Jester’s Cafe, a Warm Welcome In All Seasons
Warm Welcome of Summer
Venerable Bricks: Quaker Meeting House
Quaker Meeting House, with early Bordentown mural on side wall hidden here in shadow
Old Bordentown Mural near Quaker Meeting House
Nearby is the Point Breeze land on top of the Bordentown Bluffs, where Napoleon ordered his brother Joseph, former King of Spain and of Naples, to live but not to rule, because so convenient to Philadelphia, New York and Europe, under sail.
View from the Bonaparte Estate, Point Breeze
Next to the Farnsworth House is the impressive John Bull memorial, first steam engine in America, which pulled the legendary Camden and Amboy Railroad across Farnsworth Avenue — the railroad that carried Abraham Lincoln to his Inauguration and his grave. See what I mean about gliding through time’s veil?
Please, Santa? Bordentown for Christmas….
River Line Trenton Sign (Trenton is one stop north — through the Marsh)
This Way to Camden and Walt Whitman’s House
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Filed Under (Adventure, Birds, Discovery, Forests, Nature, Preservation, Princeton Region, books, heirloom seeds, leisure, trails) by Carolyn Foote Edelmann on 12-05-2011
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There’s entirely too much virtual naturing going on in our time. There is NO substitute for being OUT there on the trail, in the kayak, following the birds, threading a forest! However, when Mother Nature is uncooperative weather-wise, or “the world is too much with us” - one rich substitute is reading our gifted (and often quirky and challenging) nature writers.
I had considered a book list, but no! Authors are the key.
A firm believer in independent bookstores, I find my natural mentors at Half Price Books in Montgomery, near the movie theatre; and at Labyrinth, doing a fine job of helping us not to miss Micawber’s on Nassau Street.
Here’s my short list - what’s yours? The Henry’s: Thoreau and Beston (Outermost House). Edward Abbey’s anything. Rachel Carson, ditto. Aldo Leopold. Wendell Berry. Rick Bass and Farley Mowatt, the latter especially on wolves and whales. Annie Dillard and Anne La Bastille - Woodswoman, what I long to be! Terry Tempest Williams, describing her red deserts, exhorting us to preservation, conservation and stewardship. Gary Paul Nabhan on seeds, restoring heirlooms to our produce stands. Michael Pollan’s anything. Mary Austin on deserts. Seminal birding author, Roger Tory Peterson’s Wild America and Kenn Kaufman’s evocative Kingbord Highway, inspired by Roger’s journey with his British colleague.
This will do for starters… opportunities for savoring… I am eager for your responses.
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Filed Under (Adventure, Animals of the Wild, Birds, Discovery, Farms, Forests, KAYAKING, Nature, Preservation, Princeton Region, books, leisure, wild, wildness) by Carolyn Foote Edelmann on 11-30-2011
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Singing Prairie Warbler
The wild is everywhere around us. But, many resemble the boy encountered by Richard Louv on the plane, whose favorite place is his “bedroom, because that is where the electrical outlets are.” Stunned, Louv crafted his seminal book that spawned a nationwide children in nature movement: “Last Child in the Woods - Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder.”
Increasingly techno-addicted, we could be convinced that there is no more wild in America, let alone New Jersey. We could be making those exit-jokesters right.
Or worse, we could assume that the wild is irrelevant. It has been too long since we first nodded in agreement with Henry David Thoreau who insists, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” But Thoreau’s warning is even more crucial in the 21st Century, most appallingly true in New Jersey. A Rutgers study predicts that we may be the first state to be completely built out - within 30 years or less.
Read the rest of this entry »
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