Cormorants Swim Where Brenda Jones and I Birded By Car…

NJ WILD readers know, if they know anything about me, how precious is the birding refuge, ‘The Brig’, A.K.A. Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge to me, as a birder, and far more profoundly, as a spiritual being.

It’s where I restore myself when “the world is too much with me”, more and more frequently these days.  Far more important than I, however, ‘The Brig’ is a key stopover on the Atlantic Flyway, rich in rarities at all times.  Perhaps never more precious than in winter, when winged creatures elsewhere can be scarce.

Duck Flight Before Storm, Brenda Jones

Everyone also knows that un-hurricaned Sandy destroyed great swathes of our beloved New Jersey’s three coastlines, especially The Shore, especially at and in and near Atlantic City.

One of the eeriest factors of being at ‘The Brig’ is that you see all those gambling towers through the migrant flocks.  My happiest times at ‘The Brig’ are when I can’t see Atlantic City, because of fog or whatever.

I have been down at the Brig in fire, fog and ice. I can never believe that anyone would rather be in those towering prisons of glass, those cacophonous, frenzied places, rather than in the seamless peace of the marshy reaches of The Brigantine.

Great Egret, Great Peace of Brigantine Wildlife Refuge, Brenda Jones

I can’t drive it’s dike road any more, because it has been severed by uncategorized-storm-Sandy.

Cormorants swim where I used to bird by car.

All those carefully managed impoundments with their specific salinities, to nourish certain aquatic plants and shelter and feed certain waterfowl, are fouled.  The Bay, –Absecon Bay, whatever its salinity in the storm and ever since–, has surged in.  The Brig, as we know it, is no more.

Grebe Swallowing Frog, Brigantine Wildlife Refuge December Drama — Anne Zeman

I’m going down there for Christmas, ‘come hell or high water’.  Certain walking trails are open, and birds don’t watch the Weather Channel.  I’ll check out Leed’s Point, where the Jersey Devil was purportedly born and which thrives as a tiny old-world fishing village, at least until Sandy.  Herons frequently soar in and land on Leed’s Point pilings.  I’ll drive the bumpy sand road to and from Scott’s Landing, always remembering encountering hunters with their ‘bag’ of bloodied snow geese there, late one autumn.  Odd, I’ve never read a recipe for snow goose.  How neatly they were lined up along the sand…  below the targets, silhouettes that teach hunters the differences among birds on the wing at various distances.

Snow Geese In Flight, Brenda Jones

How Snow Geese Look when they hear shots….  cfe

In the meantime, this is some of ‘The Brig’s’ reality.  God KNOWS what’s happened at my other major havens - Island Beach, south of ruined Bay Head, Mantoloking, Seaside and so forth, and Sandy Hook, up by the Highlands and too many rivers….

Serenity and Tumult, Bay Head, Carolyn Foote Edelmann

NJ WILD BEAUTY, ISLAND BEACH    Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Pristine Barnegat Bay, which rose to meet the Atlantic…   Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Winter Realities, Normal Sandy Hook, Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Sandy Hook, Bay Side, After a Hard Winter    Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Brigantine Serenity from Leed’s Eco-Trail    Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Cloudscape, Summer, Brigantine   Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Glossy Ibis and Marsh Mallow’s First Bloom, Brigantine    Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Update as of Friday, December 7 at 10 a.m.: The Wildlife Drive in Galloway remains closed due to damage from Hurricane Sandy. The Songbird Trail, including the portion that uses the Wildlife Drive, will be closed December 10 through 14 due to a refuge hunt. Other hiking trails in Galloway are open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. daily, including the Akers Woodland Trail, Leed’s Eco-trail, and foot access to Gull Pond Tower.

The Visitor Information Center is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.weekends. All fees have been temporarily waived.

Scott’s Landing Boat Launch is open. Barnegat Observation Platform is open. The deCamp Wildlife Trail in Brick Township is open for the first 2000 feet. Holgate remains closed.

Introduction

The Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, where more than 47,000 acres of southern New Jersey coastal habitats are actively protected and managed for migratory birds. Forsythe is one of more than 500 refuges in the National Wildlife Refuge System administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The National Wildlife Refuge System is a network of lands and waters managed specifically for the protection of wildlife and wildlife habitat and represents the most comprehensive wildlife resource management program in the world. Units of the system stretch across the United States from northern Alaska to the Florida Keys, and include small islands in the Caribbean and South Pacific. The character of the Refuges is as diverse as the nation itself.

Wish me well on my Christmas pilgrimage.  Far More Important, wish the birds well no matter man’s depredations.

Do whatever you can, wherever you are, even in those 90 countries who, for some reason, read NJ WILD about our dear state, to preserve refuges in your region.

And pay attention to catastrophic climate change.  It’s no myth.  It’s not a subject for believe.  We have seen, to borrow the Pogo line, catastrophic climate change, and it is us.

What Sandy did was dress rehearsal.  Sandy scrawled the signature of inevitable sea level rise for all the world to see.  Sandy was not a one-time event.  Sea level rise will not undo itself, as do hurricanes in time.  Although not in damage.

Our world is changed forever.

Sandy didn’t change it.

We did.

What are you doing about it?

Spotters on the Cape May Bird Observatory Hawk Watch Platform    cfe

Actually, it’s more like “Cape May For Two Days”!  And yes, it was MORE than worth it.

Those two days centered upon the Cape May Bird Observatory [CMBO] Hawk Watch Platform.

After stopping at CMBO to renew my membership, and pick up a super-comfortable strap for my binoculars, I headed for the lighthouse and the Platform, even before checking into my motel room.

Helpful Cape May Bird Observatory Personnel on Hawk Watch Platform, cfe

CMBO maintains “counters”, “spotters” — professionals of highest caliber, who spot and count birds zooming past in autumn migration.  The Platform fronts upon a pond. always graced by swans and frequently dive-bombed by peregrines.

Sunset Swan, Brenda Jones

I immediately recognized the silhouette and mellifluous voice of Pete Dunne, head of CMBO, author of wit, wisdom and experience, and yes, bon vivant.  Also, natural teacher.  So many facets of my birding knowledge have been inserted or polished by this man, over the years, at sunrise and sunset, and sometimes at 20 degrees with 20-mph-winds.  I was overjoyed to reconnect, after my year plus of hurt-hip-induced absence.  Pete, watching me walk, exulted, “We live in remarkable times.”

He went on to prove it by mentioning, “I was informed by phone about the nighthawks.”

Here and there, spotting scopes were trained on the skies.

But these pros of the Platform don’t need optics.  A black spot miles away can be differentiated, as in Cooper’s or Sharp-Shinned Hawk, and they’ll even tell you how they can tell.  Something to do with frequency of flapping.  Pete:  “It it were a Sharp-shinned, it would’ve flapped by now.”

Sharp-Shinned Hawk, Brenda Jones

But I say, these spotters, these CMBO mentors, are attached to birds by senses which have not even been defined, let alone located.  Senses which go beyond eyes and even beyond Swarovskis.

Brilliance is a big part of being on the Platform.  And fellowship.  I hadn’t realized that (this concentration of) birders are family; that I had missed them to such a high degree.

There’s always humor, and even humility.  At one point, Pete said, with a shrug in his voice, “Haven’t a clue….”  There was a pregnant pause, followed by, “… bird.”

At the same time, in my two visits that day, early and latest, I was part of a bald-eagle count approaching 30.  Even more importantly, –as I learned at early light the next day–, a 268- kestrel day.

There was a bare tree set among cedars, as studded with kestrels as a Christmas tree with ornaments.  Every one vivid.  Every one fluttering.  These raptors swooped out, over and over, –not unlike flycatchers–, in quest of insects, one after another.  And kestrels can hover — I never knew that.  So vivid that they seemed iridescent, even spangled.  What a privilege to be surrounded by them.

American kestrels have been ‘fewing and fewing’ in recent years.  Their sacred edge habitat has been increasingly devoured by what others deem progress.  I forgot to ask Pete, why there were/are so many right now.  But this is one time when why doesn’t matter.  Only beauty, power, rarity and presence.

Among the other numbers on Monday (departure day) morning were 109 osprey.  Osprey were everywhere Sunday evening, often ‘packing a lunch’ - fish in talons, aerodynamically situated so as not to interfere with flight.  17 sharp-shins.  10 Coopers.  30 Merlin.  5 Peregrine Falcons.  and so forth…

I even spotted a tern I didn’t recognize, which Erin-of-CMBO eagerly identified as a Forster’s.  She trained the Swarovski scope on this single bird at the end of a wooden dock-like structure to our right.  “Only Forster’s terns have that black eye patch now.  They’re really fun to identify in autumn.”  As David Allen Sibley puts it, “Black eye patch of non-breeding plumage distinctive.”  This Platform is where Sibley ‘earned his wings’, with Pete and Clay Sutton, his co-authors of Hawks In Flight, about to be re-issued.  All three will be at the Cape May Birding Weekend, to talk and sign this re-issue of Sibley’s first book, before his NYT best-sellers, The Sibley Guide to Birds, and The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior.

Usually, white shrubs and vines surrounding the Swarovski-sponsored Platform are filled with monarch butterflies this time of year.  There were fewer than I’ve ever encountered of these orange-and-black long-distance fliers.  Even so, I was welcomed to the Platform by one which nearly landed on the bridge of my nose.

Icy yellow, with a tinge of chartreuse, or key-lime pie, the cloudless sulphur butterflies seemed more in evidence here and among the bayberried dunes of Higbee Beach.

One of the butterfly magnet shrubs has the lovely name of High Tide Plant.  Elder is another name for it.  I’m sipping St. Germain liqueur, late this night, as I bring Cape May back to memory and to life.  Pretending I’m a butterfly, nectaring on the elder plant from whose flowers this French specialty is crafted.

I hear Pete observe, “That eagle looks like he’s about to leave for Delaware.”

American Bald Eagle, Brenda Jones

Delaware is very near, here where our River meets the ocean, and the Cape May Lewes ferry carries cars, birders, bicyclists, hikers and just plain tourists from one state to another.  The ferry is a grand place for seeking out seabirds who “come to land only when nesting.”  (Sibley)

I reluctantly leave the Platform because it’s time to walk The Point.  Newly crafted ‘boardwalks’ (they’re not real board) lift birders off the marsh-scape, into the realm of warblers and other treasures.  Somehow, they’ve conquered phragmites to an enormous degree, those towering invasive rushes that drive out all the native plants the birds need, not only in migration.  In the place of reeds is a meadow or a prairie of New Jersey wildflowers.  The air is fragrant with (the invasive) autumn clematis, tiny white starflowers spun along tangles of vines.  It’s more interesting than honeysuckle, with mimosa ‘notes’.

Colors on all sides of me include a pinkish bronze (wool grass, which is really a sedge); purple asters; white asters; seaside goldenrod, white ‘rose’ mallows, white boneset, pink marsh mallow, white dotted smartweed, mistflower, wild ageratum, purple gerardia, etc. etc. etc.

I don’t know all these plants - a fine naturalist, the plant equivalent of Pete Dunne, was sitting on a bench and eager to teach me every single species, in English and in Latin.  Carl Anderson.  He explained that the bayberry-like plants were wax myrtle and hybrids of wax myrtle and bayberry — the leaves on the latter are broader and darker, and bayberries were definitely in the minority.  Bayberries are essential fat/fuel to migrant birds.  I felt like Alice In Wonderland, having drunk whatever and shrunk to be smaller than most of these flowers.

Birds were few, because it was mid-day.  Fish crows ringed the beige lighthouse like a crown of thorns.  A single egret minced about the edge of a pond.  A sound I never knew, or maybe ever heard, turned out to be a single kestrel in a naked tree just above my head.  The closest I’ve ever been to a kestrel.

Kestrel at the Pole Farm, Brenda Jones

Morning dawned with a beach walk among black skimmers beyond counting, followed by another couple of hours on the Hawk Watch Platform.

Black Skimmers in Flight, Brenda Jones

Sky Full of Skimmers, the Jetty, Cape May   cfe

From ten to twelve thirty, Monday, I floated on the boat, The Skimmer, among Cape May marshes.  We were in quest of rare birds there, too.  What I best remember is a series of large turtle heads in Turtle Creek, and a very rare Tri-colored Heron before we turned back to the dock.

Leaving for home was almost unbearable.

All the way north on the Parkway, I would hear those Platform phrases, “Over the cedars.”  “Really soaring.”  “Got ‘im!”

The line I’ll remember most is Pete Dunne’s description of yesterday, to a fellow ’spotter’ who also writes a blog:  “Here’s the first line for your blog, Mike.  If you weren’t here yesterday, slay yourself now.”

Black Skimmer Aloft, Cape May, by Brenda Jones

What do you do when your favorite Motel, even weeks ahead, only has one night in which to welcome you?  It’ll be nearly three hours down, ditto back.

But the birds are migrating.

And the ocean beckons.

Shimmering Beachwalk, Cape May   cfe

And I haven’t been on the Hawk Watch Platform since a year ago Easter, since this has been ‘The Year of the Hip.’

But my legs work now.  I can carry my suitcase upstairs to my sea-facing room.  I can walk on sand again.

My camera is not exactly rusting from disuse, but close.

Cape May Hawk Watch Platform after 2009 Blizzard    cfe

The Hawk Watch Platform of Cape May Bird Observatory is officially open.  Raptors are soaring.  Shore birds staging.  Monarchs might be nestled throughout the ivory blossoms of the high tide plant.

I have two good books, in a field new to me, food philosophy.

Seaside Seafood Supper, Inside Jetty Motel    cfe

There won’t be enough time for all my favorite restaurants.  But I’ll literally make a stab at it.

Osprey of May in Cape May, over CMBO Hawk Watch Platform   cfe

And Monday morning, before turning north, I’ll be on the Skimmer again.  This is a flat-bottomed craft that noses in and out of Back-Bay Cape May.  Its knowledgeable Captain and Mate know where all the rare birds wait.  Whether or not the ospreys have left, they’ll know how many young each nest produced.  They’ll use delicate dip nets to introduce us to marshwater creatures, tenderly returning them as soon as we’ve memorized the names.

Everything will be shimmering.

And I’ll have new reasons to be glad of having endured this mightily successful hip replacement.

In a way, I’ll be migrating, for a too-brief interval.

Cape May vistas new and old will fill my treasury for the months ahead.

How Cape May Light Looks in Winter - CMBO image from Hawk Watch Platform

And probably, I’ll return, as is my wont, for Christmas.

The Jetty Motel is my favorite — go there.  You’ll be made to feel like family.  And, offshore, this time of year, hordes of black white and orange skimmers wait somehow, coming in for landings at sunrise, like the breakfast flock in Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  Only vivid.

Make Cape May YOUR own…

Whale Watchers, Cape May, Brenda Jones

SALEM COUNTY’S BUCOLIC HISTORY - ALLOWAY CREEK    cfe

NJ WILD readers know my favorite places to travel are the wild ones of New Jersey, –especially central and southern–, particularly near water, salt and fresh.

Often in quest of birds, rare yet plentiful.

You also know that the places I choose are havens on many levels.

However, I may not have emphasized enough that one can visit NJ WILD sites, even on major ‘Holidays’, without crowds.

Hancock House Historic Outbuilding - Revolutionary Site — cfe

If you pull up NJ WILD, it has a search feature.  Write in ‘Brigantine’ or ‘Pine Barrens’; ‘Sourlands’ or Sandy Hook; Bull’s Island, the Delaware River, Island Beach, etc.  You’ll be given a string of posts on their wild beauty, and directions are often part of the saga.  For deepest solitude, plan birders’ hours — first light and last light.

In general, Take The Pretty Way, the back roads.

Salem Preserves — cfe

Tomorrow, a friend and I will launch her new Prius into Salem and Cumberland Counties. We’ll be treated to golden stretches of marshland; to shimmering rivers with splendid Indian names, such as the Manumuskin.  We’ll ride on and laugh at the sound of Buckshutem Road.  We’ll wonder, as you always must down there, where on earth will we eat?  Of course, there’ll be the freshest of Jersey Fresh produce on weathered stands in front of farmhouses of other centuries.  Of course, we’ll slide coins into Trust Boxes, as we settle agricultural jewels into our sustainability bags to take home.

We’ll see rare birds, especially eagles. Salem County held our only productive eagle nest during the grim DDT years, which my county (Somerset) is about to reinstitute, as it ‘adulticizes’ mosquitoes in the week ahead.  Now, I am not kidding, in Salem and Cumberland Counties, we could see more eagles than we can count.

American Bald Eagle Floating - Brenda Jones

Ditto osprey.

Osprey Claiming Nest, Brenda Jones

Butterflies, too.

Cabbage Whites Nectaring — Brenda Jones

Especially ditto purple martins, but they had all left the Brigantine the last time I was there, weeks ahead of schedule.  Theory is that our drought hinders the insect population to such a degree that martin migration is over. I’ll know tomorrow.  If not, there could be hundreds of thousands of them, bending the marsh grasses, then darkening skies, along the Maurice River.

Alloway Creek, site of British Massacre of Colonial Soldiers, Salem County — cfe

Look up these sites, and find them for yourselves.  There won’t be anyone else on most of the roads to the unknown, actually usually forgotten, Delaware Bay.

Salem County, Tranquillity Base   cfe

Pine Barrens Peat Water, Mullica River    cfe

Between drought and development, it is hard for others, even for New Jersey natives, to credit our slogan, “The Garden State.”

NJ WILD readers know, I celebrate New Jersey’s wild beauty wherever and whenever I can find it, even right in my own (near Rocky Hill) rocky hilly foresty yard.

But sometimes, I must go far afield, gulp great ‘draughts’ of New Jersey Beauty.

As. recently, to and from my cherished ‘Brigantine’ - Wildlife Refuge, otherwise known as Edwin B. Forsythe.

The blessings of visiting ‘the Brig’ are beyond measure, starting with the long silent even winding drive through the Pine Barrens to Smithville and Oceanville.  Due east of those tiny pre-Revolutionary towns stretches the 8-mile dike drive among bays and impoundments, rare birds at all times and in all seasons.

Come along with me on last week’s spur-of-the-moment, if not even desperate, flight to beauty.

Queen Anne’s Lace, Mullica River, Pine Barrens      cfe

Beyond the dock, fortunate kayakers make their way up the Mullica, without whose Revolutionary waters and watermen, we wouldn’t have a nation:

Mullica Kayakers,    cfe

Cloud-Studded Salinity-Managed Waters of Brigantine    cfe

FIDDLER CRABS, OUT FOR LOW-TIDE LUNCH, Brig     cfe

NEW JERSEY BEAUTY - CLOUD MAJESTY   Brig     cfe

There were great egrets everywhere, like archangels at the Nativity, as well as black-bellied and American golden plovers, ibis beyond counting, a few skimmers not skimming, and osprey families everywhere we looked — some feeding young, one ‘mantling ‘ - waving mature wings to cool the immature!

Successful Osprey Family, The Brig    cfe

Duck and First Marsh Mallows of the Season     cfe

Glossy Ibis and Marsh Mallow, Brig    cfe

Wild Flowers (water lilies and Sagittaria) and Cranberry Bogs Near Chatsworth, #563,

The Empty, Beauty-Bracketed Route Home     cfe

As you can see, beauty and wildness are with you every step of the way to and from ‘The Brig.’

(”The Pretty Way” will have no cars to speak of, even on major holidays.  Route 1 South to 295 South to Columbus Exit to 206 South to Carranza Road/Tabernacle to 532 (stop at Russo’s for fresh-made cider doughnuts and very local produce).  532 east to 563 South to (I forget the number -[579?]) left to New Gretna below Chatsworth  Route 9 South, moments on GSP, Exit 48 Smithville, back onto Route 9 South below Smithville to left turn to Forsythe Wildlife Refuge after fire station, Lily Lake Road. See Noyes Museum of Art while down there.  Eat breakfast at The Bakery in Smithville; any time at Smithville Inn, and Oyster Creek Inn at Leeds Point, if it’s open when you’re there…)

It’s impossible for me to believe scenes of great white sharks off Chatham, Massachusetts.  That priceless working fishing port served as my essential haven throughout the 1970’s and 80’s.  It was a place of weathered grey cottages with white shutters, pink roses on the picket fences.  Its winding Oyster River used to be famous for that bivalve, possibly my favorite food.  Anything in the waters there was food for us, not the other way ’round!

Daily beach walks from our [Nantucket] Sound-side front door to Harding’s Beach Light revealed rarities, from the red-necked phalarope circling and circling in the Sound to the Hudsonian godwits who pranced around us as we set out.  The morning I showed the girls the long-tailed jaeger in the Peterson’s Guide — hovering over a dune — we found one doing exactly that down by the Light.  The morning after I read of crows mobbing eagles - to look for raptors when one hears that cacophony — I watched crows drive an American bald eagle all the way back from the Light to Harding’s Woods.  I recall it only took the eagle 5 or 6 wingbeats to cover what stretched for us for an hour or more.  Down on the hard sand at low tide, back on the high road with the heather and horned larks — all creatures were blessings in Chatham.

Life in Chatham was simplicity itself, a barefoot existence, –full of sweetness in those who shared our cottage and the very local foods we ate, especially Nickerson’s Fisheries fish.

In all our long restorative summers, I never recall the ‘S-word’.  Even when we went whale-watching off Provincetown, I remember shearwaters as much as whales.  But no sharks.  Of any sort.  Never, flying from “Chatham Municipal” to Nantucket or the Vineyard.  No sharks in headlines, either.  “Clam Wars” were all the rage in Chatham summers.

Great White Shark, David Watts, Seapics

Let alone seals!

How can seals have become the norm in Chatham on Cape Cod?  How can it be that they lure great white sharks this often and this close to shore?

My NJ WILD readers know my stand on (the increasingly ignored, as increasingly experienced) climate change. So you know my theory - ocean currents changed by melting glaciers and altered temperatures bring sharks closer to shore, and not only in Chatham.  And not only this summer…

Change your carbon footprint before it is absolutely too late!  What does it take to waken us?

[The two nameless photos have no credits on Internet...]

Meanwhile, here are two new poems triggered by shark news.  The first one describes shark alerts along the Jersey Shore, when we summered at Normandy Beach.

**

DIFFERENCE

**

lifeguards taught us

how to tell the difference

between sharks and dolphins

**

–bronzed gods

high in their whitewashed towers

they’d raise firm hands to

replicate

**

sinuous curls

of dolphin fins

beyond the ninth wave

**

relentless cleave

of shark fins

–executioner’s blades

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

June 21, 2012

VISITORS

**

there are two great whites

off the coast of Chatham

**

coursing among infamous shoals

which keep her fishermen

shorebound

but for one tide

each day

**

Chatham, haven in the grim years

place of my poet love

–sea-change

–first outrageousness

**

as essential

as these behemoths

foraging, frolicking

**

beyond the ninth wave

knowing

they are somehow

home

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

June 24, 2012

Black-Crowned Night Heron by Brenda Jones

NJ WILD readers know I have been to ‘the Brig’ (Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge at Smithville above Atlantic City) in virtually all conditions.  Literally, fire and ice.  Snow, of course.  Fog.

The fire was a controlled burn to remove phragmites (tall blinding invasive grasses that alter food supplies for birds ‘the Brig’ was created to attract and protect.)  The ice was Mother Nature at winter normal, making the dike roads too slippery for entry.  Fog is heaven, though birds scarce — because you can’t see Atlantic City looming.

Yesterday, Tasha O’Neill, a fine-art photographer and dear friend and I deliberately traveled to ‘the Brig’ in rain.  Both of us had been incarcerated at our desks for a ‘rosary’ of crisp sunny days.  When freedom arrived, rain came with it.  ‘The Brig’ holds miracles anyway.  (It used to be called Brigantine Wildlife Refuge, and is in NO WAY connected, save visually across water, to cheek-by-jowl developed Brigantine Island).

Waterlilies welcomed us, half-open upon arrival because of the dearth of sun.  But waterlilies are rewards in any weather.

Waterlily in Rain by Tasha O’Neill

Among the “miracles anyway” was a red knot — our most tragically scarce bird.  They used to feed by the hundreds of thousands on 100s of 1000s of horseshoe crab eggs.  But developers, along with exploiters of horseshoe crab for bait and fertilizer, have had their way with this lustrous bird of far-flung migratory habits, all centered on our Delaware Bay this time of year.   To see any red knot is to see the NJ equivalent of the passenger pigeon, the ivory-billed woodpecker.  Any year now may be their last.

Accompanying the knot, and then sprinkled throughout our day, was a profligacy of ruddy turnstones.  I’ve been in love with their yes ruddy patchwork backs, their dapper jet ascots and cummberbunds, since I met turnstones at our Chatham, Mass., shore house.  They, too, feed at nearby Reed’s Beach, Fortescue and others in Salem and Cumberland County, on whatever horseshoe crab eggs there may be.

My co-birder that day was fine art photographer, Tasha O’ Neill.  Weather made seeing out of the windows chancy, let alone photographing, but she did her best.  She found the black-crowned night heron off to our left - standing bolt upright as I have virtually never seen them.  Hunkered in shrubs over water, breeding plume reaching the water below; settling into taller trees for the night; posing like a football on rocks by a channel — these are usual BCNH positions in my experience.  Not sentinel-straight.  Not marching like a soldier at the changing of the guard.

Rain-Drenched Black-Crowned Night Heron at Brigantine, by Tasha O’Neill

I never found a harrier, my signifying bird at Brig.  But Tasha found two definite red-tails in a dead tree before we were even off 206, and I saw one quartering a field like a harrier somewhere near Tabernacle.  It’s always good when your birding starts off before the sanctuary.

Willets were quieter than usual at the Brig — otherwise they generously call out, “I’m the Willet!  I’m the Willet!”, as they prance, pounce, then lift off.  These birds the color of light toast turn snappily black and white as they lift off over the impoundments.

We were there at low tide - best for shorebirds.  A couple of black-bellied plover did not impress my co-birder, wanting them to match their full breeding plumage in my Sibley Guide.  It’s not quite time yet for turnstones, or for black-bellies, to be completely in the full black splendor of what always looks like formal evening attire, lacking the patent dress shoes.  Stars of low tide for both of us, however, were black skimmers - only two in total, and not performing their Balanchine skimming act in such low water.  But handsome and dapper and inescapable with those formidable red-orange beaks.

Skimmer in the Air, by Brenda Jones

We had one golden plover, stately as Tutankhamun, amongst a host of busy ‘little grey jobs’, busy as pyramid builders stoking up before the carry.  I have friends who have mastered sandpipers; ditto sparrows.  I’m slowly learning sparrows at their hands (we had a nearby chipping sparrow, down on the ground where he belongs, rusty little head pouf very visible, early on); but I remain hopeless with sandpipers.  Dunlins?

We found longbilled dowitchers and a lovely curved-bill whimbrel, looking classic against dark peat and green marsh grasses.

Great Egret Fishing in Rain, Brigantine, by Tasha O’Neill

Egrets were stately, immaculate, and the rain-wind generously blew their full breeding plumage, so that they resembled ladies in Dress Circle, sporting plumes for a new diva’s Traviata — back in the days when egrets were killed for these immensely long, pristine feathers.  The snowy egrets’ breeding plumage turned them into bleached female mergansers — who always look to me as though they’ve their toes stuck in an electric socket for the effect on head feathers.

Fish crows mourned overhead.  There was a scarcity of osprey, though some on nests.  Most nests stood empty.  One was adorned with all sorts of human detritus — from a float for a lobster trap to orange construction netting.  One or two nests showed sitting females, the male on the nearby feeding platform.  We did not hear that plaintive delicate osprey call we’ve come to cherish.

Osprey Returning to Nest, by Brenda Jones

Tasha was delighted with a levittown of horseshoe crabs, each defending his domicile with an ivory-hued larger claw, all the rest of the crab invisible in subeterranean safety.

No swans that day.

One SNOW GOOSE! — yes, indeed, white with black feathers and that characteristic rosy beak.  Have you EVER seen a solitary snow goose?

Tree swallows, then barn swallows — virtually the only bird call we could hear.

One scowling snapping turtle, resembling an armored tank on a forested road.

Early stars and late, the angular glossy ibis.  Even in the half light, their forest green and buffed copper highlights gleamed.

However, I have to admit, the highlight of this journey was coming home through the Pine Barrens, studded with just opening rosy-to-pale-pink mountain laurel, deep into the pinewoods.

Laurel in the Mist, Sooy Place, Pine Barrens, by Tasha O’Neill

And, as I’d hoped, jewels encrusting the north side only of Sooy Place off 563, goat’s rue.  Tasha had never seen it.  I’ve probably been lucky enough to be their for its brief rare bloom five times total.  Its foliage is icy green and lacy, its little face like a snapdragon sticking out its saucy fuchsia tongue.

Goat’s Rue in the Mist, Sooy Place, Pine Barrens, by Tasha O’Neill

It’s not often that the birds of Brigantine are eclipsed (pun intended).  But May 21, on the day after the solar eclipse (only seen in Albuquerque, I gather), birds took second place.

Every trip to the Brig is different.  Get DOWN there.

Remember, we have that sanctuary because of people with high and deep commitment to preservation!

Baltimore Oriole with Fishing Line for Nest    Brenda Jones

Most people don’t even know there IS a Marsh in the middle of Trenton (and Bordentown and Hamilton).  Let alone the northernmost freshwater tidal wetland, which surges and empties in synch with the tides of the ocean, as amplified by the nearby Delaware River.  Let alone that ‘The Marsh’ is Oriole Central this May!

Most people don’t know that the Marsh has mattered to the Lenni Lenapes for at least 10,00 years, that artifacts proving this have been found there over the centuries.  That the Lenapes at first didn’t live there, but connected with each other and other tribes in spring, in autumn, en route to or from hunting lives to gathering times at the Shore.  That Route #195, which noisily curves above and through the Marsh, began all those centuries ago as the Indians’ footpath to ocean gathering time.

Baltimore Oriole, Full Breeding Plumage - Brenda Jones

For sure, what most people don’t know is that, if you’re in love with orioles, as well as other rarities among our NJ birds, go to the Marsh right NOW!  The earlier in the day the better, though late light is good, too.  Go with anyone brought there to lead tours for the Friends for the Marsh (www.marsh-friends.org), such as Charles and Mary Leck, Lou Beck and John Marin, among others.  Orioles will welcome you immediately, perhaps even before the mute swans glide over to enchant you.  Not only Baltimore orioles, but also orchard orioles.

Baltimore Oriole in All His Glory    Brenda Jones

If you’re with Charlie, Mary, Lou and John, you’ll be informed that the vaguely chartreuse oriole is a first-year orchard oriole.  You may know, from other Marsh trips, –when Orchards and Baltimores conveniently perched on the same empty branch so that you could compare and contrast, as in English class–, that Orchard example will, next year, be the hue of a toasty chestnut.

Spring Lake was named by the Lenni Lenapes, because spring-fed.  It may well have been formed by the beavers, who still generously inhabit watery stretches, in what Charlie calls, “Beaver Condominiums”

Beaver Close-Up, from D&R Canal in Princeton — Brenda Jones

There’s a trail map at entry of what is also called Roebling Park.  You can hike over a small bridge (see beaver dam, which is different from lodge, to your right) into woods with well blazed trails.  And/or turn left at the lake and circle it very slowly, binoculars on everything from posts to vines to tulip trees (Indians carefully burn-hollowed these trunks for canoes) to towering cottonwoods to shrubby arrow-wood viburnum (Indians used this wood for arrows) to dead trees, otherwise known as snags, perfect perching posts for avian visitors and nesters.

Great Blue Heron    Brenda Jones

This morning, starting at 8 a.m., an enthusiastic group decided that birding is more important than Mothers’ Day. Birding-by-ear was the name of the game from the start.  I’ll try to remember what was seen and heard, so you can pretend you were with us.

DIRECTIONS:

To get there yourself, take Route 1 South to South Broad Street Exit at Arena; when exit T’s, that’s South Broad/206 South, there by the River Line Train holding pen.  Left is south onto Broad, past Lalor.  Turn right at the light (Sewell) after the two green church steeples.  Drive through tiny neighborhood until Sewell T’s at the Marsh.  Turn left/down and park next to the lake.  Miracles of peace, beauty and birding await.

Red-Winged Blackbird in Full Breeding Plumage — Brenda Jones

Mute swans; orchard oriole; red-winged blackbirds; yellow warblers; common yellowthroats; blue-grey gnatcatchers; solitary sandpiper (only there were 2 of these (really rare creatures); great blue heron; mallard pair; beaver lodge; beaver dam; Carolina chickadee with insect in mouth, waiting for us to pass so it could pop into its nest in post hidden by vines to feed young.

Osprey At (Much Heftier) Nest — Brenda Jones

Osprey on scrungy nest on top of hideous power tower, male arriving with outsized nest material, matrimony on his mind.  Flock of cedar waxwings, conveniently in emptily dead tree.  Warbling vireos everywhere, proving their name.

Cedar Waxwing — Brenda Jones

Red Admiral butterflies, the lepidopteral stars of Spring 2012, first ON parking lot, where everyone could get ‘a good look’ at it, resting mid-flight on the gravel.  The next red admiral was on a tree that had been graffitied — on a large 0 after a peace sign.  Those with cameras were ecstatic.  Those without will never forget those juxtapositions.  At the shore, such as Cape May and ‘The Brigantine’ about which I write so often, people recently saw 40,000 migrant red admirals.  Warning — they’re not red - they’re orange — but that’s pretty much the norm in nature nomenclature.  Remember how orange the redstart is, and to me the red knot is terra cotta…

American Redstart by Brenda Jones — If you ask ME, it’s orange!

We saw a toad upon whose species — the experts could not agree.  It was right in the clover by the lake, and still as a stone.  Henslow’s?  American?  I didn’t hear the outcome, because I was on the trail of overhead orioles, irresistibly posing in the full sun we weren’t supposed to have.

Now, answer me.  Would you believe a saga like this took place in Trenton.  Does all day every day, depending upon the season.  Several times, those of us who are riveted by bouquet de fox were stopped in our tracks by fox pungency.

I didn’t take my camera - but Brenda Jones, of course, has pictures of some of our species.  I’ll put them in for you.

Put yourSELVES into the Marsh.

And support it, through Friends for the Marsh and D&R Greenway Land Trust, where I work — who preserved and maintain those 1200 crucially moist acres, buffering temperature and drought/flood conditions, and serving as nursery and migrant corridor for species beyond counting.

Although botanist Mary Leck and ornithologist, Charlie Leck, have, indeed counted and you can find the species count for plants, animals, amphibians (fish?), and, of course, birds on www.marsh-friends.org.

Never forget that www.drgreenway.org keeps green New Jersey green

D&R Canal Above Mapleton Aqueduct by Brenda Jones

Where D&R Greenway Began its Preservation Miracles…