Branch Brook Park

The state of New Jersey seems to be the butt of many national jokes, and the city of Newark even more so. Yet Newark, NJ,contains some amazing places. Among them is Branch Brook Park, an amazing greenspace designed by the firm of Frederick Law Olmstead, the designers of New York's famed Central Park. It was their vision that gave Branch Brook its lovely naturalistic feel.  At the park's south end it is overlooked by the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, lending an almost European feel to the park.

 In the spring the park is a riot of pinks and whites as the cherries blossom. Branch Brook Park has more cherry trees than the famed Tidal Basin in Washington, DC, and has a wonderful annual festival.

 As the cherries blossom and spring is in the air the cricket players take to the park, also lending a slightly "foreign" air to one of New Jersey's finest parks.

Newark is not a place most people think of as a birding hotspot, yet it has several fine birding locations, and Branch Brook Park is the chief among them. Of course it has its share of "urban birds" like the Canada geese, mallards, rock piegons, starlings, and house sparrows seen in parks all over. But if you visit the park at all times of the year, and keep your eyes open, you can see an amazing number of birds..

  Ospreys soar over the ponds searching for a nice fish dinner.

Red-tailed hawks make the park their home also. Plenty for them to eat here!

  The starlings are ubiquitous, but keep your eyes peeled anyway. That dark bird on the ground may actually be an eastern kingbird.

 Great egrets, great blue herons, black-crowned night herons - all of them can be seen at the park if you go there at the right time.

 As I've mentioned before I have a special passion for ducks, so I always loved the winters when ducks would appear in the park. The ruddy ducks often hung out at the south end near the cathedral.

Northern shovelers were also there in abundance, usually closer to the middle of the park where the geese and mallards tended to hang out.

The reeds lining the ponds and brooks would be filled with red-winged blackbirds.

The park was a driving route for me primarily, from one end of the park to the other at a slow pace, pulling over from time to time to investigate certain favorite areas. There were spots to see red-bellied woodpeckers investigating dead trees for possible nesting sites. In the winter there were lots of song sparrows, white-throated sparrows, dark-eyed juncos. Wood ducks came here, and hooded and common mergansers, cormorants, coots, vireos, swallows...birds of all sorts. Not one of them bothered by the fact that they were in Newark, NJ. :-)

An Everyday Birder's confession

 yellow-breasted chat, Boy Scout Woods, High Island, Texas

It's October now! Temps are dropping down into the 60s at night. Days are clear and breezy and lovely. My favorite time of the year is here. It's also a great time for migrating warblers passing through and fellow birders and ebirders seem to be reporting all sorts of warblers regularly. It's the perfect time to go out and look for warblers.

EXCEPT I HATE LOOKING FOR WARBLERS! Well, that's a bit strong of course. Maybe I should say I seriously dislike looking for warblers. It's just not fun for me. Warblers are small and flit up in the treetops or in the brush. They are hard to see, and often when you see one you see a bit of olive drab and a bit of yellow - markings that could one of a whole bunch of warblers. And their songs? I play my CDs over and over again, but so many of the warbler songs still sound alike to me!  

Palm Warbler, Fleming Island mall, Fleming Island, Florida

 So warbler season actually tends to depress me. Lots of interesting little birds passing through my area, and I can almost never see them. And when I do see them nine times out of ten I can't figure out what they are.

Do I ever see warblers? Sure, I see them sometimes. I've seen a few interesting birds. But rarely. When I do it's usually because I'm with someone else who spotted them first and then pointed them out to me. And since I tend to be all alone when I go birding about 95% of the time that means the occasions when I have someone to point out warblers to me is rare.

Yellow warbler, Sackville Waterfowl Park, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada

So here it is warbler season, and I feel I *ought* to be looking for warblers. But I don't really want to look. I want to go to the saltmarshes, not the woodlands. I want to see DUCKS! Ducks are my special passion. But it's not quite duck season yet. And when it is duck season there are few good areas I've found to see ducks that are not too far from where I live.

And now for a break from the usual - Disney World!

Magic Kingdom, Disney World

Yup. last week I was at Disney World, with my son, daughter-in-law, and two grandkids. It was sort of a group birthday occasion for them, celebrating my DiL's birthday which was August 25, my grandson's 4th birthday on September 9, my son's birthday on September 19, and my granddaughter's '6-month' birthday on September 16. :-)

Disney World is not the place one normally thinks of when one thinks of birding. And indeed, I was there for a week and birding was not at the top of our list! And yet there were plenty of birds around - many, like house sparrows, feral mallards and white ibises, begging handouts from the tourists. Lots of grackles too - both boat-tailed and common, many vultures flying overhead.

Certainly the theme parks are not serious birding spots, but quite a few birds were seen on the ground, in the trees, in the ponds, flying overhead. I was not at Disney World to bird either, but kept track of all the birds I did happen to see and put in some "incidental" reports to eBird.org.

my son, daughter-in-law and two grandkids, Disney World

Mostly I was there to be with the family of course. And that was lots of fun. Seeing Disney through the eyes of a 4-year-old is the way to see it. Everything is so new and awesome and incredible to them. And of course birds were the last thing on his mind. 

white ibises, Disney World

Though he couldn't help but notice the white ibises. They are so large after all, with such remarkable bills, and they were as bold as could be, strutting along the paths, coming up and begging from people. Very interesting how some bird species seem to have very little fear of humans. I wonder what makes some more bold around humans and some so timid?

mourning dove in the morning, Disney World

Mourning doves are also birds that seem pretty comfortable with the human condition, though not quite as close to the people as the ibises and mallards. Oddly enough there were no pigeons at Disney. When I think  of "people" birds begging for food they are one of the first species that come to mind. But while there were doves aplenty, mostly perched on the wires, there were no pigeons in sight.

grackle, Disney World

The grackles were noisy too - lots of boat-tailed grackles in the parking lots, hopping in and around the cars as visitors disembarked and headed for the trams. In the parks themselves they also made rackets, as did the common grackles who seemed to be around the Magic Kingdom.

sandhill cranes, RD Keene Park, Orlando, FL

On Wednesday of our week there we took a break from Disney. The kids went to the pool at the resort where we stayed, and I went out to do some actual real birding! I used eBird to check out what locations might be not far from our resort, and made brief visits to three of them.

I first went to the Tibet-Butler Preserve, which sounded like it would be an interesting location. And maybe it is under the right conditions. But it began to rain torrentially just as I arrived. And thought I spent 30-40 minutes there I did not see or hear one single bird, other than a mourning dove sitting on a wire at the entrance to the preserve. What a bust.

However then I rode a few more miles up the road to RD Keene Park and Boat Ramp. It was still raining, but more of a drizzle, and much more exciting birding. I saw 4 sandhill cranes there! I love sandhill cranes, and this is only my third lifetime sighting of them.

From there I moved on to the Dr. P. Phillips Community Park, a very interesting park also on the water, but not too exciting birdwise. After that I needed to return home to see the family, so my "real" birding was pretty uneventful - but a typical sort of day for an everyday birder like me.

tree containing scolding Florida scrub jays, Ocala National Forest

I did have a special bonus on the way home however! I decided to take the scenic route home up SR 19, through the Ocala National Forest, to see a part of Florida I had never seen before. I took my grandson with me, and my son, DiL and granddaughter went on their own way up the I-4/I-95 corridor. The Ocala National Forest was amazing, just a wonderful ride. And as I was driving my phone beeped indicating I had gotten three text messages. Thinking they might be important I pulled off to the side of the road to read them. As I pulled over I heard a raucous noise outside the car.

So I rolled open the windows. Something was making loud noises in the tree across the way, so I got out my binoculars to see what I could see. And what did I see but two Florida scrub-jays scolding me from the trees. Without my decent camera I was unable to get a photo of them, but followed them closely for several minutes through the trees. What fun. Only my second lifetime sighting of Florida scrub jays, and it was a totally serendiptious sighting which I would never have had if not for checking my texts.

I was near the Juniper Springs area and decided I would then take a few minutes to see what other birds might be around. Nothing too exciting - just usual suspects like turkey vultures, cardinals, crows, etc.

But the scrub jays made the day, and I wound up with 26 species for the week in Orange County. That puts me so far down the list that  I don't even show up on eBird's "Top 100" for species seen in Orange County. I'm at number 200+ there. But as an everyday birder I still wanted to submit reports even though I was mostly enjoying the family and the rides at Disney.

Vilano Boat Ramp

Vilano boat ramp at sunset, St. Augustine, FL

I haven't posted in a bit, but life got interrupted by a week at Disney World. It was a fun week, and perhaps I will have to post about it.

I live in Clay County, and I certainly love my house here. But so many of my favorite birding spots are over in St. Johns County. I love to head over towards the ocean and the salt marshes when I have enough time to devote to birding other than at my house or the mall.

And one of my early discoveries was the Vilano Boat Ramp along A1A. It's a perfect stationary and car birding site. You have the water in front of you, salt marshes to the right and left, some trees and shrubbery. It's just a wonderful place to pull up in your car, or to sit at the picnic bench.

Being on the water you naturally have lots of water and shore birds, although the place is a haven indeed for the standard rock pigeon, or "city" pigeon.

royal tern, Vilano boat ramp

But after the pigeons, gulls and terns are the most common birds there, particularly the ring-billed and laughing gulls. Terns can be seen there too but not as common.

leucistic ring-billed gull, Vilano boat ramp

And sometimes amid the often dozens and hundreds of gulls you'll spot one that is just a little different, like the leucistic ring-billed gull who hung around Vilano for a few weeks. I love his blue eyes.

black skimmers, Vilano boat ramp

Sometimes you can come here and find hundreds and hundreds of black skimmers. Black skimmers are such odd looking birds. It does make them rather endearing. :-) 

osprey, Vilano boat ramp

You can almost always plan to see ospreys when you go to Vilano, perched on the poles, soaring overhead, perched on trees in the hammock across the marsh. They are such haughty-looking birds, proud and free. I love to see them swoop down into the water and come up with a fresh catch of fish! It's always an amazing performance.

roseate spoonbill, Vilano boat ramp

Roseate spoonbills have been seen nesting in the hammock also. They are another endearing bird - with a rather ugly head, truth be told. But their glorious pink color makes up for their other shortcomings, LOL.

cedar waxwings, Vilano boat ramp

But you never can be quite sure what you will see at Vilano. Sometimes you go there and there are hardly any birds at all, or just a few of the "usual suspects". But then you will see something amazing, like a flight of 100+ cedar waxings flying overhead.

lark sparrow, Vilano boat ramp

This bird, however, was my most amazing sighting, a lark sparrow, a very rare bird indeed for this area! Everyday birder that I am I hadn't the least clue what the bird was, though I was at least skilled enough to realize I was seeing something unusual. Fortunately I managed to get a fair number of photos, and got help from people more knowledgeable than I am in IDing the bird. Rarities do not come my way every day, that's for sure. I'm much more a pigeon and starling and house sparrow kind of gal.

black-crowned night heron, Camachee Cove, FL

After I had been going to Vilano for a while I learned from Audubon Society contacts that across the road from Vilano, by the marina at Camachee Cove, there is a colony of black-crowned night herons. Now whenever I make a trip to Vilano I also drive up the road at Camachee to check out the night herons. They are not always there, but I love seeing them when I can.

So far my Vilano boat ramp "patch" contains 67 species of birds seen. I'm sure it would be higher if Vilano was at close as the local mall. But since it's almost 40 miles from home I don't get there nearly as often as I would like!

The Mall

 Loggerhead shrikes - Fleming Island mall, FL

When I lived in NJ I had several favorite birding spots - Rifle Camp Park/Garrett Mountain in Passiac County, Branch Brook Park in Essex County, the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in Morris County, but especially Richard W. DeKorte Park in the Meadowlands of Bergen County, NJ. DeKorte had everything I wanted in a great birding site - located along the Hackensack River, with lots of water views, excellent walking trails and boardwalks - plenty of gulls, songbirds, raptors, herons and egrets, ducks of every sort - and it was very close to my home! And I especially loved that the Audubon Society had walks there on Tuesday mornings - a great day of the week for me! Unlike Saturday and Sunday which are both bad days for me to get out with birding groups.

 Tuesday morning birding at the Meadowlands, Lyndhurst, NJ

I have a special fondness for ducks and wading birds, and adored the boardwalk trails with their great sightings of herons, egrets, and ducks, as well as swallows, swans, gulls, and many other birds. But their wooded trails were memorable as well.

belted kingfisher, from the boardwalk trails, Meadowlands, Lyndhurst, NJ

When I moved to Clay County, Florida, my hope was to find an amazing birding spot nearby that I could love as much as I did DeKorte. But alas, after two years now it seems my quest for that is hopeless. There are birding spots close to where I live - but they don't offer the great variety and open water vistas that DeKorte offered. There *are* wonderful birding spots in FL that offer those things, but none of them are close to where I live. None of them are places that I can visit on a daily or even a weekly basis.

And no local places that are great for car birding in the way that Rife Camp/Garrett Mountain or Branch Brook Park were. I was pretty bummed as I explored, and didn't find what I was seeking. But not far from my house is a shopping area. We've got a Public and a Winn-Dixie, a Walmart, a Target, a Home Depot, a Petco, a Kohl's, a Michael's craft store, a movie theater ... and various restaurants and hair salons and stores of other sorts, so that most everything I need can be found over at the shopping mall. But as I discovered the place I also discovered it was very different from shopping malls in NJ.

double-crested cormorants in a retention pond, Fleming Island mall, FL

The *backs* of the stores were ringed with wooded areas and retention ponds. Retention ponds seem to be all over the place. I live on one as previously mentioned. They are all around the mall. The first time I noticed an egret at one of these ponds I was intrigued. I took to paying more attention. Soon I began allowing myself extra time when I went shopping to take time to check out the ponds and the woods. Pretty soon it was becoming a regular routine. I found myself going to check out the ponds and woods even when I *didn't* have any shopping to do!

Wood stork, Fleming Island mall, FL

And before I knew it the Mall had become my premiere birding spot close to home. I don't love it like the Meadowlands. There are no wonderful boardwalk trails. It's a car birding site, with various places to stop and look and listen.

Most of the time I see the same birds over and over - the Canada geese, the Muscovy ducks, the great egrets, the crows both American and fish, the house sparrows and boat-tailed grackles and starlings. But every now and then you can go to the mall and see a green heron, a worm-eating warbler, a blue-gray gnatcatcher, indigo buntings...

Green heron, Fleming Island mall, FL

indigo bunting, Fleming Island mall, FL

I'm passionate about logging my bird sighting on eBird.org. eBird has a facilty that lets you define favorite "patches" - places you like to bird regularly. It keeps track of the statistics for you of the species you see, and lets you know how many you have seen in your life, the past year, the past month. And lo and behold, the Mall is now my Number One Patch as far as the number of species I have seen. I look at stats for my old favorite in NJ, DeKorte Park, and my total species count there is 81. For Rifle Camp/Garrett  Mountain it's 65, for Branch Brook Park it's 57. But my count for the mall is 86! Of course I have submitted over 300 reports submitted in the past two years! That's averaging around 3 times a week which sounds about right. The more often you go the more likely you are to see new and interesting birds - the tree swallows and/or barn swallows who are only there for a few days, among others.

And after many trips you get to know where birds will be found - the ospreys who have nested for the past two years on top of a light fixture in the parking lot in front of Target, the Eurasian collared doves who are always found on the east side of Home Depot, the fish crows who hang out behind the small strip of stores to the west of Home Depot, the black vultures who love to roost in the trees behind the soon-to-be defunct La-Z Boy store. I've seen belted kingfishers and anhingas and double-crested cormorants, ring-necked ducks, lesser scaups, curiously blown off course birds like least terns and a semipalmated plover.

osprey nesting on light in Target parking lot, Fleming Island mall, FL

So after two years I still have not found a local birding place I *love*. Crawling along behind stores and their loading docks and dumpsters just doesn't give me the same thrill as a more natural environment does, but the mall somehow seems to have become my birding muse.

Yes, there are days I wished I lived closer to Guana River or Merritt Island - two places that both thrill me in the same way the Meadowlands does. But I don't.  Guana River is 50 miles away, Merritt Island a whopping 165 miles away. I can't go there several times a week, or even weekly really. So right now I have the Mall, 2 miles from home. It's a good day for a drive.

eastern phoebe, Fleming Island mall, FL

My Florida Yard

My yard seems to be a perfect place to start with in regards to my favorite stationary and car birding locations.

It was two years ago Labor Day weekend that I moved to Florida, after spending most of my life in New Jersey. Talk about big changes - but New Jersey is expensive, I had been laid off from my job of 36 years, and my son had just taken a job in Jacksonville, so events conspired to move me down here. Luckily I was moving from a higher priced real estate area to a much lower one, but I was still nervous about what sort of home I could afford, and whether I'd find myself living in some sort of tacky shack or hovel somewhere. When I looked around with a realtor I was struck with all the retention ponds, and the houses on ponds, and thought how cool that would be - but figured that would be out of my price range.

  my pond, facing west, Fleming Island, FL

But I was lucky! I found a house in a neighborhood I loved that was on a pond! And at a great price.

 my pond, facing east, Fleming Island, FL

I've been here two years now and each day I love my home more and more. I was only in a week when I first put up bird feeders - though it took MONTHS before birds found them. But eventually they did. With money I got from the sale of my NJ house I had a sunroom built off the kitchen which now gives me great views of my feeders and pond. 

my sunroom (and grandson John), facing the pond, my yard, Fleming Island, FL

I start every morning out there with my coffee, and keeping lists of the birds that show up. It's my time for morning meditation and renewal.

And eBird.org statistics show me that in the past two years I've seen 81 different species of birds here, and that's just from sitting in the sunroom drinking my morning coffee! And I've had the thrill of seeing bluebirds and wood ducks nest in the yard, as well as numerous other babies - cardinals, Carolina wrens, red-bellied and downy woodpeckers.

I've had visits and flyovers from all sorts of cool birds also - pileated woodpeckers, swallow-tailed kites, bald eagles, blue grosbeaks, indigo and painted buntings, anhingas, cormorants, all sorts of herons and egrets and white ibises galore.

 two anhingas, my yard, Fleming Island, FL

two red-shouldered hawks, my yard, Fleming Island, FL

two hooded mergansers, my yard, Fleming Island, FL

 ruby-throated hummingbird, my yard, Fleming Island

 eastern bluebird, my yard, Fleming Island, FL

                                         pileated woodpecker on a rainy day, my yard, Fleming Island, FL 


I don't take any of it for granted. I count my blessings every day. Selling the house I had lived in for 30 years and taking a huge leap into the unknown was a major stressor for me - but it seems to be working out well. I love my home, I love my birds. I get to paint and sing and see my grandkids and work for conservation issues with Audubon...It's amazing the twists and turns your life can take.

dawn over the pond, my yard, Fleming Island, FL