Winter Traffic Jam at the Beach for an Owl

A traffic jam on Wildlife Drive; the white specks in the water are overwintering Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens)

Kali and I enjoy visiting the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge just north of Atlantic City, New Jersey during the winter to observe the overwintering waterfowl; we've paid a visit on or around New Year's Day for three years now - looks like we've got a tradition going.  Because the forecast showed last Saturday (December 29) would be the best day for a week, we took advantage of the sunny skies and temperatures in the low 50s F to make our annual migration. 

Forsythe is always a great place to visit but, this year there's a special "draw": two of the large number of Snowy Owls (Nyctea scandiaca) that have erupted from the Arctic and which are spending the winter in the eastern United States have decided that Forsythe is good overwintering habitat.  We hoped we would be lucky, but we knew we'd enjoy the day regardless.

Upon reaching the refuge, we knew we were in for an unusual day.  First, the parking lot where people stop to register and pay their entrance fee was filled to capacity (usually, there are one or two cars when we visit).  Then, as we started on the 8-mile Wildlife Drive through the refuge, we could see cars everywhere.

Our first stop was a lone tree crowded by birdwatchers alongside the drive.  Sitting calmly about 15 feet off the ground was a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis), probably wondering what all the fuss was about.

Male Northern Pintail (Anas acuta)

Another handsome Northern Pintail (slightly pixelated from being digitally enlarged)

Our second stop was alongside the drive were a large group of birdwatchers had gathered and were looking down the embankment into high grass and weeds.  I couldn't see what they were observing until one of the birdwatchers pointed out an American Bittern (Botarus lentiginosus) stalking mice.  Bitterns are so perfectly camouflaged that they all but blend into the grass and weeds they inhabit, so they are rarely observed on the ground.  I have no idea how these people found this bird (unless it flew in) because I could hardly see it even when they pointed it out to me.  This was only my second bittern ever, so I was excited.

We continued along the drive observing waterfowl until we came to a point at which all traffic stopped and everyone got out of their cars and crowded the verge.  Of course, we followed the crowd - and were rewarded with one of the highlights of our birdwatching careers: one of the Snowy Owls.  Jokingly, I said it looked like a soccer ball on the ground, and I immediately got some dirty looks from the other birders.  Below are the best pictures I could capture with my camera.  The first image was how the bird looked in the field; the second two images are digitally enlarged on the computer.  What a great day all around!

Baldpate Spring

Wolf tree (a locust) on the summit of Baldpate Mountain

Kali and I hiked six miles at the Ted Stiles Preserve at Baldpate Mountain, a Mercer County natural area just north of Trenton, New Jersey yesterday.  A mountain in New Jersey?  Well, Kittatinny Ridge (a real mountain, for those of us in the East) which embraces the Appalachian Trail, crosses the northwest corner of New Jersey.  Further south, though, erosion-resistant diabase ridges rise a few hundred feet above the surrounding landscape and create "mountains" like Baldpate.

Because of the steep topography and the stony soil that develops from diabase (an igneous rock that cooled and solidified in fissures below the surface of the earth), these ridges were often left forested or only lightly farmed.  Despite the forest cover, though, there was plenty of evidence of farming and disturbance on Baldpate.  Stone walls ran through the woods, and we came upon the ruins of stone cottages and woods roads buttressed with stone. In addition, the air was perfumed throughout the hike by countless invasive non-native autumn olive trees in bloom.  In fact, the understory there consisted of nothing much more than mutiflora rosebushes and garlic mustard, though some spring ephemerals managed to persist.  Nevertheless, the tree canopies were alive with the songs of wood warblers and thrushes.

View over southern New Jersey (including Delaware River)

When we finally reached the crest of the ridge, we were rewarded with long views of southern New Jersey and the Delaware River below.  You'd almost never guess that we were in the most densely settled state in the union.

Rancocas

New Jersey, south and east of the state capital, Trenton, is the Coastal Plain--an area of unconsolidated sand, gravel, and clay washed off the Appalachian Mountains and the Piedmont and deposited on the shallow continental shelf.

In New Jersey, the Coastal Plain is divided into two zones, the Inner Coastal Plain and (naturally) the Outer Coastal Plain.  The two zones are separated from one another by a series of low, sandy hills called cuesatas, which form a regional watershed divide.  Streams rising on the northwest side of the divide flow westward toward the Delaware River.  Streams rising on the southeast side of the divide flow eastward toward the Atlantic Ocean with one exception--Rancocas Creek--which rises on the Outer Coastal Plain, flows westward through a valley, and empties into the Delaware River like its Inner Coastal Plain brethren.

Kali and I visited Rancocas Creek State Park last Saturday afternoon.  The day was cool and overcast, but pleasant for walking.  New Jersey Audubon maintains a nature center with well-marked trails on 125 acres in the park, but the rest of the preserved land seems nearly abandoned by the state.  Foot trails are not marked and difficult to follow.  In addition, they are regularly interrupted by deer trails, making hiking especially challenging.  In addition, the state allowed a local chapter of the Lenni Lenape Indians to use a significant section in the center of the park for tribal activities, but the chapter has been split by internal rifts and the Indians have abandoned their facilities.

Nevertheless, we walked about four miles, enjoying the gently undulating landscape and the woodlands that feature oaks, sweet gums, beeches, and American hollies.  Most people have hollies in the foundation plantings around their houses; here (and throughout the Coastal Plain), they are evergreen components of the forest.  In addition, the streams are sand bottomed and stained with tannins.  All in all, a nice break from the Piedmont.

 

Sourland Mountain Preserve

"Sourlands"

What a wonderful, evocative name for a landscape.  The Sourlands are a narrow band of elevated, rocky land running generally southwest-to-northeast through the west-central part of New Jersey from the Delaware River (on the west) to just north of Princeton (on the east).

The terrain is characterized by a stony ridge rising about 400 feet above the surrounding land.  The ridge is there because of an igneous rock called diabase.  Sixty-five million years ago, as Africa and North America began to tear away from one another along their mutual suture, the land on either side of both continents stretched and fractured.  In some places, the fractures became faults, while in others, magma welled up into the fractures from below but never made it to the surface.  Instead, it solidified deep underground into diabase, a rock that is much more resistant to erosion than the surrounding sedimentary layers.  Over the intervening millions of years,  the sedimentary shale layers entombing the diabase have worn away, leaving an exposed ridge of resistant rock. The exposed diabase weathers into huge block and boulders that tumble down the slopes from the top of the ridge.

A refugium.  The forest has no understory vegetation, undoubtedly because of the dense white-tailed deer population.  These ferns escaped atop this rock.

The origin of the name Sourlands is disputed.  Some sources claim that the rocky landscape was not arable and thus useless, or "sour."  Other sources claim that the name is a corruption of the word "sorrel" meaning "reddish," but I wonder about that interpretation because, while the sedimentary shales surrounding the Sourlands do weather into reddish clay soil, the Sourlands soils themselves are brown loams.  Surely someone has tested the pH; the most logical explanation is that the soils are very acidic. 

Somerset County (NJ) has preserved 3,197 acres at the eastern end of the ridge as the Sourland Mountain Preserve, and has built a trail network throughout.  Kali and I visited on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, a beautiful late autumn day with temperatures near 50 degrees and sunny skies.

The biggest draw in the preserve is a particularly distinctive boulder field perched on the eastern shoulder of the ridge.  It's a ridge-top amusement park with rock outcrops, crevices, overpasses, and underpasses.  The 5-mile Ridge Trail loop, which we walked, also includes extensive boardwalks crossing poorly drained portions of the landscape and a walk along Roaring Brook, which emerges from a valley filled by a truly Brobdingnagian tumult of room-sized boulders.      

Roaring Brook

Grounds for Sculpture

We had family in town visiting this weekend, so we took them to the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey, just northeast of Trenton. Established on the old state fairgrounds, the Grounds for Sculpture is a private, nonprofit 25-acre sculpture garden, arboretum and park featuring over 250 sculptures.


Most of the artwork is contemporary, especially that which I like, but there are many examples of representational sculpture in the park as well, such as these painted cast bronze figures reminiscent of a Renoir.

Among my favorites, offset beautifully by the dramatically colored building.

This piece, called Awakening, is my favorite. I love the design, the texture and the colors, which remind me of the desert Southwest. Late afternoon lighting doesn't show off the piece to its best advantage.

Despite temperatures in the 90s on Saturday (June 26), we spent three hours strolling the grounds. It's a captivating place.