Don't Take Your Guns to the Swamp (from April 16, 2011)

(This is another old column that got obliterated and I am now republishing. I've since learned how to put in more pictures as well as links.)

It has only been in the last couple of years that I have begun bringing a camera with me when I go birding. Until then I was content to have only my 10x50 Nikon binoculars and use the camera in my brain to record notable images.

With digital cameras suddenly everyone became a nature photographer. That's fine if you are trying to prove you saw something unusual such as this pinkfooted goose my husband, MH, photographed early in March in a private park in Washington Township (Bergen County), NJ.

But a lot of photographers are doing it for profit, either by selling those photographs as stock images to be used in calendars and the like or to put on their personal photography pages and garner the ensuing glowing comments.

If you want to do that, fine. But what I CAN NOT STAND is when someone takes his or her gun-like lens and aims it practically in the face of a bird, creating unnecessary stress and ruining it for other birders when the bird takes off.

There have been many instances of this selfish and cruel behavior on the part of people who want a picture that badly. For instance, a few years ago the birding lists were full of angry birders screaming about a rare boreal owl in Central Park that had been there for a few weeks but finally left after a man set up a camera and used a bright flash (by day, yet) to take a picture practically in the face of the roosting owl.

I have witnessed several such instances, two of them at the Great Swamp in New Jersey.

An aside: Fifty years ago, the plan was to make this 7,500-acre gem straddling Morris and Somerset counties into an airport. Environmentalist Helen Fenske created a grassroots movement to stop that plan. Every time a plane flies over the swamp I shudder. The new visitor center is named for Helen Fenske.

Another birder and I were at the Heronry Overlook parking lot watching a mature bald eagle sitting in a tree close by. Suddenly, we saw a man with a rifle-like camera lens walking in an off-limits area closer and closer to the tree, snapping away, until the eagle flew off.

We started yelling at him and he was completely amazed and confused at our reaction. What was the big deal? He only wanted a picture of an eagle. (The eagle eventually returned after the idiot left, but to a tree much farther away and only identifiable thanks to its white head.)

The second example involved a couple of long-earred owls that decided one winter to roost in a cedar tree very close to Pleasant Plains Road, practically at eye level, not far from the Fenske office.

The swamp is not far from my home so my husband and I drove over and found the owls easily thanks to a couple of birders there. Most birders know to give owls some space during the day since they are resting for the night's hunting. Not the guy there with another gun-like lens, standing real close to the alarmed owls as he took his pictures.

This begs the question, why stand that close if you are using a telephoto lens?

I asked him that question, and told him to get the hell back across the road. MH and the man's wife were afraid we were going to get into a fight, and it was very close. But he moved back. MH and I took our own pictures from across the road. I thought I had gotten through to Mr. Photographer until I looked in the rear-view mirror as we drove off and there he was, up in the owls' faces again. I wasn't surprised to learn not long after that at least one of the two had flown off. I can only hope the second owl, when it left, hadn't been scared off by other inconsiderate birders lusting for that special photograph.

There hasn't been an extended stay by a long-earred owl along that part of Great Swamp since, as far as I know. Owls have long memories, too.

Farewell, Kirkbride

The end has come.

For years there have been battles over the fate of the Kirkbride administration building at what used to be the Greystone Park psychiatric hospital. When N.J. Gov. Christie Whitman, after a number of scandals involving the century-old hospital and its outdated facilities and leaky security, had the hospital closed down and a newer, smaller hospital built on the western-most end of the property, the bulk of the land was sold to Morris County for $1 and became a park.

The stone wards built to stand the test of time came down. The space is open and green. There are ball fields, playgrounds and, late in coming, hiking trails. But Kirkbride stood, a decaying hulk, on state-owned land. Nearby stood two "cottages" and the old train station.

Many plans were circulated to "save" the historic old building, the wonder of its age with the largest continuous foundation in the world until the Pentagon was built in Virginia. But each plan included residential housing and commercial space and many, including me, were worried about the effect on the park and the populations of Parsippany, where the hospital was located, and Morris Plains, literally just down Central Ave., which leads to Kirkbride's doors.

Legislation was introduced to tear the structure down and turn the state land over to the county to add to the park. Morris County is one of the more congested counties in the most congested state in the U.S., so opening more parkland to the community rather than putting up hundreds of townhouses - creating hundreds more cars and people with their traffic and demand on local services - is a better idea.

The people who wanted to preserve the Greystone building as an example of fine architecture claimed a deal had been rammed through the legislature to pull the building down without due process or public input. Had more people complained, it wouldn't have happened, they claimed.

I am not so sure.

I've written about this battle many times before and I maintain my opposition to anything that would have added more people to the area. That this proposed development - shops and luxury apartments plus a museum of mental health was in the latest plan - would've taken place in an already established county park made the whole thing seem ludicrous. The park is crowded enough when there are soccer or lacrosse or cross-country events but where do you put the parking for the stores and the apartments?

The issue went to court and there were rallies, but the court did not stop the demolition.

So bit by bit, the building has come down. First the back buildings and "cottages" that flanked Kirkbride, then the back part of the building. Each day, more comes down. About the only thing standing was the main entrance. I wondered if the preserver people were going to get their wish - toward the end they harped on that museum of mental health more than shops or apartments.

But the other week, the newspaper reported the head of Preserve Greystone had thrown in the towel, saying too much had been taken down for the building to be of use. Last week, the ornamentation around the windows and doors was removed, and I hope they aren't dumped in the meadowlands as part of the old, beloved Pennsylvania Station were discovered to be.

So it will be only a matter of time before the last of it comes down, the debris removed and the fencing. At some point, the land will be taken over by the county and the old farm buildings in the back, from the days when Greystone was built to allow inmates to work in the country air, will be removed and perhaps trails put in for hiking. Before then, people have been coming by to take pictures of the building, as I have here.

There is a lot about the Central Park of Morris County I do not like. I did not like seeing forests taken down for the soccer/lacrosse field. I did not like the long wait before something resembling a trail was put in. I am not crazy about the disc golf course put in across the road, which means I must be even more aware of my surroundings when I am walking around the old ice pond or hiking up the hill than usual.

But I agree with the removal of Kirkbride. If the state wanted to preserve it, it should have done so when the building was newly abandoned and the park not yet created. It could've done a lot with the old stone building but instead it left it to rot, and then said it was too expensive to rehabilitate it. I wouldn't have wanted my county or state taxes going to pay for that.

So I say farewell to you, Kirkbride, and hope your ghosts find another resting place.

I have a little list 3/20/11

Back on May 27, 2012, I rather stupidly deleted the links of many of my older posts -- not understanding why the headlines of the posts were hyperlinked. I've learned a lot since then, such as linking and spacing and captions. 

But when I was trying to find an older post for a newer one, I realized it was time to start republishing the lost posts, and restore the links.  I will be doing this over the next few days, but I am starting with some of the oldest ones.

When I was growing up in Brooklyn and then living in Queens with my husband, New York's Central Park did not have a good reputation - muggers behind every tree, bicyclists and wallets stolen at gunpoint, homeless men and women sleeping (and doing lord knows what else) on park benches.

That was particularly bad in the 1980s when the city had devastating fiscal problems and police couldn't keep up with simple crime like graffiti on subway cars, much less murder.

Things changed as the economy improved and, for better or worse, Rudy Giuliani became mayor in the early 1990s on a platform of, among other things, fighting crime and encouraging tourism. More police were hired and hit the streets as well as Central Park and, slowly, more people started to feel safe going in there.

In the late 1990s, a Wall Street Journal reporter named Marie Winn collected her writings about a particularly light redtailed hawk who'd improbably made a nest on an upper 5th Avenue building facade facing Central Park. The book was "Red-Tails In Love." It not only put the focus on the redtail nicknamed Pale Male (inspiring two movies and at least one song, by Steve Earle) but on Central Park in general and the birders who'd never stopped going there even during the bad times in particular.

I have never met Marie Winn but she is a wonderful email correspondent. Thanks to her website, http://mariewin.server304.com/index.htm, you can find Central Park nature notes and information about Pale Male's story and her other books.

But what I found most valuable about her site when I first went to it was her publicizing the New York City Bird Report. Unfortunately, the site no longer posts active sightings and is now a historical database. But between 2003 and 2007 it told you what visiting birds were in different New York City parks every day. 

A correspondent to this list was Tom Fiore, also featured in Marie's book, whose detailed reports were a major reason I (and no doubt others) started birding Central Park more often.

When nycbirdreport.com ended active reporting, Marie mentioned other interesting sites including ebirdsnyc (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebirdsnyc/) and the NY Birding List, part of www.birdingonthe.net, a service that provides lists of bird sightings by state and by rarity.

One recent mention on the New Jersey list, for instance, sent hundreds of birders from across the state and beyond to a small private lake in Washington Township (Bergen County), NJ, for a sight of a rare pinkfooted goose. Based on subsequent list comments, township residents didn't know what hit them when the birders flew into town. Such is the power of the list.

I enjoy reading the lists, and those who wish to subscribe can post their own sightings and comments. These list services are great when you want to bird beyond your backyard, so check them out.

Saving the Land

I was standing on a mountain top the other day, looking for hawks in the haze. It's not something I do every day because I don't like hard climbs. But the Land Conservancy of New Jersey had invited members of 10 years standing or more on this hike as a thank you for our membership and I couldn't say no.

We got to the top, greeted the men who come here every day during spring and autumn migration to count raptors, and rested. While up there the Land Conservancy's head guy, Executive Director Dave Epstein, pointed out the acres of trees leafing out below us.

This would have all been houses. The reason it isn't is due to a public-private partnership involving the state of New Jersey and several groups, including the Land Conservancy.

Wildcat Ridge. Now imagine the trees replaced by houses.

Where we were standing was Wildcat Ridge in Rockaway Township in Morris County, NJ, not all that far from where I live. Back when I became a member the group was called the Land Conservancy of Morris County. But there are many areas of the state threatened by overdevelopment, and so the name was changed to reflect the broadened mission of the Land Conservancy.

Standing on the mountain and trying to imagine a housing development below, I got the same feeling I get every time I go to Great Swamp (also in Morris County) and a plane flies over - I shudder. It was citizen action that stopped the plan for an airport to pave over this prime spot for God's creatures, particularly birds. The Helen Fenske visitor center is named for the head of the effort to save the Swamp.

These battles never end. They continue in Morris County.

Morris Plains is in a battle with the developer of the old Pfizer buildings on Route 53. The developer bought the land with plans to put in 500 apartments, condominiums and townhouses plus about 100,000 square feet of retail space, according to the borough website. The borough asked for changes The developer is suing, claiming the borough is shirking its affordable housing requirement.

Nearby Parsippany once approved what I call the Scar on Watnong Mountain, but is officially called Powder Mill Heights. It a multi-story apartment building atop a multi-story parking garage. It is an eyesore you can see for miles around, degrading the mountain it sits upon. I could see it from Wildcat Ridge.

Parsippany, the largest township in Morris County, more recently approved a developer's plan to put a Whole Foods, another retailer and 72 upscale townhouses on 26 acres of the undeveloped land currently zoned for office space. Nearby residents complained. Parsippany started to reconsider. The developer threatened to change the proposal to 530 rental apartments, designating 20% of them as affordable housing, which the developer said would force the zoning board to approve the plan because of its "beneficial nature."

That pissed off Parsippany and its residents, particularly the ones closest to the proposed development, who have already been raising money to fight the developer.

The developer wants to take down woods. Meanwhile, throughout Morris County there are vacant office parks. Hanover Township has allowed developers to clear-cut woods for a shopping center that has yet to be built, and which is located less than a mile from another shopping center that has struggled to keep tenants for years.

There is something about New Jersey that smells like money to be made, I guess.

The Kirkbride building.

At the border of my town and Parsippany is the Central Park of Morris County, which I will always refer to as Greystone. This land used to be a state mental hospital of that name. Morris County bought it for $1 when Gov. Christie Whitman ordered the old hospital closed down and a modern one built in a smaller parcel of land at the property’s western edge.

Whitman was a Republican, the same party that dominates Morris County politics. Subsequent governors who were Democrats said it was a land giveaway and the public would be better served if public housing went up.

That would've changed the entire character of the area and sent more traffic through my town.

That idea never took hold. However, the current governor, another Republican named Christie - as in Chris Christie - authorized the state to do a study of what could be done with the remaining property, in particular the hulking stone administrative building known as the Kirkbride Building.

Kirkbride was a wonder in its day, the biggest stone building of its type in terms of land mass until the Pentagon was built. While the county was busily demolishing the deserted stone wards to create a park, Kirkbride stood decaying, its bottom-floor windows boarded to deter vandals and squatters.

The state did a study of what it would cost and it would be $110 million to $125 million. The cheapest alternative was the $11 million to clean the building up and seal it. The study concluded there was no “economically feasible” way to save the building.

But in New Jersey, there is always room to make a buck.

The state solicited proposals, which made the group Preserve Greystone happy because it wants the building to stand and be used for a variety of things including a mental health museum, shops, condominiums and government offices, according to an article in the Star-Ledger daily newspaper.

According to an April 15 article in the Star-Ledger, the state put out its 108-page report on the different scenarios for the future of Kirkbride. Here they are:

Historic rehabilitation for 315 apartments, with rents of $1,500 to $2,500 a month.

Historic rehabilitation for 199 larger apartments that could be converted to condominiums, which would each lose an estimated $11.9 million.

Historic rehabilitation for a mixed-use facility including assisted living, office space and a bed-and-breakfast, which would lose an estimated $25.75 million.

Subsequently, the lead consultant on the study the state used for its estimates heard there was “'some interest" by developers in upscale apartments, "based on 'the magnitude of the project' and its historic aspect," according to the Star-Ledger.

Let’s get real here.

This place is in the middle of nowhere. The closest train station is in Morris Plains and there is already a fight for parking spaces. Only one bus line runs to Kirkbride.

That means cars - a lot of cars. Where do you put them? Perhaps you rip up the old farm fields behind Kirkbride and put in a garage or parking deck.

Also, this is a former office building that has had no one in it for close to a decade, located at the edge of a large park Morris County spent a lot of money to create. Right now there are ballfields with large lights being put in. Would you want to spend $2,500 a month for a place with lights coming into your windows and the roar of the crowd during a sporting event every summer night?

If it was me, I’d be complaining. If enough of us complain, the landlord takes notice - and that means the developers start “discussing” things with Morris County to put restrictions on a public park for which we have paid and are already using.

Central Park of Morris County.

Of course there is “some interest” in buying up some of the last remaining open spaces in a congested and overpopulated New Jersey in general, and Morris County in particular, for "luxury" residences. The developers don't care that drawing more people to an area means kids who need to go to school, drivers who will need improved roads and traffic lights to get on and off adjacent streets and appliances and phones that need to sap power off an already overloaded grid.

I'd rather the state either pulls down the building or pays the $11 million to seal it up and leave the remaining residents - ghosts and birds - in peace. But I'm readying my letter to the Land Conservancy just in case. Hey, it worked once in Rockaway Township.

Seeing the Forest for the Tax-Ratables

I may be wrong, but I believe in the office of every New Jersey county, town or state person in charge of creating or maintaining a park there is a manual.

Its title is something like “How to Get State Funding.”

Somewhere in the first chapter it probably says the following:

“To be able to maximize the greatest number of limited resources, the park shall be created to have the broadest number of uses.”

That means, if you want a park it can’t just have trees and perhaps a path or two. It must have an area for ball fields or a playground or a basketball court or soccer area.

It must be a “multi-use facility.”

That brings me to the Central Park of Morris County, and the clear-cutting of the trees.

Ever since the county (for $1) bought the land New Jersey no longer needed when the state was forced (by bad publicity) to close the old, hulking Greystone mental hospital and build a smaller, modern facility at the western-most end of the property, the county has been making improvements.　

One of the first things the county did was take down the abandoned stone buildings that used to house the inmates on either side of Central Avenue.

That was good. Those hulking buildings were dark and creepy, ghosts watching from the barred windows of the upper floors.

The buildings down and with all this land at its disposal, and all the time, effort and money expended to prevent trespassing, Morris County couldn’t just leave fields full of trees.

It started with a dog park, or “canine center“ as the county parks commission website calls it. I understand -- when you have a townhouse or condo or even one of the McMansions that have sprung up in the 20 years I've lived out here and your dog doesn’t have a big, fenced yard, you want a place to bring it.

Here’s what else is there, according to the website:

Two lighted, regulation-size, in-line skating rinks (that can be converted in summer for other sports). A baseball field for wheelchair activities. A 5K cross-country course.

That’s a lot of noisy activity on the south side of Central Ave., or “multi-use facility,” as it would be called in my hypothetical book. Not exactly the advertised “passive recreation” -- or hiking, as I call it.

Now the trees are down on the north side of Central Ave.

The north side of Central Ave. seen from Cottage Rd. The old hospital can be seen at the back.

I had hoped, fool that I am, the land would be left alone. The long grasses and very old trees had drawn wild turkeys, redtailed hawks, chipping sparrows, bluebirds, goldfinches, Eastern kingbird and others. I know because I hiked through that land and found them.

Now the trees are gone. The county has been cutting the trees for weeks. I’ve heard the sawing. I’ve seen the mountain of mulch.

Why?

What could the county NOW possibly be putting on that land between Cottage Rd. (the one that runs in front of the old administration building, which is state land) and the old hospital (currently under development; you can see it in the back of my photo)?

Soccer fields? A swimming pool? Maybe a condo village?

Who knows? I saw no notice of the county’s intentions anywhere.

I get it -- money is tight. If Morris County, one of the most built up in the most congested state in America, is going to create a park, it wants to get more bang for its buck. I think it did so.

I also think it should’ve created more hiking trails and left the trees alone.

But trees don’t pay taxes. Neither do the birds that nest and feed in them. It’s the same thinking that allows Parsippany to approve Whole Foods tearing down woods for a new store when there are half-empty storefronts throughout Morris County. In Livingston (Essex County) there is a completely deserted mall where the Borders used to be. Whole Foods could’ve had the whole thing to itself. But it wouldn’t have been paying taxes in Parsippany.

Or take Hanover, which allowed a developer to clear-cut property along Hanover Ave. for a shopping center, even though the nearby Cedar Knolls Plaza (formerly the Morris County Mall) and the Pine Plaza Shopping Center along Route 10, both also in Hanover, are half-empty.

You get the idea. Leaving woods alone is considered a “waste” of resources. Even my small borough is allowing 70 town homes to go up where a school used to be, which will make the Route 202 rush-hour traffic even worse since no one put in a traffic light for the residents to get into or out of the site.

Those park planners think they are giving us breathing room, and I suppose they are if you look at the over-development going on around us.

For those of us who think trees are important, there are still places to go. Some of these places are called National Wildlife Refuges.

They were created by the federal government with your tax dollars to protect the birds and animals that would otherwise be hunted to extinction.

To my thinking, they are also protectorates for trees, which in Morris County are also an endangered species.

Stately Mansions

I’m not part of the wealthy class, the 1%, despite living in one of the richest counties in the U.S.

Luckily, when I want to leave my middle-class existence for a while, I can find a way to pretend.

There was a time when, like Fifth Ave. in Manhattan, roads in Morris County were lined with mansions. The area was considered country, where the titans of industry could flee the city with their families in summer for cooler, fresher air.

However, as with the most of the Fifth Ave. mansions south of East 60^th Street, most of those in Morris County were converted to office buildings or torn down for something else. (For pictures of Morris mansions, some long gone, some still standing as private residences, click here.)

Many Morris mansions only live on as street names. The ones I know are Mayfair and Idlewild in Morris Plains. Danforth and James in Madison. Kahn Drive, the road that led to financier Otto Kahn’s “country” mansion in Morristown. (His NY town mansion is still standing, at 1 East 91st and is a Catholic school.)

Then there’s the Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge estate in Madison, Giralda Farms, where the mansion came down and the grounds were converted into an office park (with a sidewalk around the campus for walking - outside the fenced grounds, of course). Florence Vanderbuilt and Hamilton Twombley’s nearby Florham is now a campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. The mansion is the administration building.

But some of the biggest estates were donated to public or private entities and became parks, for the enjoyment of all, and that‘s where I go.

The various members of the Freylingheusen family held wide swaths of land in Morris County. The mansion of Peter Freylingheusen is now the Morris Museum. Another one, George Freylingheusen and his wife Sara, an heir to the Ballantine Brewery (Newark's own) fortune, donated Whippany Farms, their summer home, to Morris County (and adjacent land to the Morristown-Beard school). It became the Freylingheusen Arboretum and the mansion is the headquarters of the Morris County Parks Commission.

This park  is one of my favorite places to walk, my go-to spot when I have to let off steam immediately.

Whippany Farms, from the back

I have been there at all times of the year - with boots and stick in 7 inches (or more) of snow, in spring when the many different birds pass through, summer with its resident nesters (including Baltimore and orchard orioles) and fall when the colors come. The garden plants around the parking lot are labeled and many garden courses and one big garden sale (always the first Saturday in May) are held there. You could drop me anyplace there and I’d find my way back.

Morris County isn’t alone, of course. Somerset County is lousy with estates, too. One that became a park is Natirar, whose last owner was the King of Morocco. It straddles the borders of Peapack-Gladstone, Far Hills and Bedminister.

After the king died his son, for some reason, wanted out of New Jersey. The estate was bought by a group that includes Richard Branson of Virgin Media. They donated the land down the hill from the mansion to the Somerset County park system. The mansion, which makes Whippany Farms look like a toolshed, is now an exclusive restaurant/spa.

(UPDATE: I have since learned that the land was NOT donated, it was bought by Somerset County for $22 million and the mansion leased to Branson and his group for 99 years. So much for charity.)

That’s fitting for this wealthy area, and the late King of Morocco would feel right at home, I’m sure.

I don’t find most of the park very interesting to look at, although if you want to just walk or bike or jog in a very large loop it will do you fine. The main path is wide open, with very little shade except for the area along the north branch of the Raritan River (Natirar is Raritan backwards). There is a second path, up a different hill, I’ve yet to try.

More interesting to me is Duke Farms. Like the Freylingheusen arboretum, this property is now set up to be a sort of teaching landscape with various habitats. But unlike the Freylingheusen Arboretum, everything is on a much larger and grander scale, as the Dukes were (Duke tobacco, Duke Energy) compared with the Freylingheusens (a colonial family, one of whose descendants is my congressman).

Duke Farms is so environmentally correct it’s almost scary. The paths are wide and walkable. Bicycling is encouraged. You can only park in one area across the road from the main park (a crossing guard stops traffic for you). Only one tram runs from the education center (the former stable) to three points in the park, every 30 minutes. Otherwise, you’re on your own.

After being there twice, I still feel I haven’t seen everything.

Duke mansion

But there is one path I took the second time where I could see the Duke mansion through the trees. This is where the reclusive Doris, only child of James Buchanan Duke, lived when she was in NJ., one of her four mansions. The mansion is still kept up but it is gated off.

That makes it rather sad. I doubt Doris as a child was allowed to explore the grounds. When JB was in town he was driven (first by horse, then by auto) to other parts of the farm to supervise whatever work had to be done. I can’t see him walking around for the hell of it either.

So much estate for one small family, just sitting there and not being enjoyed. It was a protective buffer for the Dukes, set up to be a self-sustaining farm and shut off from the world. I’m glad when Doris died the Duke Foundation decided to open up the land as an environmentally correct, self-sustaining park (growing its own seedlings, for instance) for the enjoyment of all.

But when I saw that mansion hiding in the distance and thought of the lonely woman who lived (at least part of the time) within, I’m reminded the rich are different, and not necessarily in a good way.

My Grail Bird

These are not Wilson's warblers.
They are goldfinches.

There are people who want to see every bird on earth. There are people who want to find the ivory-billed woodpecker.

I would like to see a Wilson's warbler.

It is a peculiar truth that what is a common bird for some is far from common for me.

In Chicago once, my husband (MH) and I were standing on the shore of Lake Michigan in a downpour made worse by one of the Windy City's patented gales. Trying to hold up my umbrella in one hand while focusing my binoculars with the other, a man in his rain slicker, shorts and sandals came bounding up and asked, "Have you seen the loon?"

We're all loons here, brother, I remember thinking. But he was looking for a common loon that had been reported, which while common on placid Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire when we visit is not so common on choppy Lake Michigan.

In Playa del Rey in California I was able to add 10 birds to my life list within 15 minutes on Ballona Creek because they were "common" to that area and not to New Jersey.

In Florida I saw two types of kites, a limpkin, a woodstork and an anhinga, plus a lot of prothonotary warblers. When one of these warblers appears in the New York area it always causes a stir among birders.

Wilson's warblers, however, are common to my area. Every year when the warblers move through Central Park there are Wilson's. Every year they are reported in New Jersey.

A prothonotary warbler I photographed
near the NY Public Library. You can't
see the big crowd this little guy drew.

One year one was reported - and photographed singing - in Bee Meadow Park in nearby Hanover. The next day I rushed out there but couldn't find anything in the area except a kid on a motorbike going round and round and pretty much killing any chance of finding anything else.

My good luck in finding a gray-cheeked thrush, a life bird for me, in another part of the park didn't sink in for quite some time because of my disappointment over that missed Wilson's.

Once I thought - maybe - I heard a Wilson's singing in a brushy area near a part of the Great Swamp wilderness area in Harding Township. MH was sure a Wilson's came to our feeder several years ago while I was at work because, he swore, it did not look like a goldfinch. Wilson's are yellow below with a green back and the males have a black cap. Neither sex have wingbars, unlike the goldfinchs.

It is likely the reason I want to see a Wilson's is just because it is such a common bird. It is a point of pride.

I doubt I'll ever see an ivory-billed woodpecker, if one is still around in that Arkansas swamp where it was allegedly found. I doubt I'll ever see any of the Siberian birds that get blown across the Bering Strait to Alaska. There are thousands of species of birds around the world that don't come anywhere near North America, much less New Jersey. I can accept this. But the Wilson's is another matter.

MH has never seen a redheaded woodpecker, but it doesn't bother him. He's more laid back about birding than I would be in his position.

This is not a redheaded woodpecker.
It is a pileated woodpecker.

You may think you've seen a redheaded woodpecker but chances are it was the more common redbellied woodpecker (whose red only goes down the back of the head) or the pileated (whose red is on the crest) . The redheaded woodpecker has an entirely red head, white breast and belly and a back that is solid black and white.

It is a striking bird. The first time I saw one was after a report that it was in a tree along the driveway to the old Great Swamp visitor center - practically in my backyard. I had to go. I almost missed it, too, but for the kindness of another birder who practically walked me to the tree where the woodpecker was preening for another birder's camera.

Several times we've tried seeing a redheaded woodpecker. For MH's own good, of course.

But we keep missing it, at Great Swamp where there's usually one every year; at Lord Stirling Park, which is Somerset County's part of the Swamp; and even at the New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman center, where one was at the feeders for several days the other month. When we got there a crowd in the driveway was watching the distant trees.  Something moved and I pointed it out to MH. Then I realized it had a solid black back...a pileated.

A good bird, but not THE bird.

MH calls these wild bird chases my hunt for the Grail Bird, which was the title of a book about the hunt for that ivory-billed woodpecker mentioned before. We always want what we haven't had, and in my case not seeing a "common" bird others have seen as regular as clockwork sticks in my craw. It reflects badly on my abilities as a birder, even as others tell me I'm pretty good at it.

It is a fine line between enjoying a day in the field and obsession, and I walk it every day.

But spring is nearly upon us, and with it will come birds heading north. Maybe this will be the year I see the Wilson's warbler.

Don't take your guns to the swamp

It has only been in the last couple of years that I have begun bringing a camera with me when I go birding. Until then I was content to have only my 10x50 Nikon binoculars and use the camera in my brain to record notable images.

With digital cameras suddenly everyone became a nature photographer. That's fine if you are trying to prove you saw something unusual such as this pinkfooted goose my husband, MH, photographed early in March in a private park in Washington Township (Bergen County), NJ.

But a lot of photographers are doing it for profit, either by selling those photographs as stock images to be used in calendars and the like or to put on their personal photography pages and garner the ensuing glowing comments.

If you want to do that, fine. But what I CAN NOT STAND is when someone takes his or her gun-like lens and aims it practically in the face of a bird, creating unnecessary stress and ruining it for other birders when the bird takes off.

There have been many instances of this selfish and cruel behavior on the part of people who want a picture that badly. For instance, a few years ago the birding lists were full of angry birders screaming about a rare boreal owl in Central Park that had been there for a few weeks but finally left after a man set up a camera and used a bright flash (by day, yet) to take a picture practically in the face of the roosting owl.

I have witnessed several such instances, two of them at the Great Swamp in New Jersey.

An aside: Fifty years ago, the plan was to make this 7,500-acre gem straddling Morris and Somerset counties into an airport. Environmentalist Helen Fenske created a grassroots movement to stop that plan. Every time a plane flies over the swamp I shudder. The new visitor center is named for Helen Fenske.

Another birder and I were at the Heronry Overlook parking lot watching a mature bald eagle sitting in a tree close by. Suddenly, we saw a man with a rifle-like camera lens walking in an off-limits area closer and closer to the tree, snapping away, until the eagle flew off.

We started yelling at him and he was completely amazed and confused at our reaction. What was the big deal? He only wanted a picture of an eagle. (The eagle eventually returned after the idiot left, but to a tree much farther away and only identifiable thanks to its white head.)

The second example involved a couple of long-earred owls that decided one winter to roost in a cedar tree very close to Pleasant Plains Road, practically at eye level, not far from the Fenske office.

The swamp is not far from my home so my husband and I drove over and found the owls easily thanks to a couple of birders there. Most birders know to give owls some space during the day since they are resting for the night's hunting. Not the guy there with another gun-like lens, standing real close to the alarmed owls as he took his pictures.

This begs the question, why stand that close if you are using a telephoto lens?

I asked him that question, and told him to get the hell back across the road. MH and the man's wife were afraid we were going to get into a fight, and it was very close. But he moved back. MH and I took our own pictures from across the road. I thought I had gotten through to Mr. Photographer until I looked in the rear-view mirror as we drove off and there he was, up in the owls' faces again. I wasn't surprised to learn not long after that at least one of the two had flown off. I can only hope the second owl, when it left, hadn't been scared off by other inconsiderate birders lusting for that special photograph.

There hasn't been an extended stay by a long-earred owl along that part of Great Swamp since, as far as I know. Owls have long memories, too.

What's the worst birding transgression you've ever seen? Tell me at bellerbirder@gmail.com

I have a little list

When I was growing up in Brooklyn and then living in Queens with my husband, New York's Central Park did not have a good reputation - muggers behind every tree, bicyclists and wallets stolen at gunpoint, homeless men and women sleeping (and doing lord knows what else) on park benches.

That was particularly bad in the 1980s when the city had devastating fiscal problems and police couldn't keep up with simple crime like graffiti on subway cars, much less murder.

Things changed as the economy improved and, for better or worse, Rudy Giuliani became mayor in the early 1990s on a platform of, among other things, fighting crime and encouraging tourism. More police were hired and hit the streets as well as Central Park and, slowly, more people started to feel safe going in there.

In the late 1990s, a Wall Street Journal reporter named Marie Winn collected her writings about a particularly light redtailed hawk who'd improbably made a nest on an upper 5th Avenue building facade facing Central Park. The book was "Red-Tails In Love." It not only put the focus on the redtail nicknamed Pale Male (inspiring two movies and at least one song, by Steve Earle) but on Central Park in general and the birders who'd never stopped going there even during the bad times in particular.

I have never met Marie Winn but she is a wonderful email correspondent. Thanks to her website, http://mariewin.server304.com/index.htm, you can find Central Park nature notes and information about Pale Male's story and her other books.

But what I found most valuable about her site when I first went to it was her publicizing the New York City Bird Report. Unfortunately, the site no longer posts active sightings and is now a historical database. But between 2003 and 2007 it told you what visiting birds were in different New York City parks every day.

A correspondent to this list was Tom Fiore, also featured in Marie's book, whose detailed reports were a major reason I (and no doubt others) started birding Central Park more often.

When nycbirdreport.com ended active reporting, Marie mentioned other interesting sites including ebirdsnyc (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebirdsnyc/) and the NY Birding List, part of www.birdingonthe.net, a service that provides lists of bird sightings by state and by rarity.

One recent mention on the New Jersey list, for instance, sent hundreds of birders from across the state and beyond to a small private lake in Washington Township (Bergen County), NJ, for a sight of a rare pinkfooted goose. Based on subsequent list comments, township residents didn't know what hit them when the birders flew into town. Such is the power of the list.

I enjoy reading the lists, and those who wish to subscribe can post their own sightings and comments. These list services are great when you want to bird beyond your backyard, so check them out.