Before and After

 

Scherman Hoffman field, October 2024
(Margo D. Beller)

Same field after a controlled burn in 2017
(Margo D. Beller)

Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. Babies are born, they grow, they become adults and have babies of their own. Places where I used to walk often I don't visit for different reasons.

Years ago, working at a stressful job five days a week where I had to rise long before dawn to catch a train that would get me to my 7 a.m. shift, I would rise before dawn on Saturdays and go birding. One of the places I'd visit was the closest New Jersey Audubon center, one county away. I would take the 8 a.m. bird walk with the then-director or with the then-education director. 

Eventually, I overcame my squeamishness at being part of an organization and became a member. I started volunteering by putting plants in the ground. But soon I decided I'd rather write so I suggested running the center's blog. The then-director liked that idea.

The path to the river trail, one of the few areas that hasn't changed
much except for some erosion. (Margo D. Beller)

I wrote that blog for many years. It allowed me to attend various events such as an owl prowl and a program on the American woodcock. (One woodcock landed about a foot from me after doing its high-altitude mating flight during the group's subsequent night walk.)

Unfortunately, the head guy at the NJ Audubon organization decided that to strengthen the "brand message" all the centers should end their blogs and there would be only one, produced by a company that specializes in hiring freelancers to take press releases and turn them into articles. My blog was summarily obliterated, not even archived.

Luckily, I had kept copies of those posts, some of which I have republished on this blog. 

I was damned mad. I stopped going to Scherman Hoffman. There are plenty of other places for me to visit that are within closer driving distance. I did not renew my membership. The then-director, who said he was sorry I had to go, later retired. So have the people I once worked with for the blog. I even stopped buying my bird seed there.

The Passaic River from the river trail. Across is Morris
County. (Margo D. Beller)

One of the times I took my husband (MH) there was just after a spring controlled burn, done to eliminate the overgrown of invasive weeds and other plants. The 2017 picture above is from that walk.

I've written about the gnats that infested my bird seed. Slowly but surely the pail is getting emptied so I will need more seed. I went back to Scherman Hoffman recently to see if it was still selling seed grown by NJ farmers. Like everything else, it isn't doing that anymore.

As long as I was there I decided to take a sentimental journey and hike the trails again. After all, now I have much more time on my hands and I don't have to rise before dawn on a Saturday to get in my birding. What I found here, as I have also found at another place I once visited more often, the Frelingheuysen Arboretum, is things have changed, and not for the better.

At the arboretum, which is off a road that has become four times busier with traffic seven days a week because of the malls that have gone up where there were once woods, trails have been marked, paths have been blocked, other paths have been created and all have been made more "inclusive." It is too stressful to drive there unless I am going to the county library across the road, which I rarely do.

Autumn colors (Margo D. Beller)

Like the arboretum, the center was created from an estate - actually, two estates. The arboretum is a Morris County (NJ) park. The NJ Audubon center is privately run and depends on what funds it can wrangle from members and other sources. So while there are now many, many more plants providing food and shelter for the birds, the hillside paths have become seriously eroded from flooding rains and thousands of feet. Trees have been planted in some areas but some of the paths have become so rocky I was glad I was going uphill so I could steady myself with my stick and walk against gravity.

A bridge over a brook now has handrails, which is an improvement, but the path along the Passaic River - the border between Somerset and Morris counties - is so filled with tree roots as to be dangerous for someone like me who is not always steady. Another path, once marked "vernal pool" is now a "Pond Trail" named after someone I don't know and who has probably been a NJ Audubon benefactor.

Dogwood (Margo D. Beller)

Even the store where I once got my birdseed and some of my feeders has changed. Where once it was run by one woman - now also retired - it has two part-time managers; one woman who knows birds, another who knows retail. Retail is definitely important, tho the seed is relegated to the garage. High-end optics, however, are front and center.

I guess you can sum up my feelings with the old Yogi Berra-ism: Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded. I suppose it has to be that way for parks to survive. The more people who come, the more they will care about the environment. That's a good thing in the abstract. But for me those "popular" parks, even those with a nice number of birds in season, are not where you'll find me now.

Hydrogen - Atomic Number 1 With a Bullet

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 12, 2015, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

After a mainly damp and cool spring, getting hit with a hot and humid day is hard to take. Even harder to take is knowing that when the electric bill comes next month it will be much higher since the utility company is allowed by the state regulator to increase its charges because people will be using the air conditioner a lot more. (The same happens in winter with the gas company, which knows you'll have the heat on when the north wind is blowing.)

Mike Strizki with hydrogen-powered toys

With my curtains closed against the hot sun and the AC making it cool enough for me to think, I wondered yet again about ways to cut my electricity bill short of not using the AC at all. I do what I can but humidity can make an 80 degree day feel like 95.

With that in mind I bring you the story of a guy who has been trying to spread the word on hydrogen as a power source. He made his pitch at New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. His Hydrogen House Project is still running and you can see pictures and videos from the site.

I may have to give him a call after I get my next electricity bill. (I took all the photos):


What would you pay to get the utility companies - electricity, oil, gas - off your back and never pay them a dime again?

The average house uses approximately 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per month.We all know there are other options out there -- costly ones -- including windmills, solar panels and geothermal, which is drilling into the earth to draw its heat to power your home.

Mike Strizki has another way he claims will save you money, create no emissions and take you completely off the grid, preserving Earth for generations to come.

He uses hydrogen.

The sun is over 70% hydrogen. Hydrogen is the first element in the periodic table -- colorless, odorless, literally lighter than air and, when combined with oxygen, creates your water. It is this basic chemistry, with more than a little help from the sun and the fuel cell system he created to transform hydrogen into power, that he uses in the 11-acre house in Hopewell, N.J., he completed retrofitting in 2006. That house is the nucleus of the educational Hydrogen House Project.

"We have to educate the public that hydrogen is safe," he said at a recent program at N.J. Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. "We can't keep going down the same path. It just doesn't work that way."

Hydrogen-powered truck

To that end New Jersey Audubon is partnering with Hydrogen House to be the state coordinators of the National Wildlife Federation’s (NWF) Eco-Schools USA program providing free materials to schools to include "sustainability education" in their curriculum. That includes tours of Hydrogen House, learning the nuts and bolts of creating sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels.

Hydrogen is safer than crude oil (remember this crude oil explosion in W. Va.?). It creates none of the unpleasant side effects of fracking. For those who know history, Strizki insists the only reason the Hindenburg airship blew up over Lakewood, N.J., in 1937 was because of rocket fuel that coated the shell, not the hydrogen inflating it.

Looking at his website you can see Strizki is no mere tinkerer. He spent 16 years at the state Department of Transportation's Office of Research and Technology, leaving it when funding for renewable energy was cut because, unlike oil and gas, "you can't tax free," he said. Since then he has worked on renewable energy and clean water projects around the world. He’s also come up with fun stuff, like the hydrogen-powered toys he brought that can be directed from his hydrogen-charged cellphone.

How does hydrogen power work? According to his site: Hydrogen House operates by collecting solar energy from a 21-kilowatt array of solar panels mounted throughout Strizki's property. The energy from the 70 thin film and 80 polycrystalline panels passes through inverters where it is collected in a relatively small battery bank used to run a low-pressure electrolyzer.

The electrolyzer splits water molecules into their base elements - hydrogen and oxygen. Strizki's system stores the hydrogen in 11 reused low-pressure propane tanks, similar to those found at a typical gas station. The hydrogen can then be burned for cooking and heating similar to natural gas, and can be converted into electricity by way of a hydrogen fuel cell. The only emissions from the system are medical grade oxygen and chemically pure water.

There are 10 used propane tanks in back of Hydrogen House to store the gas to get him through times when there isn't a lot of sun, such as the short days of winter. Those 10 tanks provide enough hydrogen to power his house for a year. And you can make more - put in purified water and you can split it into hydrogen and oxygen or, using another of his products, the joule, recombine it with oxygen to form water that can be split again. It is the ultimate in recycling.

But as with anything new, there are two daunting drawbacks to using hydrogen as an energy source- the cost and the government bureaucracy.

Hydrogen-powered cellphone charger

It cost Strizki $500,000 - that's half a million - to retrofit his Hopewell home back in 2006. He said he put in $100,000 of his own money and got the rest from New Jersey Board of Public Utilities grants and donations, he said. He is now building a second home (since completed) in Hopewell that will cost about a fifth of that, in part because he has developed more streamlined and simpler storage technology that doesn't require a tank farm.

He said it took 3 ½ years to get all the permits to retrofit his house because of those 10 old propane tanks. The local building inspector took one look and refused to do anything, he said. The process was moved to another agency that treated the home as an industrial facility, also because of those tanks. Even then the process sat in limbo until, he said, he got the New York Times involved. He got his permits.

Strizki said that now, with his smaller, more portable fuel-cell system - which uses flexible, lightweight solar panels rather than the heavier ones seen on roofs or in solar panel farms -- the only permit a homeowner has to get is for the connection to the house, just as someone must do to install an outside, permanent generator -- the kind that became very popular with homeowners after Hurricane Sandy.

Such generators "just sit there and cost you money," he scoffed, while his system saves money. As for the simpler permitting, the regulators are "not happy about it but there is nothing they can do about it."

That was certainly on the minds of those in the audience, who peppered him with questions. There is something very appealing about saving money and becoming self-sufficient.

For instance, Hydrogen House never lost power after Sandy, he says on his website, at a time when "New Jersey’s electric utility companies scrambled to fix downed power lines and busted transformers." As you can imagine, his house became very popular with the neighbors who were without electricity for over a week and needed to power up their phones using the charger he developed (pictured). This charger, the streamlined power system and other products he has developed are detailed on the site, too.

The cost of the technology will come down over time - as it has with computers that are smaller but have more power than the ones that used to take up a whole room, for instance - as will the retrofitting cost and the cost of your energy usage. But the initial outlay is high.

Scherman Hoffman Director Mike Anderson said he'd love to have a renewable source of energy to power the education center and offices. Right now they are powered using propane. Most of the old oil tanks used in the former Hoffman estate were removed.

Sustainability is a wonderful idea but it's a costly reality.

To Strizki, it's all about self-sufficiency and not being "squeezed and controlled" by the government. It's also about removing your "carbon footprint" and saving the planet for our children and grandchildren.

How much is that worth to you?

A Very High-Tech Treasure Hunt

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 22, 2015, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

The other week, MH and I went to a relatively close-by park that was once the estate of the billionaire Doris Duke. Since her passing her mansion has been torn down and other buildings have been made more ecologically friendly. In fact, the whole park is a model for eco-friendliness. For instance, we went looking for a newer trail map and discovered these are not printed anymore, to save on paper. (Luckily, we had brought our old paper map.) A tram that would take people to some of the more notable landmarks on the property had been discontinued to save on fuel and pollution (and the cost of maintenance, no doubt).

Duke mansion (Margo D. Beller)

I mention all this because one brochure that was available related to geocaching. What is that, you might ask? It is a form of treasure hunt except you use your mobile phone's GPS to locate the prizes at specific locations. According to one site I found, there are 4,422 geocaches in my area alone.

No thanks.

However, others love this stuff, not just in my area but all over the world. Since this is an activity that you do by getting off your couch, leaving your home and getting outside, preferably into nature (albeit with a phone in your face), there are some nature organizations that want to take advantage of the foot traffic and don't mind hosting some of these geocaches if it promotes their parks. Duke Farms, I now know, is one of them. At least in 2015, so was the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary of New Jersey Audubon.

Here is what I wrote about geocaching for the Scherman Hoffman blog. I took all the pictures:

The treasure hunt has gone high-tech.

The Northern New Jersey Cachers (NNJC) held a “meet and greet” at Scherman Hoffman on May 31, a unique partnership between a group dedicated to expanding interest in using satellite technology to find caches and a sanctuary that, as its website says, is “focused on nature.”

If you see an inherent contradiction here, you’re right.

For this treasure hunt, called geocaching, you need global positioning satellite, or GPS. Ever since the Clinton administration stopped scrambling government satellite data, the use of GPS has exploded.

According to NNJC President John Neale, once GPS took off it was just about inevitable some techie wonk would make a game with it. That happened in 2000, in Oregon, when a couple of hikers found an old bucket in the woods. Instead of passing it by and forgetting about it, they put the coordinates -- good old longitude and latitude -- on a website for others to find.

From those humble beginnings the movement has grown to 220 countries, 2.5 million active caches and over 6 million geocachers worldwide, according to geocaching.com. Neale told me that in New Jersey alone there are 16,000 caches. His group has over 500 members and there are separate organizations that cover central and south Jersey.

The cache can be anything, of any size. Some are big enough to fit into ammunition boxes. Some are “nano-caches” that can be easily concealed in big cities. Griggstown Grasslands has caches concealed in the false bottoms of a few bird boxes. Typically, it’s a plastic lock box that contains a pencil and pad of paper for signing your name. The cache can be anything from a toy Jeep (many are sponsored by Chrysler dealerships - it’s good publicity) to a manhole cover. If you take the cache you must leave something of equal or greater value.

Then you log your finding in your logbook and log the experience at the geocaching.com website.

So on a lovely Saturday morning more than a dozen people chatted, ate cookies baked by one of the long-time cachers and waited for the coordinates of the 10 Scherman Hoffman caches to “go live” so the hunters could check their phones and then their GPS and start hunting. 

The event was intended to bring newbies and more experienced geocachers together. Neale said that besides being a fun activity for people of all ages there is a competitive aspect. Case in point: One older man he pointed out is ranked ninth in the world in finding geogaches. Like a lot of cachers, this man goes by an alias, IMSpider. Neale - whose own alias is Old Navy - told me IMSpider took up caching with a vengeance after his wife died years ago. Now he doesn’t even bother using the pencil when he finds the caches, he stamps his name.

Any birder who has been involved in the annual World Series of Birding or has read The Big Year or To See Every Bird on Earth knows that competitive aspect too well.

Bird watching has also become more high-tech. There are bird calls that can be stored on mobile phones for checking in the field as well as GPS, high-tech cameras and sites such as New Jersey Audubon’s eBird, which allows you to check what has been found and where, including coordinates.

We’ve come a long way from a walk in the woods.

Ironically, that’s how Neale got into geocaching. Neale loves to hike and gained a love of nature traveling with his mother when she worked at Watchung Reservation. She worked with Dorothy Smullen, now a teaching naturalist at Scherman Hoffman and the point person on the meet and greet.

Smullen said the route of the caches runs along the Dogwood (Red) trail, crosses the driveway heading toward the vernal ponds near the NJ Audubon headquarters building at 9 Hardscrabble and then along the River (Yellow) trail (see below). Each cache has letter(s) inside the box tops. When unscrambled, the letters complete a phrase that cachers can use for a discount on some merchandise in the Scherman Hoffman store. Cachers could also buy a collectible "path tag" with the NJ Audubon logo to keep as a souvenir or drop at their next cache.

The Passaic River running through the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary.

Smullen told me the hope is the cachers discover the sanctuary, see the beauty of the place and then come back. Many of the cachers I spoke with had never been to Scherman Hoffman before, much less Bernardsville, NJ, where it’s located.

Once the cache coordinates were published, I followed one small group (2 men, 1 woman and 2 boys) to the first location. “Third boulder from the trail,” one of the men read from his phone. (Warning: In the woods, you’re likely to lose your cellphone signal.)

The boys started counting and then turning over rocks somewhat off the path. By the time they had found the cache we were joined by a larger group, who now - one by one - signed their names in the cache notebook. IMSpider used his stamp and then strode off to the next cache, up the steep hill, other cachers scrambling to keep up.

Among them were Carmine and Maria, of Jersey City and Mountainside, who have been geocaching for a year. “That guy is hardcore,” Carmine said of IMSpider with some awe as he puffed up the hill. Maria told me she’s a teacher. Trying to find some way of engaging her tech-literate students, she read about geocaching in a magazine and got them involved. That’s how she and Carmine got into it.

I think I told Carmine and Maria as much about Scherman Hoffman as they told me about their geocaching.

 

By this time we’d gotten to the top of the hill. But instead of veering left along the Red trail, the group continued on Patriots Path (the White trail) into the Cross Estate, which is not part of the private Scherman Hoffman but is part of the federal National Park Service's Morristown National Historical Park (Jockey Hollow).

This brings up one of the problems I find with geocaching. The official route might’ve been along the Red trail but if the GPS says the quickest way is cutting through a federal park, you follow it. Neale told me people placing caches are supposed to get permission from landowners and at least warn states and the federal government there will be caches and people looking for them. But that does not stop people from using shortcuts.

One geocacher told me he does not believe in bushwhacking and puts all his caches within five feet of a trail. He also gives clear clues on the geocaching website so people don’t harm the environment looking for the cache.

I gather he is unusual.

Just as you will see birders putting themselves and the environment in danger by bushwhacking after a bird, you will see people put caches in inappropriate places and searchers do quite a bit of harm -- despite the organization’s rules to the contrary.

It’s part of the “game’s” competitive spirit, I guess.

Scherman Hoffman Director Mike Anderson told me geocachers inundated New Jersey’s Kittatinny Valley State Park with caches. Before the state knew it, hundreds of people were overrunning the park.

That’s the main reason NJ Audubon got involved with the NNJC -- to have some sort of control and minimize that kind of damage, Anderson said. NNJC maintains the caches. NJ Audubon trail maps, program schedules and other flyers were there for the taking, to encourage NNJC members to come back again.

I’m not sure that will happen.

Leader with box turtle

The cachers running up the hill were too busy following the leader -- IMSpider -- to stop and listen to the birds around them or even notice the beauty of the woods.

Not everyone is like this, of course. I later found a geocacher alone on the river trail - unlike others, he came from the area - who said he doesn’t like finding caches in packs because it takes the fun out of it when others find them first. However, he showed less interest in the nearby veery I pointed out than in his ringing cellphone.

As with everything else, it is too easy to forget technology is merely a tool. Too often I see people use an iPod - even in the car - to block out the world, or stare at a game on their phone to avoid eye contact on the street. And don’t get me started on drivers blindly following GPS instructions to the exclusion of sense.

I do not use GPS (MH is my GPS) and I was glad when the cachers left me alone in the woods with the birds.

Earlier that morning I had been on the weekly bird walk with naturalist Stephanie Punnett. Our group stopped for long periods of time listening to and looking at all sorts of birds. At one point one of the younger group members looked down instead of up and found a wood turtle.

Wood turtles are threatened in NJ, and Punnett said this female was new to her because it hadn’t been marked for tracking. She put it in her bag so it could be marked and then returned to the same spot to get on with its life.

Now this was a cache worth finding.

Prowling for Owls

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 22, 2017, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

In mid-March 2017, MH and I went on an "owl prowl" that took place at a Somerset County park. I have always been fascinated by owls because they are nocturnal and thus difficult to see or hear if you are a person who, like me, is more of sunshine lover.

But I have had my contact with owls. During the time I would have to rise long before sunrise to work an early shift I would hear great-horned owls, screech owls and the occasional barn and barred. Driving on a causeway in a marsh at dusk a short-earred owl flew over the car. A long-earred owl was reported at Central Park and I traveled a long way to find it, once a sympathetic birder told me which tree and another, sitting on a bench, pointed it out. 

Great Horned Owl (Photo by Joe Pescatore)

And then there was the snowy owl that came down to a NY pier one winter and just sat there, occasionally flying down to grab a ruddy duck (or so I was told; I didn't see it happen although we did travel to see the owl. We've seen other snowys during winter irruptions since then).

So I've seen almost all ones expected in NJ except for the smallest one, the saw-whet. But soon, I hope.

Here is some of what I wrote about the owl prowl:

Why are we so fascinated by owls?

Is it because some of them are very small and, with their round heads and big yellow eyes, look cute and cuddly?

Is it because we remember the Disney cartoon "The Sword in the Stone" where Merlin turns himself into a "wise, old owl" -- a Great Horned Owl -- to instruct the young, soon to be king Arthur?

Or perhaps we think of Hedwig, the Snowy Owl Harry Potter receives when he arrives at Hogwarts.

Or, maybe we are fascinated that these are birds of the darkness, which attracts and frightens us. After all, our human eyes lack the many additional rods owls have to see in the darkness and the asymmetrical hearing they use to hunt (depending on the species) mice, insects, rabbits, even other owls. (Great horned owls hunt skunks because the owls have no sense of smell.) There are many superstitions about owls, according to "Owls: A Wildlife Handbook" by Kim Long. For instance, the hooting of an owl is seen as a sign of impending death in some cultures.

Screech owl. As usual, someone had to point the bird out to us because
we'd never have found this ourselves. (RE Berg-Andersson)

There are 286 different types of owls around the world, from Iceland to the Falklands and across northern Europe and Russia down to Africa, but in the 950 acres that comprise the Somerset County (N.J.) Park Commission's Lord Sterling Park, which is adjacent to the federally run and much larger Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, the most commonly seen owls are great horned (GHO), barred and eastern screech owls.

And that was why 30 or so owl enthusiasts were standing in the dark, shivering on a subfreezing night, under a nearly full moon, listening to park naturalist Ben Barkley or Mike Anderson, director of the New Jersey Audubon Scherman Hoffman sanctuary (also located in Somerset County), try to fool a screech owl into calling to us by imitating it. We were a split squad and I was part of the 15 or so in Barkley's contingent.

"Why are we fascinated by owls? The darkness, and the cuteness factor," Anderson said before we headed out. An owl is cute, "unless you mess with it."

As he prepares us inside for the Owl Prowl outside, Barkley's enthusiasm is infectious. When he was a high school junior, in 2010, he and Mike Anderson identified raptors during the Scherman Hoffman hawk watch on the platform of its education center. Less than a year on this job now, he can watch and listen for birds as he walks to work. "I am very lucky," he told me. (Yes.)

Before leading us into the dark he tested our owl knowledge. Who knew the 25-inch GHO is only 6 pounds? He showed amazing video of a Serbian long-earred owl (LEO) roost where at dusk 140 birds flew out of one tree. He amused many in the crowd by showing how "cute" some owls -- such as the 11-inch burrowing owl and the 6-inch elf owl -- can be.

Don't be fooled, however. Just like the turkey vulture and the redtailed hawk that hunt by day, owls are raptors. They have sharp claws for killing and sharp bills. They will eat prey whole and then regurgitate the inedible parts in a hard pellet. Some owls hunt by day -- snowy, northern hawk and great grey owls are birds of the northern tundra where they can hunt in many hours of daylight in summer. In winter, if food supplies are scarce, they will frequently fly south in what is known as an irruption. Many "night owls" hunt at dawn and at dusk, such as the barn and short-earred owls.

But they are, in the main, creatures of the darkness, emitting eerie sounds ranging from the "Hoo-Hoo-Hoo" of the GHO to the weird barks and "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?" call of the barred to the hissing of the ghostly white barn to the whinnying and one-note tremolo of the 8-inch-long eastern screech.

Snowy owl we almost missed at Island Beach State Park
during a winter 'irruption.' (RE Berg-Andersson)

It was the screech Ben was trying to fool into calling, a process known as "pishing." But no owl was responding. Either it could see we were a group of humans (very possible with all those rods in its eyes) or the cold wind kept it at bay.

The West Observation Blind loomed over us. A pair of canada geese voiced their displeasure at our presence from nearby Branta Pond. Trails I've walked many times now looked ominous. Owls are very good at hiding themselves when they roost by day. They are even better hiding in plain sight at night.


As it turned out, the only owl MH and I saw that night was at dusk when a GHO (or perhaps a barred) hunting, likely to feed its owlets, flew over the road ahead of us when we were almost at Lord Sterling. But for me it was enough.

A Bird Walk of the Mind

I see again those myriad mornings rise

 when every living thing

 casts its shadow in eternity

-- Poem 19 from "A Coney Island of the Mind" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It is hot as blazes outside today. The temperature is soaring to around 100 degrees F and the humidity makes it feel worse. The sun is not yet around to the part of the house where I am but I know it is coming and the AC will soon be have to be turned on.

I hate weather like this. It forces me to stay inside. The weather people say, those with breathing issues should stay where it is cool. And so I am. Early in the day I was on my porch listening to the cardinal, the catbird, chipping sparrow and distant Carolina wren. I would like to be walking but where? The bugs attacked my bare ankles just walking to and from the compost pile.

The Passaic River. Scherman Hoffman (Somerset Cty) on the right, Morris
Couny on the left. (Margo D. Beller0

It is depressing.

So I try to do other things to get out of this heat-induced funk. I imagine myself walking in a cool forest where there are no bugs, no people, just birds singing. Right now, I am imagining myself at the New Jersey Audubon center at Scherman Hoffman in Bernardsville.

Just about every Friday and Saturday morning, weather permitting, there is an 8 a.m. bird walk, and I've taken many of them back in the days when I would rise early on a Saturday and rush from my home to try and decompress from a week of stressful work in a city office. It is a peaceful walk that can have anywhere from two to two dozen people. One of the best things about this walk, besides all the birds I can find, is the walk is free.

I have been on the property enough times that I can sit on my back porch and visualize my own, ideal bird walk.

(Margo D. Beller)

I start at the education center. From inside the store I can see the Scherman feeders and a water source that attract the same birds I can see in my backyard, usually titmice, chickadees and chipping sparrows, perhaps a cardinal or a jay. There is a window feeder for the hummingbirds. (My feeder has drawn few of them this year.)

Next, I visit the observation platform. If this was autumn I'd be here watching for southbound hawks. In summer it's a good bet there will be chimney swifts flying about, looking like cigars with wings, hunting for insects in the heat. Below are the nest boxes for house wrens. A shadow passes and it is a red-tailed hawk.

I leave the building for the driveway, looking for slight movement in the leafed-out trees. Is that the breeze or a bird? It's a bird, in this case a black-throated green warbler just poking about for a meal. In the distance I can hear a Baltimore oriole with its melodious whistles.

Black-throated green warbler
(Margo D. Beller)

Where the Dogwood Trail (red blaze) meets the driveway I take a left and head down the hill to the open fields that were burned recently to get rid of the invasive plants and make room for natives. Along this hill I have found bluebirds, Carolina wrens and indigo buntings. At the bottom of the hill I have a choice: the Field Loop (green blaze) trail into an open field with its small pond and circular path, or head to the Passaic River (yellow blaze).

I take the left, letting the many dogwoods shade me. At any moment the silence can be broken by a number of birds such as American redstarts or ruby-crowned kinglets or catbirds. I keep moving to the river, the mighty Passaic.

This river is the border between Morris County across the way and Somerset County where Scherman Hoffman is located. It is nowhere near as wide as farther downstream when it becomes more polluted because of decades of abuse by chemical companies.

Ferns and dame's rockets, Scherman Hoffman (Margo D. Beller)

Flying to a low branch, bobbing its tail is a phoebe, one of the first migrants to arrive in spring. I see them often here along with Louisiana waterthrush and the occasional scarlet tanager. I have to walk carefully now because of the many exposed tree roots. Many plants I can't name but I do recognize ferns and dame's rocket. The monotonous "here I am, look at me, sitting here, in a tree" tells me a red-eyed vireo is nearby. In my mind there is no one walking a dog or fishing along the river, although I've seen both in visits here.

Eventually, I turn around and go back to the red trail, left on the green trail and then slowly up the hill to my car, listening to all the birds.

Time to put on the AC.

My Cathedral of the Pines

I wish I could make you hear the quiet I heard the other Saturday when I was standing in the middle of this pine grove at Rancocas Nature Center. I wish you could smell the fresh piney air.

The only thing that would've made this grove better would have been a few pine warblers calling their sweet trills, as there were the first time we came to Rancocas and stood in this grove six years before.

Pine grove, Rancocas, NJ (R.E.Berg-Andersson)

Rancocas is in Westhampton, N.J., abutting the much larger Rancocas State Forest. The nature center was once part of New Jersey Audubon but NJ Audubon went through one of its frequent financial shudders and closed down or gave up several of its nature centers, claiming not enough people were visiting. Rancocas is in central Jersey, so compared with the north Jersey location of NJ Audubon headquarters, it must've seemed on the other side of the Earth.

(Another center NJ Audubon shut down - the one on Sandy Hook, one of the best areas for birding in the state but rather elongated, so perhaps not as many folk got to the northern part where the office was located.)

This pine grove is interesting because the trees were planted in straight rows. However, the saplings were never thinned and so all the trees grew straight and tall, competing with each other for the light. "Forestry management" is what the pros call thinning out the trees. So if you look at the trees at eye level you can walk from one end to the other and not run into a tree. (You can't see it as well in this picture looking up at the sky.)

MH and I drove here one other time before Saturday, years ago, and found the placed gated shut. It was after NJ Audubon left. However, it didn't sit shut long - the site is now run by Burlington County and several groups, including the Friends of Rancocas Nature Center, which runs the visitor/education center.

Owls are here, and warblers and robins and woodpeckers of various types. There are trails through woods, marshes and uplands. But what I like about Rancocas is what made NJ Audubon give it up -- not many people were around. Hence the quiet.

In our travels MH and I were once driving in NH, near Rindge to be exact, and there was a sign for "Cathedral of the Pines." I made him take the exit to investigate. It turned out to be an actual, ecumenical church, open to the skies in some areas, enclosed buildings elsewhere.  

We did not stop but I remember being disappointed that it wasn't just a large grove for silent contemplation.

I am glad to say that many years later I found my Cathedral of the Pines in central New Jersey, at Rancocas.

Eyes Like a Hawk

My late great-uncle Elly, in a letter -- yes, a real letter, not an email -- responding to my description of visiting a hawk platform that fall, said you have to have eyes like a hawk to find one. He was right.

I have seen enough raptors in my time to be able to tell the differences between an osprey and an eagle, a black vulture from a turkey vulture and, perhaps most difficult, a sharpshinned from a Cooper's hawk and both from their larger accipiter relative, a northern goshawk.

One of many bald eagles on Scott's Mountain. (RE Berg-Andersson 2015)

That's when the birds are relatively close. When I go to a hawk platform, I might as well be a novice.

If you are on a hawk platform and you are counting the number of, say, broadwing hawks flying south to their winter grounds in order to give a complete count, you have to be able to see a speck in the sky, then be able to train your binoculars or scope on it and then identify it, all while the bird is hundreds of feet high and flying fast with a stiff tailwind.

For that is what raptors do, they wait for the wind to come hard out of the north and then allow themselves to be pushed along ridge lines where they can be kept aloft by warm air off those ridges. The Hawk Mountain platform in the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania is one such spot. So is the Chimney Rock Hawk Watch between the two Watchung Mountains of New Jersey and the Racoon Ridge Hawk Watch in the Kitanny Mountains.

I have been to many of these hawk platforms and a few others - the New Jersey Audubon Scherman Hoffman sancturary, the Sandy Hook platform, the Cape Henlopen platform in Delaware - including my own unofficial platform, back when I was working in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, atop the Palisades. (I'd come out on my break and watch eagles, ospreys and assorted hawks follow the Hudson River south.)

(RE Berg-Andersson 2015)

I enjoyed my time at these places, but my favorite hawk platform is atop Scott's Mountain over the Merrill Creek Reservoir in New Jersey, a short flight from the Delaware River.

We try to go at least once a year, and have become such irregular regulars that when we made our first 2015 visit in late September, several people thought we had been there earlier. Alas, no, we missed the big week when the broadwing hawk - the smallest of the buteo hawks of eastern North America - flew through in the thousands. These are early travelers. As autumn goes on, the number of broadwings will decrease and the number of eagles - bald and golden - and accipiters and redtailed and redshouldered hawks will rise.

We drive up to the top of the mountain, get our folding chairs from the trunk, then say hello and sit down, binoculars at the ready. Then I have to get back in practice picking fast-flying birds out of the sky. It isn't easy.

Unlike a lot of the other hawk platforms, where the counters are serious and those real regulars stick to themselves and ignore irregular visitors such as myself, the regulars at Scott's Mountain are very friendly, very helpful and very good spotters. Paul, the lead counter the day we showed up, was on birds no one else even saw coming. He usually is, even when he's not the official counter. At least for my old eyes, I couldn't even see the dot in the sky.

One of many sharpshinned hawks on Scott's Mtn. (RE Berg-Andersson 2015)

Standing at a hawk watch once with Pete Dunne, he told how to look for broadwings beneath clouds and how turkey vultures fly like a man walking a tightrope with his arms extended out and slightly up. I tried to apply this knowledge but when you can't even see a dot, you have to trust that the lead counter or his assistants (there are usually four, spread along the parking lot to see as much sky as possible) is right. Paul was always right, and he was always patient in directing me to find the bird.

It is nice to be able to sit, too. Most platforms are hard climbs to the top and when you get there at last you have to find a seat on rocks that are far from comfortable. Or, you carry your chairs with you (or a pillow) and then hope that if you can make it all the way up without falling you can find a big enough space to open the chair and sit down. Neither is a given. 

From my chair on Scott's Mountain a few of the birds stayed low enough for me to easily find: the two resident bald eagles taking off after another eagle passing through and too close to their nest; an American kestrel, the smallest of the falcons, looking so colorful against the deep blue sky; the skein of migrating Canada geese found as I was looking at some broadwings Paul had pointed out.

Goldfinches, backyard, Sept. 27, 2015 (Margo D. Beller)

This is, without a doubt, the easiest birding I do except for what I see out my back porch.

(And there has been quite a lot. Thanks to an investment in a thistle sock and enough seed to put in a second feeder, we've had as many as 20 goldfinches feeding at the same time. Whether it be the weedy plants drying up or yanked out by homeowners or no one else having thistle feeders up, we have been reaping the benefits.)

MH was told decades ago he'd never see a bald eagle in the wild in his lifetime. That was after the overuse of DDT nearly decimated the eagles and the falcons. Luckily, that scoutmaster was wrong and we've seen many majestic eagles since then, and other birds, too.

Crossing Paths With Pete Dunne

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”  -- Stephen King

Pete Dunne was scheduled to be at the New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary yesterday, Sept. 19. I wasn't able to attend, anxious to do a lot of walking in the woods after a homebound work week. I wanted to find warblers making the trip south for the winter, not stand on a concrete porch in the middle of hundreds of people broiling in the cloudless sun and watch migrating raptors high aloft, listening for some insight from this man, the co-author of the seminal "Hawks in Flight" and a number of other books. 

Pete Dunne in 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

I wasn't there, and there is a strong chance he didn't show up. However, I can still visualize the scene because I was there in 2012, and I saw the crowd and I saw his enjoyment in calling out what hawks were passing through and bestowing identification tips. I saw him patiently listen to all the birding stories and he even answered a question or two of mine, asked in my role as writer of the Scherman Hoffman blog.

However, in March 2013, Dunne had a stroke. In 2014, after much rehabilitation, he stepped down as head of the Cape May Bird Observatory, which he built from nothing to a major destination for anyone with a serious interest in finding and identifying birds. He has become NJ Audubon's "Birding Ambassador." 

He also stepped down as editor of New Jersey Audubon's magazine (in which I've had one article published and have another in production). In 2011, another time we crossed paths, I got his phone number and called the man, who cheerfully talked to me about what kind of articles they would publish, if I could come up with anything. He was encouraging but made no commitment.

I did not mention that phone call when I talked briefly to Dunne in 2012 on the Scherman hawk platform. He talks to a lot of people in the course of a given day. For the same reason, this past May I did not remind him of our previous conversations when MH and I spent a weekend in Cape May that happened to coincide with the day of the annual World Series of Birding -- an event Dunne helped create.

(I first crossed path with Dunne when a friend at work loaned me Dunne's 1986 book "Tales of a Low-Rent Birder." I had never heard of Dunne, and I was only starting to get interested in bird watching thanks to the feeder my brother-in-law and his wife had given us for a housewarming present in 1994.)

The Friday we drove to Cape May -- the southernmost point of New Jersey and a prime feeding spot for birds flying north after they cross Delaware Bay -- was our wedding anniversary. The next day was the WSB. That day we rose early (we had a lot of stops to make our one full day there) and went to Higbee Beach, a large piece of property, and arrived just as a tour bus was loading up with birders trudging out of the Higbee fields.

Pete Dunne, Scherman Hoffman hawk platform, 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

"Looks like there's a Carolina wren in your future," said the tour leader as the little bird sang. Pete Dunne, of course, looking as energetic as if he had risen from a refreshing nap. No cane. No sign of the weakness in his left side. Dunne used to travel the state during the WSB from midnight to midnight with a group - at one point including another bright light of the birding universe, Roger Tory Peterson - but now he was sticking closer to home in Cape May, with a large tour group in a larger white bus.

MH and I got to Higbee no later than 7 am and here's Dunne's group just finishing their visit, heading on to one of Cape May's many other birding locations. They had to have started right at dawn, which means Dunne had to have gotten them in the bus no later than 5 am.

Pretty impressive. 

We saw a lot of very good birds on our own that day, and it was the best birding we did this past spring. (Spring migration was not very good in northern New Jersey, and autumn migration is shaping up to be as bad thanks, in part, to the drought.) I wouldn't have minded Dunne pointing out a bird I usually can't identify rather than a Carolina wren, one of my favorite birds and one I can identify in my sleep.

Yesterday's walk, meanwhile, yielded very little in the way of interesting birds aside from catbirds, a blue-gray gnatcatcher and five types of woodpeckers (mainly heard, although the pileated was seen, just barely, flying overhead). While not at a hawk platform we did have plenty of turkey and black vultures taking advantage of the hot, dry air to swoop and soar. We even had a broadwing hawk, seen from the Griggstown Grasslands, which we visited before getting to the Delaware & Raritan Canal. After our walk around the grassland we walked along the canal and back, about 3 miles. 

We got back to our car exhausted.

I bet up on that hot, sunny platform Pete Dunne didn't even break a sweat.

Leave the Woods the Hell Alone

Is there any reason people can't leave the woods alone? Is there a reason why you can't have a park without some sort of "attraction" that defaces a natural area?

Red-tailed hawk (Margo D. Beller)

In a word, no.

Last winter the area at the end of Greystone's Reservoir Rd., where the old ice ponds are, was opened as a park. The ponds drew ducks (ring-necked ducks and hooded mergansers) and the path around the lower pond was pleasant. A trail heading up a hill into the woods provided us access to the upper pond, where there were wood ducks. It was nice to walk in silence except for the occasional scream of a red-tailed hawk aloft. 

Those days are gone. 

MH and I took a walk at this area for the first time in a long time last week. We expected the people fishing - we'd seen them the last time and the county stocks the ponds with trout - but while we were walking an orange Frisbee suddenly wizzed by us and hit a tree. It turns out, there is a "disk golf" course in the works.

Disc golf (Margo D. Beller)

 

Frisbee golf tee area (Margo D. Beller)

Path to the next hole (Margo D. Beller)

The goal - get the disc into the basket. (Margo D. Beller)

This was not our first exposure to using a Frisbee to play "golf" or I'd have been completely confused. We found such a course at a Tyler State Park in Pennsylvania, which had been recommended to me (as a place to find birds) by a friend. Here, too, we were walking along and suddenly a Frisbee went sailing by us. But the Greystone course had no signs warning us of a course (except a small sign with an arrow to the first tee, as shown above). The guy throwing the Frisbee turned out to be one of the people readying the course. Up the hill we found the map of the course. 

The first announcement of this course came this morning from my town's local alert:

 NEW DISC GOLF COURSE TO OPEN AT CENTRAL PARK ON AUGUST 10TH. 

A new recreation activity has been added to the Central Park of Morris County for those of all ages to enjoy.   Beginning Sunday, August 10th, Disc Golf (or frisbee golf) comes to Central Park!   Come out for a fun-filled day beginning with an opening ceremony at 9am followed by a round of disc golf starting at 10am.  There will be awards for various divisions (Pro, Amateur, Recreation, and Ladies).   The event is $15 per player and comes with a custom Opening Day stamped disc.   No pre-registration required, please come out and support the newest addition to Central Park!  Also, for those interested in course news or are looking to become part of the local club please see the course Facebook page.

If you go to the Facebook page you find a list of things that have to be done before the course is officially open:

Hole 2 Weed whack right side beyond log
Hole 3 Needs logs moved from in front of gap 

Hole 7 trimming on left in chute off the tee
Hole 9 Trimming on landing zone.
13and 14 gravel and stone dust for tees.--Russ
Hole 16 Stairs needed up to basket. - future project?
Hole 17 Needs the most work! long tee needs clearing and the green needs more brush removal and whacking.

MH reminds me that if you want to have a park nowadays, you have to bring in some sort of facility to draw people and make it "worth it." So you have the sorry situation where New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary and the Griggstown Grasslands protected area allow "geocaching," the high-tech treasure hunt played with your cellphone. There is a geo-caching association. There is also a Frisbee golf association. There is a professional league.

Greystone used to be a state mental hospital. When the hospital was closed down and moved to be re-opened as a smaller, more modern facility, the bulk of the land became a county park. The old stone wards were pulled down. A dog park went in at one area. Ball fields and a rink were put up elsewhere. Woods were mowed down to become a huge complex of soccer fields.  

Greystone soccer field in progress (Margo D. Beller)

A cross-country running course was put in. Until a smaller trail was put into a corner of the property, this was the only place where someone like me could go hiking aside from the main Central Ave., the road that runs from my town to the front steps of the old administration building, Kirkbride (currently the focus of a preservation battle).

Had this not been put in, the land would likely have become a housing development, to the detriment to the surrounding communities.

Is this the only choice we have now for open land, a housing development or ballfields and Frisbee golf?

No. There are areas near me where there is no geocaching or disk golf or ballfields. They are called wildlife management areas and wildlife natural areas. WMAs allow hunting, WNAs do not. But the woods are left alone.

Elsewhere, the woods are routinely mowed down for shopping centers and housing. The local governments that depend on these for property taxes (because they can't justify anymore taxes on New Jerseyians, with the highest taxes in America) call this "development." I call it appalling.

Leave the woods the hell alone.  

Hiking trail before the disc golf course was created. (Margo D. Beller)