Bullfrogs and Muskrats and Veeries, Oh My!

I have fallen in love with a swamp. A swamp in New Jersey--a place I never expected to live, much less even like (I apologize in advance to anyone who grew up in NJ--because it's not until you actually live here that you realize it's a beautiful state--except for the shocking sprawl that forms part of the New York City megalopolis. Even that can be beautiful in its own strange, industrial way). In any case, Karen drove down from Massachusetts to visit for the long weekend, so Stephen and I decided to show her our new favorite place, Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. (I told her Great Swamp was similar to Plum Island...except that it's 25 miles inland...and, well, isn't quite an island. Unless you consider that much green in the middle of one of the most densely populated areas of the eastern seaboard an island).

Early Sunday morning we drove to Basking Ridge and were rewarded with amazing bird songs and wildlife. We walked the same three boardwalks that Stephen and I had walked two weekends ago, but the ferns had grown a foot and the underbrush thickened. Everything looked more green--primal and muddy and lush. The most exciting sound we heard was the Veery--a bird song that sounds other-worldly and slightly chilling (like a series of descending flutter-tongued notes--very metallic and hollow); we also figured out that the sound S & I had been calling "the Wheel-of-Fortune" bird was really made by a Wood Thrush (phew--that one was driving me crazy). Because of the thick cover at all levels in the swamp, Great Swamp is an amazing place to listen. (I find it hard to see much of the time in any case, so I love being in a place where sound is as vital as sight).

The loudest sounds we heard, though, were made by a whole slew of bullfrogs, creating a joyful noise in a pond:


Photo: Stephen Howe

This muskrat swam in silence through the reeds and grasses in the frog pond (mind you, if I saw a rat on the subway tracks, I would not think it was at all attractive--so why would I think a creature that looks like a fuzzy rat is adorable? Nonetheless...):


Photo: Stephen Howe

After leaving the swamp, we ate our "second breakfast" at the Sirling House Diner and then set off for Richard DeKorte Park (a park created from reclaimed land in the Meadowlands). Every time Stephen and I drive through the Meadowlands I wonder how people access the saltmarsh and waterways, so I was very excited to see the Meadowlands from ground-level. We walked along a thin path that crosses one of the Meadowlands' bodies of water--and despite being dotted with power-lines, we saw a group of 10 swans, a snowy egret (so pretty!), the ubiquitous Canada goose, mallards, and a Gadwell. Despite people's various attempts to tame the land, it maintains a sense of wildness; someday I'd like to canoe around the islands of phragmites.


Photo: Stephen Howe

The gosling below was the laggard of a group of about 5 tiny geese following their parents over a guard rail separating one side of the water from the other. The cuteness factor of these goslings was truly off the charts...


Photo: Stephen Howe

Tomorrow I'll try to post photos from Delaware Water Gap (last weekend's great adventure)...

Store Wars...

This is one of the funniest Star Wars spoofs I have ever seen...thank you Organic Food People!!

http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.htm

Further Adventures in Nature...

When Stephen suggested that we go to the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, my first thought was "ugh--why would I want to go to a swamp in New Jersey???" He prevailed, however, and we set off Saturday morning for Morris County.

I was stunned--the swamp and area surrounding it reminded me so much of the salt marsh areas of the North Shore! (Except that the Great Swamp is 25 miles inland, and so far away from either salt or cooling ocean breezes...). We stayed on the managed, boardwalk trails and practiced walking quietly so we wouldn't scare away any creatures...we saw one frog (that looked exactly like a leaf!), many tadpoles, three different kinds of turtles (indluding a bog turtle), two different kinds of snakes (two water snakes and one unidentified brownish snake with an ivory colored chin, about the size of a garter snake), and the following birds:

Yellow warbler
Brown-headed cowbird
Cardinal
Red-winged blackbird (lots)
Phoebe
Turkey vulture
Eastern Blubird

The bluebird was the most exciting sighting because Stephen had just been saying that he'd wanted to see one for years and never had. Next think you know, we sighted one sitting on top of a nest box in an open field. :)

We don't have any photos of birds, but we do have some of the paths and plants:


Path at Great Swamp...photo by Stephen Howe.


Unidentified flowering shrub at Great Swamp...photo by Stephen Howe.


Creative nesting space in a bird blind...photo by Stephen Howe


Creature along a woodland trail at Great Swamp...photo by Stephen Howe.

Adventures in Nature!

The weekend before last, Stephen and I took an adventure/photo walk along the southern stretch of Liberty State Park, and saw some Brandt Geese, three cormorant drying their wings on a log, and various, sundry gulls, but this was the most unexpected creature we saw:

Going to the Dogs...

Stephen found a great variant of the "What Kind of Dog Are You" meme on a site promoting the British Film Gone to the Dogs...it's one of the most lively and interesting sites I've seen in an age.

I ended up as a Hungarian Puli, and Stephen ended up as a Curly-Coated Retriver (surprise!).

What kind of dog are you?

Sound

I had the weirdest memory today--I'm not sure whether it came up because it's getting close to Mother's Day, or whether the sound actually triggered the memory to free itself from my locked-down brain. It was probably both.

In any case, I was brushing crumbs off my work desk and the sound of my ring on the table sounded exactly like the sound of my mum's wedding band as she would brush crumbs off our kitchen table after meals (she would cup them in her other hand and throw them away; I tend to brush them on the floor...alas). It's such a small memory, but I can picture it exactly.

It was like a little gift to remember this.

Testing Dash Blog

I'm having way too much fun with my new Tiger Dashboard...teseting out "Dash Blog," which I downloaded from Apple's site today...