The Salt Water Chronicles: 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...