Meadowlands Festival of Birding

Join the NJ Audubon Society, the NJ Meadowlands Commission, and Hackensack Riverkeeper for a fun-filled weekend of birding and other festivities! There will be both field and boat birding tours, butterfly walks, a raptor presentation, a lecture by Dr. Robert DeCandido on bird migration, plus much more. On Sunday the weekend continues with paddling tours of nearby birding spots. Tickets are $40 for the two-day festival and include just about everything, including breakfast and lunch on Saturday. Check out their site here and sign up quickly! The boat and paddling tours require reservations in addition to tickets.

International Vulture Awareness Day 2009

That's right, vultures have finally received their own day in the spotlight. Check out the official IVAD09 website and join in on September 5th by blogging about vultures. That could mean photos, video, a short story about a close encounter...anything you want!

http://www.ivad09.org/wp/

Updates

Hey readers,

I have to apologize for the lack of updates. This past Saturday I returned from a week of birding and hiking central Panama, and next week I leave for Reno, NV. A day after I get back, I'll be driving up to Maine! And while those places have little to do directly with "New Jersey Outdoors", I should have some great photos to post here soon!

On the NJ front, banding has continued at HMF in my absence. Some new birds have been banded including Scarlet Tanager, House Wren, Carolina Wren, Hairy Woodpecker, and Red-Bellied Woodpecker.

With the breeding season drawing to a close, our hope is that this banding will continue next summer and beyond so that abundances and species composition can be monitored. Trends in these numbers will hopefully reveal causes of decline and perhaps increases in certain species of birds. With the potential control of invasive plants looming on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how that affects the bird communities of Hutcheson Memorial Forest moving forward.

The forest is a unique ecosystem for the area, and it's a great place to visit and explore. Check the website for upcoming tours at http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~hmforest/

Bird's Nest Fungi

Stay tuned! Starting this fall NJ Outdoors will be commencing a Species Profile series for the different types of wildlife in the Garden State. An interview series is also in the works featuring sit-downs with prominent members of the community. Scientists, photographers, and many others with their hands in our natural world.

Birding & Wildlife Trails needs your help!

New Jersey's Birding & Wildlife Trails is creating a new Pinelands Guide for the state, which will include Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester counties. If you fill out their nomination form to help them decide on which sites to include, they will give you a FREE one-year membership to the New Jersey Audubon Society! All of the information needed can be found on the site, located here.

Brighter Planet

From the green minds of the people who brought us the 350 Challenge comes Brighter Planet! - a website designed to help people accurately and easily track their environmental impact. Enter things like your vehicle, home, and diet to find out how large your carbon footprint might be. You can also read and contribute tips on saving energy and conserving the environment. For those interested the site also makes it easy to partially or completely offset your carbon footprint!



Check out the site and help them test their beta version: http://beta.brighterplanet.com/

Add me if you decide to join. Username: Billtacular

New Green Media

From the fine folks over at the Edison Wetlands Association comes New Green Media, a news site bringing you all the environmental and green news from across the great state of New Jersey. Similar to their Wild New Jersey site, this news outlet will bring both exclusive, breaking news as well as important headlines from the mainstream media. Head on over there now to watch a special report on the Raritan Bay Slag Site in Old Bridge and Sayreville.

You can always find links to both EWA-affiliated sites on the right-hand side of New Jersey Outdoors.

Butterfly Walk at DeKorte Park

The NJ Meadowlands Commission and the Bergen County Audubon Society will co-sponsor a butterfly walk this Sunday at 1pm.



For more information head on over to The Meadowlands Blog by clicking here.