Cumberland County NJ birding

On January 24th I lead a field trip to Cumberland County NJ along the Delaeare Bayshore for the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club. However, we actually started the day off with a pre-trip to the Villas Wildlife Management Area in Cape May County. This is an old golf course for Schmidts Brewery that has been purchased by the sate of New Jersey. This spot sort of looks like a pine-oak savanna with a few ponds. I really like seeing the islands of pitch pines with thickets of holly surrounded by grasses. We had a really cooperative female merlin perched in a pitch pine that gave us fantastic looks. Other birds of note was an American tree sparrow and a hermit thrush. We stopped at Beaver Swamp on the way to meet the group and had the female bald eagle on the nest.

At noon we met up with 13 members and non-members of the DVOC and Wawa and headed to Turkey Point near Dividing Creek in Cumberland County. We stopped on the Maple Ave causeway to see what ducks were around. We had many black, bufflehead and common mergansers as well as mute swans. We had an immature bald eagle and saw the eagle nest but didn't see any attending birds. We would see 6 bald eagles for the day. Here we found the bird the day, a snow bunting, which was a most pleasant surprise. There wasn't much to bee seen at the Turkey Point observation deck and bridge besides harriers.

We headed to the final destination of Husted Landing for our target birds, the sandhill cranes. Seven cranes were there foraging in the salt hay. There cranes were there the whole time we where there and the rest of the flock never came in. We were hoping to see the common crane that is part of this flock. We were also treated to a beautiful 'gray ghost' male harrier. After greeting our fill of the cranes we stopped in to visit Dr Pete and his family who owns the land around Husted Landing. He was nice enough to show us his waterfowl collection, which included ringed teal, Mandarin ducks, and common pochards. He also has a stunning 'Nellie Stevens' holly in his yard. It was a nice trip indeed.

Welcome to Wild Philadelphia

Bartram's Gardens January 8th 2010. Photo by Liz Arnold


Welcome to Wild Philadelphia! This blog is a project by Clyde and Tony Croasdale, a father and son inspired by the book "Wild America" by James Fisher and Roger Tory Peterson. Published in 1955, "Wild America" is an account of the 100 day trip through North America that these two renowned naturalists took in 1953. Their goal was to visit as many places and see as much wildlife, especially birds, as possible. Our goal will be to visit as many places and see as much wildlife as we can within 100 miles of Philadelphia in a year. We would like to make as many people as possible in this region aware of the incredible nature to be found at our doorstep. From watching raptors migrate along mountain ridges, to finding frog in the Pine Barrens or exploring the plants growing in a brown field in inner city Philadelphia we will try to highlight the myriad of opportunities the region has for wildlife observation.