Nature Done Wright

On Monday I wrote…

    Yesterday morning, top Celery Farm Nature Preserve birder Julie McCall saw an unusual-looking hawk over the Green Way fields.

    Although she had only her cellphone, she was able to get off a couple of pix for I.D. purposes. (See above.)

     Can you I.D. it? And why might this be a big deal? Explain… :- )

     The answer: This is a light-morph rough-legged hawk – the first time one was ever recorded on eBird for The Celery Farm – bringing the species total to 259.

     A young light-morph,One was also seen the previous Sunday by Alyson Nilo.at State Line Lookout (See Jim Reilly’s photo below), who reports light-morph had been reported at Quaker Ridge Hawk Watch the day before. We’re all wondering if it was the same bird.

     Even more surprising, this bird is typically seen in the winter in North Jersey, especially in the Meadowlands in the early 2010s  – if at all. 

 When I worked for the NJ Meadowlands Commission, we had a couple of winters where we saw several that had flown south. Disposal Road was typically the best place to see them (if you got lucky). We even saw them on a bird walk or two.

    I hope to write about rough-legs for my next Bird Watcher column for northjersey.com and The Record. It should run on  Thursday, Nov. 5. I hope to post it at some point.