Recent Posts
- Garden Club Revives; Backyard Wildlife Expands
- Board of Health Ordinances Online
- What is Your Favorite Nature Spot?
- The Early Bird Gets the Nest
- Street Fair in Highland Park
- Spring Birds in Local Parks
- Where to Buy Native Plants
- Great Backyard Bird Count Great For Highland Park
- Saw Seal, Photographed Same
- Scentennial Garden in Bloom: the Plan
- Tree Ordinance on Borough Site
- HP Environmental Education Center Open for HPEC Meetings
- Environmental Ed Center Gets its Furniture.
Garden Club Revives; Backyard Wildlife Expands
By arnold | June 25, 2008
The Highland Park (NJ) Garden Club has been revived. Here are members on 28 May 2008 visiting the garden of Natalie and Arnold Henderson, Highland Park’s first certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat (National Wildlife Federation). The main flowers up front are cultivars of the native cranesbill geranium, in the true geranium genus. The Backyard Wildlife Program itself has been expanded in Highland Park, since we are now registered as trying for entire Community Wildlife certification. Send a message to Steve Barnes via “contact us” on this site if you’d like to learn how to have your own yard certified. (Hint: supply food such as berries for birds, nesting cover such as native shrubs, and water; that’s about it.)
Topics: meetings, native plants | No Comments »
Board of Health Ordinances Online
By leora | June 12, 2008
The Highland Park Board of Health Ordinances have been updated; a new noise ordinance has been added. These cover retail food establishments; litter; public nuisances; swimming pools; animal control; requirements for heat in apartment buildings; noise; air and water pollution; tobacco control; snow removal, and various other local health issues. You can find the link to the June 2008 ordinances and other environmental information on our info page.
Topics: health | No Comments »
What is Your Favorite Nature Spot?
By leora | May 29, 2008
Highland Park has a lot of nature in this area. Donaldson Park, the Rutgers Ecological Preserve, the Native Plant Reserve, the Meadows, and Rutgers Gardens, which is close to Highland Park, are a few. Can you tell us by leaving a comment about your favorite spot? What animals, birds, plants have you seen there recently?
Thanks for participating in this post.
Topics: nature | 3 Comments »
The Early Bird Gets the Nest
By arnold | May 23, 2008
The first bird to nest directly on Highland Park’s Eugene Young Environmental Education Center (NJ) chose a quite visible spot (see photo at left) on the raucous green solar roof structure. Actually, the structure is not yet truly solar: we need to find a grant to install the intended solar panels. But to the bird, it probably seems solar enough: warm, well lit, and securely wedged in among the girders. Whoever sees and can identify the bird, contact us. Then we can know what bird it is and watch the nesting/fledging process over the next several weeks.
Come down and watch the process as eggs are laid, hatched, and matured into fledglings.
Photo: Arnold Clayton Henderson, 21May2008
Topics: Environmental Center, Photographs, birds | No Comments »
Street Fair in Highland Park
By leora | May 18, 2008
Today is the annual street fair in Highland Park. Both the Shade Tree Advisory Committee and the Environmental Commission were represented.
Here’s the booth for STAC, with plants for sale and free tree saplings.
And here’s Arnold Henderson, who can tell you all about the environment in Highland Park:
Topics: Photographs | 1 Comment »
Spring Birds in Local Parks
By allan | May 15, 2008
The spring birds have finally arrived along the Raritan River and in the local parks (Donaldson and Johnson) and the winter birds have departed.The colorful mergansers (common, red breasted, and hooded) have flown north (although a laggard common merganser was seen last week in the river). Similarly, the occasional bufflehead and goldeneye are gone. The few wintering great cormorants have been replaced by the more numerous double crested cormorants, which can be seen fishing in the river and ponds of the parks.
The transient migratory warblers have come and gone. However, the common warblers, which nest in the area, the yellow-rumped warbler, yellow warbler, and the common yellow throat have arrived and can be found in the bushes and trees of the parks.
The more musical birds, the catbird, the mockingbird, and the northern oriole (Baltimore oriole) have also arrived in the parks and around town. The orioles with their bright color and striking “I am talking to you!” song are quite numerous this year.The warbling vireos and the Carolina wrens are singing “their hearts out”.
Shore birds such as the yellow-legs and sandpipers have also arrived and can be seen in the ponds, and the occasional puddles from the spring rains. Great egrets and black-crowned night heron are back and can be seen in both parks along the river and in the ponds.
The more majestic ospreys have arrived and can be seen flying high over the river. A few eagles have also been seen spotted up and down the river.
The robins, which never left the area, have returned in great numbers to the open fields of the parks.
Meanwhile in the last two weeks, the first baby Canada geese have been hatched in both parks.Geese families, two adults with two to eight or more goslings are wandering around the fields. Some of the babies have already grown five fold in size. Although the Canada goose is much maligned for its productivity of droppings, they are very good parents and protective of their offspring. As the goslings get to the “teen-age” phase, large numbers of these young adult geese are led around by two adults geese, which is technically known as “goosey day care”. In Johnson Park, over the past several years, a domestic goose has assumed a role as an “au pair”.
Enjoy the sights and sounds of the spring birds.
Topics: Photographs, birds | 1 Comment »
Where to Buy Native Plants
By leora | May 15, 2008
Question: Where is the best place to buy native plants to put into your own garden?
Answer: See the list of suppliers posted by the Native Plant Society of New Jersey at http://www.npsnj.org/sources_native_plants.htm
Topics: native plants | No Comments »
Great Backyard Bird Count Great For Highland Park
By arnold | March 14, 2008
During the Great Bird Count 2008 Hainesport birders led New Jersey in the number of bird counts reported (67 lists), followed in the number two and three spots by Highland Park (44 lists) and East Brunswick (48 lists). In number of species, Highland Park gained one (reaching 44 species) compared to last year (43 species). Are more kinds of birds really here, or did we just luck out in finding them? Only a long-term pattern will tell us, and that is just what this annual count is intended to produce.
This count, along with Project Feederwatch, are among several “citizen science” programs sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National and Canadian Audubon Societies. Anyone, even kids, can participate and actually contribute to science. Species lists are compiled into a data base for a continuing year-by-year statistical picture of changes in bird populations from sea to shining sea.
Topics: birds | No Comments »
Saw Seal, Photographed Same
By arnold | March 14, 2008
Bill Bonner has sent us a photograph of a harbor seal he saw in the Raritan by South Bound Brook. After posing briefly, the seal swam down toward New Brunswick and Highland Park. Is the river getting cleaner to attract one up so far? Keep a watch and contact us if you see it or its confreres.
Topics: Photographs | No Comments »
Scentennial Garden in Bloom: the Plan
By arnold | March 14, 2008
The garden and terracing at the Senior/Youth Center by Borough Hall were started in Highland Park NJ’s centennial year of 2005 as a “scent” garden. It’s called the Scentennial Garden. Get it?
Now in March of 2008 the winter jasmine is in bloom, and you can click on the thumbnail-photo of the Scentennial Garden Plan to see what treats are ahead. Metal tags hang from some plants; these identify species by marking one plant out of each group of similar plants.
Topics: Scentennial Garden | No Comments »