Here's to you, my sweet northern New Jersey woods. I've been missing you, your Black Bears and birches and oaks and hemlocks.
If plans go accordingly, when this post appears I will be camping, mountain biking, and birding in High Point State Park, Sussex County, NJ, where Pileated Woodpeckers will wake me, I hope, and Black-capped Chickadees will greet me when I pish. That would be my year Black-capped Chickadees, if you can believe it - I've not been north of NJ's chickadee Mason-Dixon line yet this year.
If there's another county I'd live in than Cape May, it would be Sussex, NJ, which has a remarkable expanse of protected public land (something like 70% of the county) and birds to make a respectable birder drool - like, in the right habitat, fairly common breeding Cerulean Warblers, for example. Abundant Veeries, Least Flycatchers che-beking next to beaver ponds, ravens croaking overhead - whooo boy, I can't wait. In Don's dream world, we'd find a way to hook Sussex and Cape May together, and the only problem we'd have is every birder in the world would want to live here, and they wouldn't all fit.
More to come about our Sussex adventures!