NJUrbanforest.com looks at Lorrimer Sanctuary in this timely blog post. Link is here.

The blog, by Mike Lefebvre, is here  -- it does a nice job of covering many North Jersey parks and natural areas.

My latest coluimn for The Record and Herald-News is about my three favorite raptor nest-cams -- all in New Jersey -- and answers to reader questions about American Robins (which you helped with).

The link to the column is here.

The link to the Duke Farms Eagle Camera is here  (a shot of Duke Farms eaglets from a previous year is above). 

The link to the Jersey City Peregrine Cam is here.

The link to the Friends of Island Beach's Osprey Cam is here.

The folks at eBird are helping with research into the steep declines of Rusty Blackbirds, and they need your help. According to the website....

Please help provide information on Rusty Blackbird migration by searching for Rusties this March and April in any potentially suitable habitat [like the Celery Farm!] and reporting those sightings to eBird.

You can scout anywhere throughout the Rusty Blackbird’s range- across the eastern United States, throughout the Midwest, and into Canada (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Rusty_Blackbird/id). 

This wetland-loving species can be found in some surprising places, so don’t be surprised if you catch a sighting or two in a place you wouldn’t consider a birding hot spot. 

Rusties can be found in many habitats from beautiful bottomland hardwood swamps to waterfowl management areas to flooded ditches by the side of the road, so feel free to get creative in your search for this bird!

More info here.

In an effort to try something different, I thought I'd team with the Princeton University Press on a blog tour of Richard Crossley's new raptor ID book.

On Friday, I'll post a page of the book's illustrations of Red-shouldered Hawks, in honor of Allendale's own celebrated family of Red-shoulders.

I thought it would be a nice fit, since Red-shoulders -- and especially young Red-shoulders -- can be hard to ID...

More on the blog tour is here.

For the past couple of years, in my spare time, I have been working on a ghost story set in 1938 in Ho-Ho-Kus, Allendale and Mahwah.

The key event in the story is an actual armed bank robbery in Allendale 75 years ago next month, so I have been motivated to get the whole thing done -- complete with all sorts of rarely seen archival photographs and the nifty cover photo above, by Barbara Socor.

The 24-page book will be available as an eBook download soon. Hard cover and soft cover versions are a possibility as well if there's much interest.  E-mail me at [email protected]. Stay tuned -- and feel free to spread the word!