3rd Annual Fell House Moth Ball

Friday, July 11, 8:30-10:30 p.m., Crestwood Lake, Allendale

Join us for the third annual Moth Ball, a free celebration of moths and other nightlife -- including a great live band -- at the Red Barn at Crestwood Lake in Allendale.

We’ll have three moth lights and sheets in hopes of attracting a wide variety of these amazing creatures of the night, and we’ll help you ID them and learn more about them.

Feel free to dance (the Jitterbug?) and enjoy a great classic-rock group, the After Hours Band.  When the band takes a break, we’ll do a quick and entertaining slide show about why most moths have gotten a bad rep.  

The Moth Ball marks the unofficial start of National Moth Week (nationalmothweek.org), which runs from July 19-27, and we hope a founder of the international group will again join us for the festivities.

    The free event is open to all and sponsored by the historic John Fell House (a.k.a. the Concerned citizens of Allendale), the Fyke Nature Association, the Allendale Green Team and the Bergen County Audubon Society. For more information, e-mail Jim Wright at wrightjamesb (at) gmail.com.

(Thanks to Patrick Carney for the photo above, of a Virginia Tiger Moth!)

Edith Wallace pointed out these beautiful postage stamps to me and suggested I share them on the blog.

The Postal Service has a neat post about the stamps and the birds. The link is here. (Thanks, Edith!)

I regret to share some sad news.

Len Soucy, founder and long-time director of The Raptor Trust, died this week. He was in his early 80s. 

No place cares more about -- or for -- injured or orphaned wild birds than avian veterinary center in Morris County that Soucy created.

The fact that anybody can bring an injured bird there for treatment, utterly free of charge, is incredible.

A link to a wonderful ScienceLine article about Len is here. The article, by Kate Baggeley, called Len "a force for nature." Amen.

Alice Leurck reports:

With the Lake St bridge in Ramsey under construction (no traffic!), I have had a chance to check out the birds there. 

In the evening after the crew is finished there has been a Black-crowned Night-Heron fishing in the brook.  There has also been a Great Egret,
and Barn and Northern Rough-winged Swallows (those are still hard for me to ID, they move so fast). 

I found an Oriole's nest in a front yard on Lake St, right next to the construction!  I guess if the construction doesn't bother the bird, neither would the traffic.   (Thanks, Alice!)

Lillian Thomas found this Luna Moth in her yard over the weekend.

The Thosmases kept it on their screened-in porch until after nightfall, when they released it.

Now that's a moth!