My post regarding the new deer exclosure at the Celery Farm generated quite a response -- and a few questions.

A follow-up is in order. Sorry if it's a tad long.

First of all, the Fyke Nature Association plans to post an interpretive sign at the exclosure that reads:

PROTECTING NATURE

For more than a decade, the region’s ever-expanding White-tailed Deer population has been devouring the 107-acre Celery Farm Natural Area’s native plants.

The Fyke Nature Association has created this deer exclosure to regenerate one patch of understory and show what a healthy forest looks like.

Once this section rebounds, you will be able to compare it to the adjacent unprotected areas and see the impact that deer have on our environment. In this protected portion of the preserve, native plants will flourish, and so will the birds, small mammals, butterflies and nature’s other creations that depend on them.

Fyke wishes to thank the New Jersey Conservation Foundation for the generous Franklin Parker Grant that helped make this deer exclosure possible.

The exclosure, which takes up roughly 3/4 of an acre in the heart of the 107-acre preserve was not done out of the blue. It is a result of an environmental survey that the Fyke Nature Association commissioned in early 2018 by the Land Conservancy of New Jersey.

You can read the entire report here:

Download CeleryFarmManagementPlanFinal(7)

Earlier this month, I volunteered to be the official migrating-raptor counter at the State Line Hawk watch in Alpine.

I lived to write a column about it. You can download it here.

Download Wright Bird Watcher TheRecord_20191031_BL04_1

One of the challenges: telling Cooper's Hawks from Sharp-shins. Which is the hawk above?

Photo by Steve Seyboth. (answer at the end of the column.)  Thanks, Steve!

I took this photo of this large young hawk at the Celery Farm on Tuesday around noon.

At first I thought young Red-tail but never got a good look at the chest and now I wonder....

A big thank you to Mike Limatola, Kurt Muenz and Fred Weber for all their work on getting the deer-exclosure project done.

It is located between the Boy Scout Platform and the Brotherton Bridge. As you can see, the understory has been destroyed.

Now there is at least one place in the Celery Farm that the deer can't wreck, and the understory there will grow back in a few years and folks can see what a healthy woodlands looks like.

A huge thank you is also due to Michele Byers, Laura Szwak and the NJ Conservation Foundation, which awarded the Fyke Nature Association a Franklin Parker Grant to help pay for the exclosure.

Can you identify this caterpillar, photographed at Shelter Island's Mashomack Preserve?