Young blue jays are among the birds affected by the mystery illness.

My column this week is all about that mysterious bird disease affecting feeder birds in several states. (Photo above by Barbara Dilger. Thanks, Barbara).

Mike Lefebvre recently left his corporate background in order to pursue an earth/environmental science degree at Montclair with the end goal of becoming an earth science high school teacher. He kept the N.J.Urban Forest blog for many years.

He has been keeping lists of plants of natural areas since at least 2009, and wanted to share the list he created for the Celery Farm using his own observations, the NYNJCT Botany website and i-naturalist.

You can download the list here:

Download Celery Farm Flora

(Thanks, Mike!)

The excellent birding blog "10,000 Birds" just posted my short article about the Bahama Nuthatch, recently declared a distinct species by the American Ornithological Society and also feared extinct.

The real James Bond "discovered" the bird 90 years ago. The study skin above is part of the collection at Bond's Academy of Natural Sciences.

You can read it here.

Photo: Special thanks to Matt Halley/Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

In honor of National Moth Week this week, can you identify this guy, photographed in Franklin Lakes? (Thanks, Sally!)

More on National Moth Week here.

We're now approaching peak butterfly time at the CF.

Pictured are some of the cool insects I saw yesterday.