N.J. visit brings pleasant surprise Wood thrush gives flutelike songs

A trip to my home state of New Jersey over the last few days granted me a wonderful and surprising gift.

I have to admit, New Jersey is a state of extremes. On one hand, there is the heavily industrialized portion that makes a mockery of its nickname, “the Garden State.” There are areas that ought to be preserved but are instead overrun with houses and flattened by asphalt.

Such was the case at the Jersey Shore. I visited Long Beach Island and, for some reason, was completely unprepared for the gridiron of beach houses that stretched from shore to shore. Unbelievably, even monoculture lawns – which at least provide foraging areas for robins and mockingbirds – were being eliminated in favor of blankets of pea gravel.

I guess I have been spoiled by Maine’s wilder and less populated islands.

On the other hand, incredible treasures exist there, such as the 1.1 million acres of Pinelands National Reserve in the southern part of the state, or the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in northern N.J., which would have become a jetport in the 1960s had it not been protected.

The gift I received, though, was given to me in a comparatively small preserve located smack in the middle of a heavily populated town.

A biking/fitness trail borders Nomahegan Park in Union County, and there is a small children’s playground near the entrance, but the bulk of the park is undeveloped. Deer and dirt-bike trails crisscross the interior, but for the most part, people tend to stay on the footpath that skirts the small refuge.

Except for me. Binoculars in hand, I had set out to do some serious birding. A wide path between towering, leafy deciduous trees beckoned. At the head of the path, I witnessed both Carolina chickadee fledglings and tufted titmouse fledglings begging food from their parents.

As I turned down the trail, I was surprised at the ethereal, flutelike song that drifted through the still forest. I hadn’t heard it in a long, long time, so it took me a few minutes to place it. At first, I mistakenly thought I was hearing a hermit thrush, but I knew that couldn’t be right; its range does not include much of New Jersey and tends to be more northerly.

Instead, it was a wood thrush. Three of them, to be exact, were singing from different points within the forest, but one was close – very close.

I crept off the path a bit and searched the lower branches for the singer, finally spotting the thrush as it perched on a bare branch of a dead seedling. The deep shade from the dense, high canopy above created a mostly clear understory dotted with shrubs; creeping vines wound around some of the lower trunks or hung in tangled masses between trees; and the warm, humid air was still and quiet, save for the song of the wood thrush. Sunlight streamed through gaps in the canopy and dappled the forest floor, which was covered by a carpet of dead leaves, decaying tree stumps and fallen limbs, and moss.

It was a primordial tableau.

The thrush sang for several moments before disappearing among the trees. I stood quietly. After several minutes, I noticed movement on the forest floor. A wood thrush fledgling was experimentally poking at the layer of leaf litter, but abandoned its efforts when the parent bird returned to stuff some tasty food item into its gaping beak.

Soon another fledgling hopped into view, and both parents were busy catching food for the youngsters. Every so often, one of the adult birds would return to its perch and resume singing for a few moments.

I felt so lucky to have gotten this glimpse into the life of a wood thrush. Not only because I just hadn’t had the opportunity to do so in a while, but also because wood thrush populations have been decreasing significantly. Habitat loss and fragmentation, as well as acid rain, are thought to be factors in this decline.

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