Ocean County Park--The Sky Has Fallen

I loathe the polyanna role but I would be remiss as a conservationist and bird-lover to say nothing about what went down today at Ocean County Park. For the past 3 years I've been going out there to check on a large Great Blue Heron rookery that occupies a corner of the park. Here's a past blog post about it. Anyway, I havent had time to check it out this spring, but today I braved the treacherous drive through Lakewood to get there. It was a portend of what was to come that I saw a turkey vulture that was feasting on a dead cat get hit by a car and killed outright. Ugh, so making my way to rookery, I noticed that the chipwood path was not maintained and full of debris. When I got to the actual ring of trees, I saw why...it's half gone! Yeah some genius decided to take all the dead snags out of the center and then blaze a path through the living forest, clear to the center of the park. Horrified, I looked at what was left and could only count about 12 nests, out of the 36 or more that were there last year. To make it worse, I located the bodies of a few young chicks in their wrecked nests. Judging from the still green leaves on the branches, I'd say about 4 weeks ago, just as the chicks were hatching, one of those tree cutting machines came in and took out more than 20 trees. Whether this was just carelessness or actual disdain for the place, I cannot say. The result is that a jewel of Ocean County is now a shadow of its former self, with many of the remaining birds extremely stressed and many of the healthy trees damaged. Never going back.

Under Pressure

As nesting season fast approaches, resident raptors have begun to cement their territory and begin work on their nests. Unfortunately, the two great area Churches (The Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Riverside Church), that have hosted both numerous successful nests throughout the years, are themselves are undergoing extensive renovations. Apparently the Churches suffer from numerous leaks and intrusive scaffolding now covers their exterior. In both cases, the repairs come very close to what are now active nests.



I watched both the male and female make sorties into the park, snipping off branches with their powerful beaks.

To date, I have not witnessed any copulation, and last years eggs were laid around March 14th. That still gives us a few weeks of time for the Cathedral to make their repairs. If anyone has a contact at the Cathedral, maybe we can petition for them to begin the work on that part of the Chapel.
Up on Riverside, the same problem exists.


Both species show a lot of tolerance for human activity, but we've seen it before in numerous cases, notably the 5th Ave. red-tailed hawks--Pale Male and Lola--but also in others, where human presence can disrupt nests. The GM peregrines are another notable situation where the installation of the spotlights for the new Apple Store disrupted the nesting peregines. All in all, New York City has many successfully nesting raptors that all have to contend with human interference at one time or another. Hopefully we can find a balance between the needs of our institutions and places of business and the rhythms of the natural world.