Jan 25 2021

Project Feederwatch Report January 23rd & 24th

Former Ewing Environmental Commissioner Lee Farnham is a long term participant in Project FeederWatch, a citizen-science project that changes the way observers see birds.  Participants observe birds in their own backyards, helping scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology track what’s happening with feeder birds across the continent (US and Canada.  More than 15,000 FeederWatchers come from all walks of life, including people of all ages and levels of bird-watching skill. Here is his report for January 23 & 24, 2021.

“This was our 295th count since 2005, and we reported a bird we’d NEVER seen here before, the beautiful Baltimore Oriole male.  He even was on the Sunflower seed feeder for a moment. How gorgeous!!! We saw him first at the other side of the yard, at 1157 on 1/23. He then flew across to the feeder area and spent a short while in the Japanese Holly bush between the Safflower and Sunflower feeders before going to the Cardinal Ring on the Sunflower seed feeder. Goldfinches were on it at the time; but kept their distance. His last position was on our Black Cherry tree before he flew off. He was here 15-20 minutes, and he’s welcome to return. In our 295 submissions to FW since 2005, this is the first BALTIMORE ORIOLES we’ve reported. My wife saw him too, as did our cat. They were both enchanted too.”

For full details containing all birds seen go to: https://feederwatch.org/pfw/count/summary?id=S79876033&s=1.

Jul 16 2020

Invasive Pest Alert – Spotted Lanternfly

The Spotted Lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula (White), is a plant hopper that is native to China, India and Vietnam and has become a major pest in eastern PA and in 8 counties in western NJ.   It has been spotted in Ewing landscapes.  They like over 70 different plant species, including fruit trees, ornamental trees, woody trees, vegetables, herbs and vines, as well as agricultural crops like grapes and hops.

The pest strongly prefers another invasive, the “Tree of Heaven, Ailanthus altissima, also from Asia.”   It is an excellent hitchhiker, so if you travel to and from areas where it has been currently found, you should search your vehicle, your clothing and your car load thoroughly, to help prevent its spread.

The Spotted Lanternfly is rather beautifully colored in its life stages.   The adult is approximately 1 inch long and a half inch wide at rest. The forewing is grey with black spots and the wings tips are reticulated black blocks outlined in gray. The hind wings have contrasting patches of red and black with a white band. The legs and head are black; the abdomen is yellow with broad black bands. Immature stages are black with white spots and develop red patches as they grow.  Before it’s a beautiful fly, it’s a nymph.  In the early stages it’s black later it turns red in July-September and eventually it looks like the fly and can be seen July – December.

How to help stop the spread of this invasive species

Remove them: If you see egg masses, scrape them off, double bag them and throw them away. You can also place the eggs into alcohol, bleach, or hand sanitizer to kill them.

Collect a specimen: Specimens of any life stage can be turned in to the New Jersey Department of Agriculture’s lab for verification.

Take a picture: A photograph of any life stage (including egg masses) can be submitted to SLF-plantindustry@ag.nj.gov.

Report a siting: If you can’t take a specimen or photograph, call the New Jersey Spotted Lanternfly Hotline at 1-833-223-2840 (BADBUG0) and leave a message detailing your sighting and contact information.

NJ Dept of Agriculture Handouts

Sep 16 2019

Plant of the Month – Spicebush

by Charlie Maack

Spicebush Lindera benzoin

Looking for a bush that likes moist feet and doesn’t require full sun?   Then a Spicebush is right for you! Lindera benzoin is an understory shrub that handles full sun to part shade.  It is happiest in part shade but will tolerant full sun provided it has adequate soil moisture.

When it reaches maturity, it will be round in shape and about 12 feet tall and 15 feet wide.  Its name comes from the wonderful, spicy scent released when you scratch a stem. Despite its size, it is considered a shrub because of its multiple stems rather than a single trunk.

The Spicebush is a deciduous shrub that is native in the Northeastern portion of the country and has many attractive treats.  It is one of the first to get its small yellow flowers in early Spring, and in the Fall, it produces small red berries and the leaves turn a marvelous bright yellow.  The green elongated leaves are alternate on its branches.

Spicebush is dioecious, meaning that the male and female flowers are on separate plants and the female plants need a male pollinator to set fruit.  The sex is difficult to identify in young plants, so either wait to buy two larger plants or to buy a small grouping, which should hopefully contain both sexes.

It is a useful plant to have in your butterfly and/or rain garden.  One or more broods (generations) of female Spicebush Swallowtail butterflies will lay eggs on the leaves of a Spicebush.  When the butterfly caterpillar is born it will eat some of the leaves before turning into a chrysalis then a butterfly.  In the Fall the birds love to eat the berries. In fact, it is one of the most sought-after bushes by migrating birds to get their energy as they begin their journey South.

The Mercer County Master Gardeners maintain several Spicebushes at their Mercer Educational Gardens (MEG) at 431 A Federal City Road, in Pennington adjacent to the Mercer County Stables. The photo below is one of the small Spicebushes there.

Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly

Notes

Information gathered from Virginia Tech Dendrology, Wikimedia Commons, http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/bfly/spicebush_swallowtail.htm

 

Jun 3 2019

BEE a Part of the Million Pollinator Gardens Challenge!

Photo by Mary CorriganDid you know that June is National Pollinator Month? In celebration of the many contributions that are made by our pollinators, the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge was initiated by the National Wildlife Federation to recognize and encourage the planting of pollinator gardens. Wild About Ewing, a joint program of Ewing’s Green Team and Environmental Commission, asks all Ewing gardeners to “Bee” Part of the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge and answer this call to action. Help preserve the health of bees, butterflies, birds, bats and other pollinators and create wildlife friendly gardens and landscapes.

To answer the challenge and BEEcome a part of the solution, just follow these three simple steps.

Plant something for pollinators

  • Plant NATIVE plants that provide nectar and pollen sources
  • Provide a water source
  • Situate gardens in sunny areas with wind breaks
  • Create large “pollinator targets” of native or non-invasive plants
  • Establish continuous bloom throughout the growing season
  • Eliminate or minimize the impact of pesticides.

If you have followed these simple principles in your garden then, take the next step and

Register Your Garden at MillionPollinatorGardens.org

Register your Garden to BEE Counted. BEE sure to add a photo of your garden or landscape to the S.H.A.R.E map. Anyone and any size garden can join in the campaign to reach one million sites for pollinators!

Don’t forget the next step because we need to encourage every property owner to help sustain pollinators and all wildlife on their properties.

Spread the Word and get others to join in!

Keep the Challenge Growing! Invite others to your garden and talk to everyone about the importance of pollinators and how you can help.

Certify Your Garden

To learn more and join with us, we encourage Ewing gardeners to follow the steps listed above to create a wildlife friendly garden and then certify your garden or yard in the National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife program. Learn more about Ewing’s Community Wildlife Habitat project at ewingwildlifegardens.com and BEEcome a part of the solution!

Apr 28 2019

Gardening for Stormwater and Wildlife: how to build a rain garden

Gardening for Stormwater and Wildlife: how to build a rain garden

Click on image for full sized flyer

Have you considered adding a rain garden to your landscape to enhance its beauty, improve drainage and create wildlife habitat? The lovely rain garden pictured above can be a part of your garden. Wild About Ewing, a joint project of the Ewing Environmental Commission and Green Team, encourages you attend our presentation and learn more about gardening for wildlife and protecting our waterways at the same time.

Rain gardens can help us manage stormwater runoff from rooftops, driveways, lawns, roads, and other hard surfaces. They look like regular perennial gardens, but they are much more. During a storm, a rain garden fills with water, and the water slowly filters into the ground rather than running into storm sewers. By capturing stormwater, rain gardens help to reduce the impact of human activities and pollution in the environment such as road sediment/salt, fertilizers, pesticides, bacteria from pet waste, eroded soil, grass clippings, litter, etc. This helps protect the health of our waterways. Rain gardens also add beauty to neighborhood and provide wildlife habitat.

In this 1.5 hour evening workshop, homeowners can learn how to plan and plant their own raingarden, enhancing their property and their neighborhood! Now is a good time to plan a raingarden for planting this spring.

Presenter: Kory Kreiseder, Stormwater Specialist with The Watershed Institute. Kory has been with The Watershed Institute since April 2017 as the Stormwater Specialist with the Policy and Advocacy team as well as the Science and Stewardship team. Previously she spent three years as an urban conservation specialist for the Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District, where she advised governments, businesses and residents on stormwater management issues. Currently, she is working with Hopewell Borough through on the restoration of the Beden Brook funded by a grant received from NJ Department of Environmental Protection. This project will install over 25 different green infrastructure practices including rain gardens, cisterns, porous paving, etc.

Date: Tuesday, May14
Time: 7 pm
Location: Ewing Senior and Community Center, 999 Lower Ferry Road, Ewing
Cost: Free and open to the public

Mar 25 2019

Wild About Ewing to Host Part II of Our Gardening for Wildlife Series – Gardens with Buzz

Wild About Ewing! is extremely excited to announce that they will sponsor Part II of an introductory series to the National Wildlife Federation’s Community Wildlife Habitat Project and how gardeners in Ewing are providing much needed wildlife habitat while getting credit for both themselves and their community at the Ewing Branch Library, 61 Scotch Road, Ewing on Monday, March 25th at 7 pm. Mary Anne Borge, a local naturalist, writer, photographer and educator, will tell you what you can you do to attract birds to your garden and which plants are best to entice bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects to make their homes with you. She will also share maintenance techniques that are the most hospitable for these garden visitors and residents.

Mary Anne Borge is a naturalist, writer, photographer, and educator. She is the Associate Editor for Butterfly Gardener magazine, a publication of the North American Butterfly Association; an instructor and naturalist at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve in New Hope, Pennsylvania; a Pennsylvania Master Naturalist, and the team leader for Lambertville Goes Wild. Her photographs have been featured in numerous publications. She shares her love of nature through her writing and photography at the-natural-web.org.

Part 1 of the series, entitled Gardening for Wildlife in the Suburban Landscape, was presented to the community on February 25th and we were thrilled to see so many interested Ewing gardeners. We hope that this will be start of a great gardening season for wildlife this spring and for the future!

To learn more about gardening for wildlife and the Ewing Community Wildlife Habitat Project (or Wild About Ewing!) please go to ewingwildlifegardens.com

Date: Monday, March 25th
Time: 7pm
Location: Ewing Branch Library, 61 Scotch Road
Cost: Free and open to the public

Mar 25 2019

Plant of the Month March 2019: Black and Weeping Willows

Steven Katovich, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org

by Charles Maack

Willow trees are among the first trees to get their leaves in the Spring and the last to lose their leaves in the Fall. There are over 400 different species of willow trees throughout the world. Among them, the Black Willow is native to New Jersey, while the Weeping Willow has its origin in northern China. Both have slender green leaves from 3 to 6 inches long. In the Fall they turn a brilliant yellow. The tiny flowers on these trees are both male and female, appearing just before or at the same time as the leaves.

The major differences between these two trees are their shape and their bark. The small branches on a weeping willow are very slender and smooth, hanging or drooping for long distances, almost rope-like, making its shape almost as wide as it is tall. Its bark is slightly furrowed. The branches are very dense making it a great shade tree. A mature black willow tree is upright, with a spreading irregular crown. Its bark is more deeply furrowed. Both willows will be 40 to 60 feet high, growing as much as eight feet per year, and requiring lots of water. They can easily dominate a spot in your yard, and it is important to keep this in mind when deciding where to plant these trees.

Dow Gardens , Dow Gardens, Bugwood.org

The milky sap of willows contains a substance called salicylic acid. In the fifth century B.C. Hippocrates, a physician who lived in ancient Greece, discovered that when willow bark was chewed it could lower fever and reduce pain. Native Americans discovered the healing properties of willow bark and used it to treat fever, arthritis, headaches, and toothaches. In some tribes, the willow was known as the toothache tree. In the late seventeenth century scientists identified and named salicylic acid. But because the acid caused the stomach to be upset it was not widely used till the late 1800’s when a synthetic version was developed that was gentler on the stomach. It was produced by a company called “Bayer”, and called “aspirin”.

Why are there not more of these trees growing in our landscapes? Both need lots of water and their shallow root system will ‘attack’ any underground water lines, utility lines, and septic tanks. For this reason, they should not be planted any closer than 100 feet from your or your neighbor’s water lines. Another reason is the amount of work required to maintain the tree. The small branches on the tree can break off in stormy conditions, and a weeping willow needs to be pruned regularly to maintain its beautiful shape.

Wildlife Value

Paul Wray, Iowa State University, Bugwood.org

Finally, we would be remiss in our overview of this beautiful species, if we didn’t mention their numerous ecosystem contributions. Insects of all types derive value from our native Salix species including over 400 species of Lepidoptera, which use the tree as a host plant. The long tube-shaped catkins are among the first to support native pollinators each spring providing much a needed source of nectar and pollen for honey bees as they emerge after long cold winters. And birds make use of the catkins and downy fibers of the seeds when making their nests. The tree foliage and twigs also support numerous grazing mammals such as beaver, rabbits, and hares. Finally, our native willows also serve as excellent soil stabilizers for eroding stream banks when planted to hold the soil in road cuts and embankments. In summary, willows make significant contributions to wildlife habitat and are a vital part of the food web for many species from the smallest microorganisms up through larger mammals. Assuming space and location requirements are met, a willow is deserving of a place in your landscape.

Information gathered from Virginia Tech Dendrology; ForestandRange.org; Thomma Lyn Grindstaff

Jan 7 2019

Wild About Ewing! Gardening for Wildlife in the Suburban Landscape

Wild About Ewing! will sponsor an introduction to the National Wildlife Federation’s Community Wildlife Habitat Project and how gardeners in Ewing are providing much needed wildlife habitat while getting credit for both themselves and their community at the Mercer County Library, Ewing Branch, 61 Scotch Road, Ewing on Monday, February 25th at 7 pm. Joanne Mullowney, Chair of the Ewing Green Team and lifetime gardener, and Glenn Steinberg, Chair of the English Department at TCNJ and long-term wildlife gardener, will introduce the National Wildlife Federation’s program, explain how to work the program to certify your garden, as well as how Ewing as a community is working the program.

Why We Need to Bring Nature Home to Our Own Backyards

Sixty percent of the world’s wildlife populations have been lost in just over the last forty years. SIXTY percent! That is the estimate from the latest Living Planet Report[1] published recently by the World Wildlife Fund. We have also personally taken note of the loss of local wildlife. Where are the boundless flocks of migrating birds that filled the autumn skies of our youth, the omnipresent lightning bugs that lit up our backyard summer evenings, the bug-splattered windshields from our driving trips, the butterflies, the bees, the bats…?

Habitat loss from suburban expansion and industrial agriculture are key. Suburban neighborhoods have exchanged healthy native habitats for vast stretches of manicured lawns which contribute little of ecological value. Industrial agriculture also plays a heavy role in unsustainable loss of habitat while also promoting synthetic chemicals and monocropping. We depend upon wildlife for critical ecosystem services and we wonder if we are destroying our planet’ s ability to support our way of life.

Joanne Mullowney states: “As a life-long gardener, my garden has always brought me a great deal of enjoyment and peace. Since I’ve started “re-wildling” my garden, I’ve realized what a sterile environment I’ve provided in the past. Gardening for wildlife has given me a truer enjoyment of the natural world and created a deeper connection to nature.”

How You Can Help

If you too are alarmed about the extent of this crisis and wonder what you can do to ensure that your children and grandchildren will be able enjoy the natural world as we did, we invite you to follow the example of members of Wild About Ewing, volunteers from Ewing’s Green Team and Environmental Commission who work to promote wider use of native plants and sustainable gardening practices, key components required to certify Ewing as a Community Wildlife Habitat recognized by the National Wildlife Federation. To become certified in the program, Ewing needs to accumulate 250 points in certified gardens from private properties, public spaces and schools. Each garden should support our native birds, insects, small mammals… by providing the essential life sustaining requirements of food, water, cover and places to raise young.

Members of Wild About Ewing are taking action for vanishing wildlife species and all Ewing property owners are encouraged to “bring nature home” on their own properties and join them in making a difference.

Wild About Ewing is conducting a public outreach campaign to property owners in Ewing to encourage them and assist them in certifying their properties. More information is available on the group’s website, http://ewingwildlifegardens.com/ and the Ewing Green Team and Environmental Commission’s Facebook pages.

[1] Living Planet Report – 2018: Aiming Higher. Grooten, M. and Almond, R.E.A.(Eds). World Wildlife Federation, Gland, Switzerland. 2018.

Dec 31 2018

Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East: a Book Review

by Glenn Steinberg

Carolyn Summers’ Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010) is an excellent book. It begins by laying out the reasons to garden with native plants (which the book insistently calls “indigenous plants”). Its reasons include providing habitat for birds, bees, and bugs, as well as making use of fantastic indigenous plants that simply don’t get enough play in the big-box nursery business. The book also discusses the jargon of the nursery business and the implications of that jargon for the gardener who wants to be ecologically responsible (such as how to know when cultivars and hybrids successfully function like native plants and when they don’t).
It spends considerable time talking about native alternatives to popular invasive species (such as Norway Maple, Bradford Pear, and Forsythia). The most interesting part of the book (to me) was a lengthy section on how to use native species in popular garden designs (including the street tree, traditional foundation plantings, a Japanese garden, and a cottage garden). Another section discusses how to mimic natural landscapes in your garden (such as woodlands, meadows, sandplain grasslands, heaths, and salt marshes). Needless to say, the book covers a lot of ground, and for that reason, my one criticism of it is that there were times when I’d have liked more depth and less breadth. But overall, it is an excellent book for anyone interested in incorporating more native plants into the garden.
Nov 21 2018

Take Action for Vanishing Wildlife: “Bring Nature Home” in Your Own Backyard

Sixty percent of the world’s wildlife populations have been lost in just over the last forty years. Sixty percent! That is the estimate from the latest Living Planet Report[1] published recently by the World Wildlife Fund. Ewing’s Environmental Commissioners and Green Team members have noted their alarm about the loss of biodiversity and vanishing wildlife in numerous published materials and posts. We have read reports that inform us that the “current massive degradation of habitat and extinction of many of the Earth’s biota is unprecedented and is taking place on a catastrophically short timescale.”[2] We have also personally taken note of the loss of local wildlife. Where are the boundless flocks of migrating birds that filled the autumn skies of our youth, the omnipresent lightning bugs that lit up our backyard summer evenings, the butterflies, the bees, the bats…?

Habitat loss is key. Suburban neighborhoods have exchanged healthy native habitats for vast stretches of manicured lawns which contribute little of ecological value. Industrial agriculture also plays a heavy role in unsustainable loss of habitat while also promoting synthetic chemicals and monocropping. We depend upon wildlife for critical ecosystem services and again, we wonder if we are destroying our planet’ s ability to support our way of life.

If you too are alarmed about the extent of this crisis and wonder what you can do to ensure that your children and grandchildren will be able enjoy the natural world as we did, we invite you to follow the example of two of Ewing’s Environmental Commissioners, both wildlife champions, who work to promote and protect wildlife habitat and diversity on their own properties. Ewing Environmental Commissioner, former chair, and avid birder Lee Farnham participates in Project FeederWatch, a citizen science program run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that counts birds and species at local feeders from November through April each year. This project helps scientists quantify the health of bird populations around the nation. And Environmental Commissioner and Green Team Chair Joanne Mullowney comes at the problem from her long-term gardening experience and now gardens for wildlife on her National Wildlife Federation certified property. They are taking action for vanishing wildlife species and we encourage you to read on to learn how you can do the same.

National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife Program

The goal of the National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife Program is to encourage all land owners to live more sustainably and harmoniously with nature on their own properties. This means changing landscape management practices to support wildlife by (1) gardening organically and eliminating the application of synthetic chemicals to the landscape, (2) removing some of your lawn to provide food, cover and shelter for wildlife thru the establishment of native plant communities, and (3) providing the water sources, however small, that wildlife needs to survive.

Lest you think that gardening for wildlife does not fit the suburban landscape ethic, we strongly disagree. A well-maintained habitat garden will not only be a refuge for our vanishing wildlife; but can be structured and beautiful. Joanne participates in the Green Team’s Annual Garden Tour and is proud to invite people to visit her gardens during the Tour each year.

If you would like to learn more about how to provide habitat in your own yard and gardening for wildlife, we have enrolled Ewing in the National Wildlife Federation’s Community Gardening for Wildlife Program. See our new website, the Ewing Community Wildlife Habitat Project, and join us to protect wildlife in Ewing. There are currently about 50 certified gardens in and about town.

Project FeederWatch

Project FeederWatch, a program for birders, is a citizen science program run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada and is a November-April survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards and common areas in North America. Participants count the birds they see at their feeders and their species on a regular schedule and send their counts to Project FeederWatch. Anyone interested in birds can participate.

This fall and winter season, Lee is once again going to pick up his binoculars to count the birds that visit his backyard feeders for project scientists. His beautiful and wonderfully wooded backyard is ideal for his avian visitors and offers plenty of shelter, cover and food (and really should be NWF certified).

Lee’s observations will be added to those of thousands of others across North America to help understand the distribution and abundance of birds that visit American feeders. This data also helps scientists to understand:

  • Changes in the winter ranges of feeder birds
  • The kinds of foods and environmental factors that attract birds
  • How disease is spread among birds that visit feeders

His data can help scientists show how climate change and decreased habitat are impacting winter bird communities.

In the coming months we will be posting the results of his weekly backyard observations. If you feed the birds in your backyard, you too can take on the role of citizen scientist while enjoying avian backyard wildlife up close this coming FeederWatch season. All you need to do is to install a feeder, count the birds that visit, and report your results to FeederWatch scientists. For more information about how you can participate go to https://feederwatch.org/about/how-to-participate/.

You may not be a birder, but there are many ways people participate in citizen science activities to help scientists around the country monitor and manage wildlife populations. From the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project, to the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program, to the annual Horseshoe Crab Count during spawning season, and the spring and fall seasonal butterfly counts for the North American Butterfly Association, there are many opportunities to do so and the contributions from citizen scientists provide data on scales previously unattainable for most research teams. We also believe that anyone can plant native plants in their yards and learn to garden more sustainably.

Join us. You will reap a truer enjoyment of the natural world and a deeper connection to nature. Do it because wildlife matters and is worth protecting.

[1] Living Planet Report – 2018: Aiming Higher. Grooten, M. and Almond, R.E.A.(Eds). World Wildlife Federation, Gland, Switzerland. 2018.
[2] The Current Biodiversity Extinction Event: Scenarios for Mitigation and Recovery. Michael J. Novacek and Elsa E. Cleland. PNAS 2001 May, 98 (10) 5466-5470.