On Saturday, June 18th, volunteers of the Greater Princeton Branch of AYLUS (GPA) were invited by Anna Corichi, Director of the Friends of Princeton Open Space, to join an educational nature walk at the beautiful Billy Johnson Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve, located in Princeton.
The conservation promoting bird walk focused on song! FOPOS Land Steward Intern Hollie Lane taught participants how to recognize the calls of common birds, including cardinals, carbirds, and wrens. The volunteers were lucky and got to hear the melodic flute-like call of the wood thrush.
Location: Mountain Lakes House | 57 Mountain Ave, Princeton.
GPA volunteers (6/18, 2 hrs): Larry Hu, Richard Da, Branden Zhou, and more.
Author: Richard Da (6/19, 3 hrs drafting the following article for AYLUS)
Subject: Bird watching
Location: Billie Johnson Mountain Lake preserve
As I stepped foot on the Mountain lake Preserve at 9 AM, I was immediately overwhelmed by the amount of extravagant noises. I could observe birds perching on the roots of a tree, or the music of calls from Nuthatches and American Robins. Whilst I listened to the music around me and stepped foot on different regions of the preserve, I documented my observations and my inferences. During the bird watching event on June 18th, I scaled the rocky park trail to perceive different clade theropoda (birds ) and also animals. I detected Cat birds, Bluejays, Woodpeckers, Vultures, American Robins, Yellow breasted finches, Brown headed cowbirds, Turtles, a Beaver lodge, a Cormorant, and Nuthatches, I was a radar in disguise. Consequently, I heard a lot of peculiar and alien noises. An example is the strange purrs from a catbird, or the repeated cherms of crickets. The tour guide, Holly, told us some unknown facts about birds, and beavers. For instance, I learned that Cat birds meow/purr to gain the attention of a potential mate, and that the Crane like birds, Cormanomants, do not have waterproof feathers like other Clade Theropoda. Due to this condition, they have to dry their feathers out after they take a swim. Another interesting thing was that I found out that nut hatches walk down a tree foot first, like a soldier
charging towards a tench. To keep it short, the Mountain Lake bird watching event was a three hour trip of beauty and discovery, observation and inference, and might I add, joy and patience. All in all, this event really helped me to notice the things around me and not just in front of me. You could say, I was a bird observing my own territory.