Fall Color Along the Old Dune Trail

Peak fall color always arrives around Lower New York Bay approximately between the last week of October or the first week of November. Yet, you wouldn't know it this year. 

This has been a strange autumn indeed. I've seen less color. Many trees are still green while others are completely bare already. It appears that a combination of an over-saturated September, a snowy October, higher ambient air temperatures in the summer, several wind storms that shredded the leaves right off the trees, and, of course, increasing weather extremes caused by global climate change have robbed us of some of the beauty of our fall foliage. The loss is sad. Peak fall color usually acts as a strikingly multi-colored finale to a well-orchestrated light show. 

Nevertheless, on Halloween day, I decided to walk the Old Dune Trail that wraps around the maritime forest at Sandy Hook. This trail is usually not my first choice to witness bright and vivid fall color, but with the lackluster look of autumn inland, perhaps the bay edge forest would offer some intensity, albeit in a subtle way. 

Sure enough, not far along the trail, I found color here like secreted precious gems. The Winged Sumacs were crimson, the Black Cherries were turning yellow with a hint of red, the Red Maples were ablaze, and the Sea Myrtles were bearing eye-catching clusters of slender long white flowers. Even the leaves of three from Poison Ivy plants were blending their bright red hue into the landscape. Very quickly on the walk my eyes were becoming filled with coastal fall color. Who would have thought it!

All the more interesting is how these plants survive so close to the bay or ocean. This is a tough place for plants to grow. The sandy soils and intense seaside weather  prevents many inland trees and shrubs from becoming established near the coast. Sand does a poor job of holding onto water, and the surface of the sand during the summer can get hotter than 100 degrees during the day and extremely cold in the winter. 

In spite of this, the coastal plants here have learned to adapt and modify their ways to endure the salt spray, constant high winds, and desert-like soils of Sandy Hook. The trees are not tall. You will not find trees much taller than 20 feet or so. Yet, they have tailored their growth to fit the landscape. They mature with less nutrients and grow up slower and shorter. The plants  also have long taproots that can reach water tables deep below the surface. The plants and shrubs found in the maritime forest are perfectly fine In a world of ever-changing weather conditions. 

Although the glow of gleaming fall color was casual and unpredictable, no doubt the rich color I found along the Old Dune Trail this season looked like gems of the lowlands!

Time to get out and enjoy what leaf color can be found this year before it is all gone!

Golden-Crowned Kinglets at Sandy Hook

In the wake of a nasty nor'easter that dumped piles of wet, heavy snow in much of the Lower New York Bay watershed region, the morning sky cleared to a crisp breezy day. For many folks in the upper reaches of the watershed, though, it was the first significant snowfall and it wasn't even Halloween yet! 

A Golden-Crowned Kinglet recently seen at Sandy Hook

In a stiff north wind, I was walking near Fort Hancock at Sandy Hook close to a grove of mature cedar trees. I could hear some high-pitched trills. Not sure, but looking around with my binoculars, I expected to see a flock of Cedar Waxwings. Instead, much to my surprise, I spotted one of the tiniest birds in the world. At only around 4 inches in height, it was a Golden-Crowned Kinglet. My first sight of a kinglet this season! 

There must have been between eight to ten kinglets. No doubt enjoying a refuge from the wind. Kinglets are insect eaters, so it was also likely that the attraction of insects led to their intense activity here. 

Instead of foraging in trees, however, as many Golden-crowned Kinglets do, several  birds were foraging on the ground for tiny insects. Most likely small beetles and spiders. The little kinglets made the grassland and tree tops come alive on a cold autumn day. They were fast and fluttering.

Males have a little dash of red in their crown

Golden Crowned Kinglets are hardy birds despite their petite size. The birds are well-known for their ability to survive in very cold climates in Maine and Canada.

Certainly the recent hard, cold weather around Lower New York Bay has made these kinglets feel right at home.

A Screamer! A Halloween Weekend Nor'easter

There was no tranquility this morning. Higher than normal tides, heavy rain, and powerful north winds had billows of sea foam the size of cannonballs scooting across an eroding beach along Sandy Hook Bay. The only birds in sight were ring-billed and great black-backed gulls. 

The Weather Channel

A nor'easter is set to dump heavy, wet snow on millions of people in the Northeast.  High winds perhaps as gusty as 50 mph will pound the coast with strong surf, and considerable rainfall will wreak havoc along the coast.

While far from the worst nor'easter ever, this screamer of storm will knock out power, down trees and cause damage in New England, New York, New Jersey, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. No doubt it will leave Lower New York Bay rowdy, restless, and roily. Yet another intense, historic, and extreme weather event.

http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/weekend-storm-wet-snow_2011-10-26 

Song Bird Day at the Maritime Forest

It was songbird day in the maritime forest at Sandy Hook. It was sunny with brisk winds and temperatures in the low 50s. Sparrows, thrushes, robins, catbirds, kinglets, mockingbirds, juncos, and yellow-rumps were active all day long. 

A Gray Catbird

With a coastal nor'easter heading our way for tomorrow, huge flocks of songbirds filled the trees and shrubs along bay edge forest today.  There must have been hundreds, if not thousands. The air was filled with their sweet songs.

A Wood Thrush

This is what I believe some professional birds call a "fallout." This is when a large flock of migrating birds ride strong winds and drop out or "fallout" of the sky by the thousands to rest and feed before continuing on the next part of their journey. Perhaps these birds were being carried on strong northwest winds for the past few days. Tired and hungry, the birds ate and ate and ate, occasionally not even acknowledging my company. 

A Yellow-rumped Warbler

They certainly picked a good place to feed. There were plenty of seeds and berries to gorge on, including groundsel tree and goldenrod seeds, and berries from sumacs, bittersweet and bayberry. Of course there were plenty of poison ivy berries too. 

The birds would feed and fly. They would flutter around near a plant and clutch on near its food source to pick away and feast on the plant's goodies, sometimes even hanging upside down to pry out the seeds. You would think these birds would be dizzy from all that flying and feasting.

The birds might stay for a day or several days before flying off. I don't know, it's possible the birds may well have stopped here to wait out the impending nor'easter.

King Tide in Keyport, NJ

Broadway in Keyport during High tide at 8:30am

Broadway the day before

The harbor parking lot in Keyport during high tide around 8:30am

Harbor parking lot the day before

Thanks to Mike F. who works in Keyport, a small coastal community located along Raritan Bay and across from Staten Island, NY, for providing these disturbing photos of what the future may present from sea level rise due to global warming.

High tide or neap tide was around 8:30am on Thursday, October 20, 2011.Sunny photos were taken the day before.

A Sky-High Tide, This Time Fleeting, but Perhaps a Glimpse of Torrents to Come

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/nyregion/king-tide-to-raise-sea-level-on-atlantic-coast.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion

By JIM DWYER
Published: October 25, 2011
NEW YORK TIMES

From his window in Broad Channel, Queens, Dan Mundy sees the tides of Jamaica Bay swing from high to low, the pendulum of a celestial clock. “Right now, 10 after 1 in the afternoon, it is 25 minutes from dead-low tide,” he said on Tuesday. “It’s much lower now than it would usually be. The mud flats are bigger.” 

When it comes to tides, what goes down will come up. By Thursday morning, Mr. Mundy expects, he will see tides two feet above the normal high level — if strong winds do not push them to greater heights.
A king tide will be running Wednesday and Thursday because gravitational forces of the sun, the moon and the earth will be lined up in a cue shot of fleeting geometry and rare power. It will raise the water level between one and two feet above normal high tides for many areas on the Atlantic coast. It’s an entirely natural phenomenon. This year, a network of scientists is asking members of the public to take pictures of the tides at their peak, and then again in a week, at their ordinary heights.

An extreme tide can give a telescopic view of a future with rising seas, when tides might routinely reach levels that they now get to only twice a year, said Kate Boicourt, an ecologist with the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program.

“What we’re seeing Wednesday and Thursday is probably what we normally will be seeing by 2080,” Ms. Boicourt said.

In Brooklyn, water from the East River will cover the steps at the base of the Manhattan Bridge. Across the river, the new pedestrian esplanade along the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive is likely to get splashed.
Ms. Boicourt said photographs could be e-mailed to her at habitat@harborestuary.org. Other groups will be collecting pictures of the king tides in Barnegat and Delaware Bays, she said, and photographs are being sought by the Peconic Estuary Organization and the Long Island Sound Study.

Mr. Mundy, a retired firefighter who lives on the only inhabited island in Jamaica Bay, said that it would be easier for him to use the mud flats to see the difference between the normal and king tides, because much of the bay is no more than a foot or two deep. An extreme low tide has an equal and opposite extreme high tide.

“The waves at the piers on Battery Park would be a good reference point for the extreme high tide,” Mr. Mundy said. High tide at the Battery on Thursday will be 8:51 a.m., and the charts predict it will reach 6.3 feet, or about 18 inches higher than last Thursday. If a weather front brings in a storm, winds could drive it higher. The times of high tides for many areas are available at saltwatertides.com and other Web sites.
For the constellation of islands that make up New York City, a rising sea level is not a minor issue: conservative projections call for a 7-to-12-inch increase by 2050, and a panel convened by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in 2009 that if rapid ice melting took place, the rise could be 41 to 55 inches by 2080. (There is virtual unanimity among climate scientists that global temperatures have risen and will climb for the rest of the century, but the rate at which glaciers will melt is unsettled.)
“Five years ago, I was of the opinion that I didn’t see a rising sea level,” said Mr. Mundy, the president of Jamaica Bay Ecowatchers, a civic organization. “I have lived on the water my whole life. I’m 73. My attitude is, show it to me.

“More recently, I’m beginning to come around. Either this island I’m on is sinking, or the sea level is rising. Probably both.”
In fact, the sea level in New York has been rising about an inch per decade over the past 100 years, due to natural geologic processes, said Adam Freed, an official in the mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. The increases forecast for the rest of the century take into account expected changes in climate.

“It’s not just two feet of water — it’s when you start to see the compounded impacts of higher sea levels with storms,” Mr. Freed said: the flooding from a tropical storm like Irene, which shut down subway service, would cover even more of the city.

Don Riepe, another Broad Channel resident, said that he was accustomed to hoisting furniture onto crates when bad weather came along, but that the storms seemed to be getting harder. Many global projections say bad storms will continue. “The northeasters are the worst for us,” said Mr. Riepe, who runs the Jamaica Bay Guardian program. “I’m concerned with the increasing intensity of the storms. It’s good to pay attention now.”

KING TIDE IS COMING NEXT WEEK!

There are spring tides and neap tides, but who knew a tide could also be a king?

Get out your camera. It is time to take pictures of the upcoming king tide next week. It will be one of the highest tides of the year! 

A king tide is an especially high tide that occurs when the gravitational pull of the sun and moon reinforce one another. This extra-high tide happens twice a year at the times when the moon is closest to the earth.  The next king tide in the New York - New Jersey area will occur on October 26 & 27, 2011.

As part of an effort across the country to raise awareness about sea level rise, the NY-NJ HarborEstuary will be coordinating photo documentation of the King Tide. The King is not caused by sea level rise, but gives us an idea of what average high tide levels are likely to be in 20-30 years.

The New York -NewJersey Harbor Estuary Program (HEP) is documenting the king tide by collecting photos of the king tide water levels in the bay.   Anyone can help with this project by submitting their photos to the HEP.  The photos will be used to help policymakers and planners identify coastal areas vulnerable to tidal flooding, visualize projected impacts from rising sea level.

We need your help to make sure all corners of the estuary are represented!

Area residents will get a preview of the effects of sea level rise on coastal areas during the October king tide. According to scientists' predictions of sea level rise, the king tides of today may be the average tide levels of the future.  New Jersey has one of the highest rates of sea level rise in the continental United States. Recent studies project that global sea level will increase by up to three to five feet by 2100. These new projections, combined with observed trends, suggest that the king tide water levels may become average high water levels by the 2030s, 40s, or 50s.

For more information about how to participate, please contact Kate at habitat@harborestuary.org or check out this website: http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1104274495059-97/King+Tide+Instructions_October_2011.pdf

Ideally, you should take photos on either October 19 or 20 as well for comparison.

 Submit your photos, along with the time, date, photographer name, and a caption to habitat@harborestuary.org by November 4th Selected photographs will be posted to the NY-NJ HEP website in early December, and may be sent on to our National Estuary Program Office.

Good Luck and have a Happy king tide day!