Fyke Citizen Science Participation
Hour on the Tower
Every Sunday 8:00 AM at the Celery Farm Pirie-Mayhood Tower platform
as announced by Jim Wright in his April 9, 2009 Celery Farm blog post
The weekly "Hour on the Tower" has begun anew. The idea is to see how many birds you can see as a group in an hour at the Celery Farm from the Pirie Platform. Everyone is invited to join us on Pirie.
The tradition began a decade or so ago when Marsh Warden Stiles Thomas and crack birder Gordon Schultze met on Sunday mornings at the Warden's Watch to see how many bird species they could see in an hour. Recently, photographers have taken over the Warden's Watch on weekend mornings, and The Hour on the Tower was moved to Pirie.
Join us. It's a good way to improve your birding skills and catch up on CF news.
Update July 2021
Darlene Lembo kept the species list for about 10 years and also created a spreadsheet from the lists. You can get the spreadsheet here.
As she remembers, "Originally the HOTT was held on the Warden’s Watch and only during fall migration, starting July and ending with the Big Sit in October. At some point we continued until the lake froze, usually mid-December and started up again in the spring when the lake was open."
Charlie West dutifully recorded the observed species list from 2016 through 2023, taking over from Darlene Lembo. A list of all the birds seen during his tenure is available here.
Julie McCall is the current scribe. You can receive her weekly reports replete with entertaining comments about the weather by subscribing to the Fyke email list as a member. A list of the first-of-year sightings at the Celery Farm can be found here.
Celery Farm Sightings
Baseline Data from 1998 to 2008
Rob Fanning compiled Celery Farm data for the first-of-year sightings and species lists for the period beginning in 1998 and ending June 20, 2008. Thanks to his work, we can now compare current sightings with historical records. You can view the data here and get the spreadsheet here.
eBird Data for the Celery Farm
All the observations for many years up to the present that have been uploaded to the Cornell Ornithology eBird Database can be found here.
Mount Peter Hawk Watch
September 1 to November 15 with data recorded at Hawkcount.org
Get under the Atlantic Flyway this fall and witness the southbound spectacle of raptors and songbirds. Mount Peter has reserved a spot just for you with views of the Warwick Valley clear out to the Kittatinny Mountains and access to the best homemade ice cream in the Northeast. Best times: mid-September for Broad-wings, Osprey and Bald Eagles; or mid- October – November for Red-tails and Red-shoulders and, with luck, a Golden Eagle. The watch is located above the Creamery at the top of 17A between Greenwood Lake and Warwick, NY.
What do University of Oxford, the University of Mexico, Hawkwatch International, and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary have in common? They have all requested Mount Peter data for research projects in 2018. Why Mount Peter? Because our lookout has accumulated fall data on raptor migration since 1958, entered it all into Hawkcount.org, and can provide researchers with decades of data to analyze. Since 2005, Fyke has been sponsoring the Mount Peter count and enabling the hawk watch to continue collecting valuable data about our raptor populations and their migration patterns. We are grateful for Fyke's support and our ability to provide data to the research projects listed below: (To view the research projects, click here.)
Stiles Thomas, one of the founders of the Fyke Nature Association in 1952, spent many years campaigning to save the Celery Farm from development. His dream came true in 1980 when the town of Allendale purchased the 80-acre marsh with Green Acre funding and help from the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. The preserve has since been increased to over 100 acres. Stiles also founded the Mount Peter Hawk Watch in Warwick, NY in 1958 and the Hook Mountain Hawk Watch in Nyack, NY in 1971. For his efforts promoting hawk watching, Stiles was awarded the Maurice Broun Award by the Hawk Migration Association of North America in 2014. You can read With An Eye On Raptors that tells the hawk watching story of Stiles here. Photos courtesy of Jim Wright.