Spring Migrants and Death to Invasives!

I'm sure you were wondering when songbirds and raptors would return to the Garden State...I sure was!

Now that March is coming to a close, more and more spring migrants will be making their way up north. American Robins have already begun their chip-chip-cherio at dawn and the abrasive cackle of the grackle has assuradly bombarded your eardrums. One of my favorite spring birds, the song sparrow, has also returned with its biz-buzzy-nonsense.

Something tells me I will be talking a LOT about birds as spring progresses...just a disclaimer!

Aside from all of the returning avians (complete audubon list here), this frigid winter potentially gave way to the death of a few invasive insect species! Insects like the pine beetle and the hemlock woolly adelgid (say that five times fast) are not huge fans of the extreme cold.

While bugs like these "are uncannily adept at surviving the winter", they do have a breaking point (as the New York Times put it). Once temeperatures plummeted into the negative region of the thermometer, these critters were most likley killed off as they are not meant for such harsh conditions. Sayonara suckers!

Bottom line? Looks like the time is nigh to head out with your birdoculars into the dis-insected woods! BIRDERS UNITE!