When you add garden accents of birdfeeders and birdbaths — and many types of organic flowers and plants – to your property, you invite New Jersey’s birds to bring their spectacular colors and pleasing songs to you. It’s a gift both you to and to the birds, since you’re joining our Morris County community’s circle of birdwatchers help our NJ native avian species make it through the winter. It’s a cold one out there this winter, and birds need a reliable food source. When they find it at your property, they reward you with their beauty.
I personally love it when cardinals and red-headed woodpeckers brighten my view on these dark winter days, and their ability to mingle with other birds, taking turns on the feeding ledge, is quite impressive. The birds get along better, and are more polite, than some people we know!
No matter where you live in New Jersey, from our local Chatham neighborhood to nearby Morristown, Madison, Florham Park and East Hanover to southern points like Princeton, Short Hills and more, you’re treated to New Jersey’s resident birds. I wanted to know more about what I was seeing, so I looked up on Wikipedia a list of birds native to New Jersey. Did you know that we’re home to two tropicbirds, usually native to tropical islands? Or that we’re home to 41 different species of warblers? 24 species of sparrows?
With these FYIs in hand, I’m even more excited whenever doves land on my birdfeeder or garden accent birdbath, since I now know more about them. Specifically, New Jersey is home to 7 different species of doves, most of which I’ve hosted on my front lawn! In addition to the mourning dove and common ground-dove you’ve seen a million times, we’re home to the Eurasian Collared Dove and the White-winged Dove.
Like so many of my Morristown neighbors, I’m not a fan of woodpeckers pecking on my house, but I am a fan of the ‘you live in the most beautiful place in the world’ sound as they peck on the trees in our nearby woods. Fascinatingly, we have 10 New Jersey species of woodpeckers, including the red-headed woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, the downy woodpecker, the red-cockaded woodpecker, the black-backed woodpecker, the American three-toed woodpecker [I’m dying to see this one!], the pileated woodpecker, and one that always reminds me of my childhood in East Hanover, a bird name that struck my child self as silly: the yellow-bellied sapsucker. For a long time, I thought that was a made-up name from a cartoon, but it’s a real bird native to New Jersey. And if I ever see one, it’ll make my day.
