Grassland Birding at The Pole Farm

On Tuesday, May 19th, 2020, I arrived at the Pole Farm within the Mercer Meadows near Princeton, NJ at 6:43 am. It was a nice partly sunny morning with temperatures in the high 50s and low 60s. Since the mission of the day was grassland birds, I was happy to hear an Eastern Meadowlark as soon as I stepped out of my car! I continued to walk the trails until 12:18 pm and managed to find 56 species! I began by walking on a path straight through a large field and was surprised by a Ring-necked Pheasant crossing the path in front of me. While this area was quite productive, it was part of a prescribed burn at some point after January of 2020, and I'm wondering if that could be the reason as to why I didn't see Grasshopper Sparrows in the spot that I usually get them. However, the burn definitely didn't seem to affect the Field Sparrows negatively, as they were in large numbers through these fields. Eventually this trail led into a patch of deciduous forest with a few big groves of Eastern Red Cedars. Here I picked up more woodland songirds. I then took another trail which followed the perimeter of the meadows and exposed me to more grassland, woodland, and a few scrub patches where I heard Blue-winged Warbler and saw multiple Indigo Buntings. Unfortunately there was a lot of construction going on which made hearing some birds difficult, but I was glad to see that they were only working on trail maintainance and not developing a part of the grassland. Additionally, the wind picked up greatly in the second half of the morning which I suspect kept many birds down low and hidden in the grasses rather than perched up where I could see them.

Posted on May 19, 2020 08:21 PM by phil_stoll