All hail the King (rail) of Bayonne!

Wow, was all I could say. I went to Bayonne to find a new species for my New Jersey birding list, and I was astounded by what else I found.

The New Jersey birding community has been abuzz with the sighting of a King rail near the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, a natural oasis of sorts nestled among the city's shipping terminals and oil tanks. Finding rare avian visitors in industrialized areas is no real shock for local birders - as we've found often in Hudson County, pockets of nature thrive where some would assume it to be impossible, and water quality has improved enough to host wildlife. I wasn't quite sure what I'd find there, but I was prepared for just about anything. Maps of the area showed a good-sized green area labeled "Bayonne Golf Club" on a tract of land jutting into upper New York Bay. Rather than looking into it before my trip, I just headed out, road directions in hand.

As for the King rail, it's a rarer visitor to New Jersey's marshes than the species usually seen here, the Clapper rail. Well, it's usually more "hearing" than "seeing": secretive by nature, rails generally live among the reeds and grasses of wetlands, frustrating birders by their clapping calls. (Needless to say, rails are masters at the game of Marco Polo.)  If you're going to see them at all, it's likely to be at low tide as they come out to feed on crustaceans and insects. Clappers tend toward saltwater marshes, while Kings are freshwater birds, with the two species sometimes sharing space (and cross mating) in brackish marshes. Bayonne, located on the bay where Hudson River and Atlantic Ocean waters meet and mix, is apparently geographically desirable for Kings and Clappers.

After a wrong turn that landed me in Bayonne's Marine Ocean Terminal, I found parking for the Walkway in a strip mall lot. I was barely out of my car when I saw a binocular-wearing couple coming off the path. "Here for the rail?" one asked. Just down the path a bit, alongside the long bridge, he told me, adding that other birders were still there. The usual rule was in force: when in doubt where to find a chase bird, look for the crowd.

The walkway winds along the northern edge of what's traditionally known as Constable Hook, with an inlet on one side and a reclaimed landfill on the other. This, as I discovered, was no typical capped landfill, but more on that in a moment. The wild grasses and flowers on the undulating slope put me in the mind of Scotland or Ireland, and the goldfinches perching on the thistles had to agree that someone had done a good job of making a nice habitat. I noticed a few egrets in the inlet to my left, patiently waiting for an early lunch to swim by.

The farther I walked along, the more the pieces came together. The "Bayonne Golf Club" I'd seen on the map isn't a city owned course; it's an all-out exclusive country club, modeled after the traditional links courses in Scotland. At the crest of the hill was a large, expensive-looking clubhouse with a huge American flag flying beside it. According to designer Eric Bergstol, as quoted on Golf.com, the economics of converting the landfill and doing the necessary wetlands mitigation blew the concept of a low-cost public links course out of the water, so it appears he hit for the fences. Bulldozer-sculpted hills and dales are lined by grasses, shrubs and flowers recommended by a Rutgers agronomist, all within the backdrop of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty and the container cranes of the port. As part of the deal, the developers were required to provide public access to the waterfront, hence the walkway.

The King rail had found a home in a most regal environment.

Fortunately, if a rule of finding chase birds is to find the crowd, the next rule is to look wherever you see someone aiming their optics. As I crossed the bridge on the walkway, I encountered a man with a viewing scope aimed between the railing and support struts. Maybe he had the rail? I walked up slowly, figuring not to scare it if it was there. It wasn't, but the consolation was a very cooperative Yellow-crowned night heron, plus more specific guidance on the rail's whereabouts. It wasn't much farther - maybe 100 feet.

Two birders were on the site as I arrived, waiting for the secretive rail to emerge from the grass to forage on the small patch of mud to the side of the bridge. A little farther down, where a wider mudflat held a stream, they'd seen a rail chick who was a bit less shy, and in the distance they'd noticed a Clapper rail.

Yup, that's the King rail, right in the middle.

Knowing I wouldn't be able to differentiate a King rail chick from a Clapper rail chick, I decided to wait the adult King out by the mud patch. A moment or two later, I noticed some movement in the grass, just behind the first layer of reedy grass. Looking closer, I was pretty sure it was the King (overall, they're a rustier shade than their cousins), but it was tough to tell because he was preening. I wasn't going to let that be the sum of my first-ever look at his species, so I sat down to wait, staring at that patch of grass as the occasional golf cart whirred past behind me.

It may sound crazy, but in situations like that, I like to send a mental message to the bird, letting him know it's safe and I just want to admire him. Sometimes it works; other times it rises to levels of frustration that nearly lead me to a Sheldon Cooper-type tantrum.

Are we in golf heaven? No, Bayonne.

This time it worked. Like an actor coming onstage, the rail emerged from the curtain of grass to walk to an open area where I could see him completely. Stopping, he posed with his wings raised above his back, as if to air them. Then, like a model, he walked a few more steps and turned, allowing me to see the rest of him as I committed him to memory.

Just as I was thanking the bird for being so cooperative, a golf cart stopped behind me and the King ducked back into the grass. Two course employees were wondering why so many binocular-toting people had been standing around the bridge for the past few days. Pulling out my Sibley guide to show them, I explained the significance of the rail and complimented them on the golf club's work to create a good environment for birds. It didn't occur to me until now that the rail was as much of a VIP (or VIB) as any of the club's members, and he didn't require use of the club's exclusive boat or helicopter to get to the links.

Hawks -- and others -- rise above Linden

Parks in highly-developed areas can be a bit of a roulette game from a birding perspective. Depending on the site's location and size, you could find something as profound as a pair of nesting eagles (as in Ridgefield Park's Overpeck Park, hard by I-80 and the Overpeck Creek), or as mundane as grackles (multiple places I'll not name to protect the innocent). I wasn't sure quite what we'd find when I suggested we check out the newly-opened, 95-acre Hawk Rise Sanctuary in Linden this past Saturday.

To the average person, Hawk Rise's location might not sound all that promising, stuck on the broad strip of land between Route 1 and the Turnpike, amid warehouses, a tank farm and a recently-capped city landfill. Then again, that description isn't much different from the way many people would characterize the Meadowlands, and we know how vibrantly alive with wildlife that region is. Plus, New Jersey Audubon was actively involved in developing the sanctuary with the City of Linden. I felt pretty confident that the trip would bear at least some good sightings.

The path from the parking lot leads you through woods.

Signs at the park's Range Road entrance mark out the course of a wide 1.25-mile gravel and plank trail that brings visitors through a variety of habitats. While the landfill is off limits, you can see it at the eastern edge of the preserve, covered with grasses and the occasional shrub. We began our trek through the wooded area just as police at the nearby shooting range started practice. Between that and the sound of barking from the adjacent animal shelter, it was hard to imagine that we'd soon hear the chatter of more than 30 species of birds.

That, however, is exactly what happened. The farther we walked in, the more the outside noise faded away,  replaced by the sounds of nature. By the time we made our way through the woods to the edge of the landfill (Mount Linden?) Ivan was recording names of birds he'd heard but not spotted, which I've never seen him do.

Marsh with capped landfill in the distance.

The trail straightens out once you get to the landfill, so the mound is to your left and a healthy wetland is to your right. As we walked along, we caught the song of the oft-heard-but-rarely-seen marsh wren, along with the call of the ubiquitous red-winged blackbird. A willow flycatcher stood atop one of the marsh reeds, occasionally adding his voice to the chorus.

Looking up and tracking, with binoculars to eyes, Ivan called, "Osprey!" Not unexpected, considering how close we were to water, but a nice find.

I heard something else rapidly approaching us overhead. "L-10-11," I called, checking out the recent take-off from Newark Liberty. We never quite forgot we were within ten miles of the airport, but the jet noise stayed well within acceptable limits.

The trail ends in a cul-de-sac boardwalk about twenty feet or so from the edge of the Rahway River, and while you can see houses and a little bit of industry at the far side, there's plenty of nature to observe. A killdeer picked through the mudflat a few feet ahead of us, and a snowy egret was doing some morning fishing in some shallower water farther away.

The eagle was just on the other side of the river. I swear.

The real surprise of the day was perched beyond the egret, at the far bank of the river. From the size and coloration of the bird, there was no question: it was an adult bald eagle, looking very comfortable in his (or her) environs. The majestic bird stood there patiently, giving us a nice side view and leaving only as a small motorboat approached. Even then, it didn't go for altitude, simply gliding a few feet above the water for as far as we could track it. Given that eagles tend to avoid human activity, it was kind of surprising to note that when we sighted it, the bird appeared to be just a few hundred feet away from the edge of a residential neighborhood. We hadn't heard anything about a nesting pair in the vicinity, but I guess anything's possible.

Our walk back through the woods netted us a few more species, including Baltimore oriole, indigo bunting and a heard-but-not-seen red-bellied woodpecker. Oddly, we didn't see a single Canada goose on the landfill or near the river. Could we have found the one place in Union County they haven't discovered?

Even considering all our great finds, I think I was most heartened by the potential for Hawk Rise to make so many more people aware of what's living -- and what's possible -- in our most industrial settings. Audubon will be running a series of events there, and the organization is working with Linden schools to include the sanctuary in the local science curriculum. We need more stuff like this in New Jersey.

Stuff that's not there anymore: Communipaw Cove

Go to Liberty State Park today and you’ll see the remnants of its most immediate former use. The Jersey City terminal of the Central Railroad of New Jersey stands restored against the Hudson River, its rail shed a small indication of the massive amounts of people and freight that once entered and departed the area. If you look carefully around the edges of the lawns and access roads, you’ll see another indication of previous use: the warning signs showing where nature is being allowed to remediate soil polluted by the industry that once stood there.

Aerial photographs of the area from the 1940s and 50s show a substantial number of docks where freight would be loaded onto or off ships. It was in the southernmost part of this area, at Black Tom Wharf not far from the Statue of Liberty, that an act of sabotage in 1916 helped prompt the United States to enter World War I. Move forward to the early 1970s, and this same location shows abandonment following the bankruptcy of two of the region’s largest railroads.

The area’s status as a shipping center actually began with the construction of the Morris Canal in the 1830s. Terminating at the Jersey City shore of the Hudson River, the canal brought Pennsylvania coal east and New Jersey iron west. No doubt, a fair amount of the coal ended up in New York City, as well.

The canal’s builders would have seen a much different topography than we do today. Instead of an expanse of land to the south, they’d have seen a naturally scooped-out shoreline. That was Communipaw Cove, the summer home of Native Americans before the arrival of the Dutch in the 1630s. A tidal flatlands, the area was rife with oysters, as was much of New York Harbor, making for a rather pleasant place to live.

Once the Dutch West Indies Company planted itself there, industrialization, as it was at the time, started in earnest. Settlements sprouted up in the area, including plantations powered by slave labor. Then, as now, proximity to Lower Manhattan fueled transportation: regulated ferry service was established between the island and Communipaw in 1669. Apparently Jersey City real estate was hot, even then.

But why does the cove no longer exist? Well, it comes back, in some regards, to the Morris Canal. The Lehigh Valley Railroad leased the entire thing from its developers in 1871 to gain control of the terminals at Phillipsburg and Jersey City. Founded to transport Pennsylvania coal, LVRR wanted to beef up its New Jersey capacity to get to the lucrative New York City market. The Central Railroad of New Jersey had already established a terminal at Communipaw, and LVRR’s incursion began a lengthy battle that resolved in 1887 with an agreement for both to develop a railyard at the site. That’s when the cove started getting filled in, eventually becoming a huge complex serving the New York area’s shipping needs. From there, we get to the pollution and decay largely eradicated by the development of Liberty State Park in the 1970s.

A fair amount of coastal northern New Jersey has a similar, yet less dramatic history. Naturally marshy areas were filled in and solidified as ‘progress’ marched on. We got fewer mosquitoes and more commerce, but our predecessors also erased what had been there for centuries. Liberty State Park may not be Communipaw Cove, but at least it’s a nice place for a picnic and maybe a little birding. I guess we can get some solace from that.