Rechnitz Pine Barrens Preserve 7/13

Eastern Towhee

In John McPhee's wonderful classic, The Pine Barrens, he says that one of the great misconceptions about the area is that no birds live here because there's nothing for them to eat. He then goes on to list a half page of birds that breed in the Pine Barrens (some, alas, like Henslow's Sparrow and Alder Flycatcher, no longer) and ends the section with the sentence, "The most common bird in the Pine Barrens is the towhee."

I first read this book in college and have reread it a number of times; the last time I read the book we had moved here and I had birded extensively and I knew that the towhee was no longer the most common bird, if it ever really was. The Carolina Chickadee is, in my opinion and experience, the bird you'll run into most frequently in the Pine Barrens. For one thing, in winter towhees are scarce, while chickadees are abundant, especially at feeders. We don't really start seeing towhees until the spring when there is always at least one nesting pair in the woods just behind the house.

I was thinking of all this today while walking through the newly-opened Rechnitz Pine Barrens Preserve off North Branch Road in Pemberton. 811 acres of preserved land, bought from a family which acquired the property in 1956 in anticipation of a Pine Barrens development boom that never came. Today, at least, in the Rechnitz Preserve, the most common bird was the Eastern Towhee. I listed 20 and that was just a fair guess. They were "chwinking" almost every step of the 1.3 mile trail that I walked. I saw one chickadee.

It's mid-summer, so I really wasn't expecting many species (I wound up with 12); I was more interested in exploring the habitat to see where, when conditions are right, I might look for birds. While Mount Misery Brook runs along the southern end of the property, there's no way to access it that I could see, but, perhaps in the autumn or early spring, when everything isn't leafed out and overgrown, there may be a way.

Supposedly this is good habitat for Red-headed Woodpecker but I have to say that I didn't notice a lot of dead trees that they like to hammer away at. I was hoping for Summer Tanager too. They're probably around but a lot harder to find when not singing.

And a Pine Barrens factoid: The place name Mount Misery derives from it original name which was Mount Misericordia--Latin for "mercy." "Misericordia" is way too long a name to say comfortably, so in a folk transformation, "mercy" become "misery."

Map of Rechnitz Preserve

Mourning Dove 1
Eastern Wood-Pewee 1 Heard
Great Crested Flycatcher 2
Carolina Chickadee 1
White-breasted Nuthatch 2 Heard
Eastern Bluebird 4
Common Yellowthroat 2
Pine Warbler 1
Chipping Sparrow 1
Eastern Towhee 20
House Finch 6
American Goldfinch 2 Heard