The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Visitors Center, Queens, NY

After enjoying a boat tour of Jamaica Bay in New York City, my husband and I were excited to visit the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Visitor Contact Center, which is part of Gateway National Recreation Area.  It is located in Broad Channel, Queens, and is the only wildlife refuge in the national park system.

( all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them once and then again when they open on a new page)

The entire Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is one of the most important urban wildlife refuges in the United States. Encompassing 9,155 acres, it is comprised of diverse habitats, including salt marsh, upland field and woods, several fresh and brackish water ponds and an open expanse of bay and islands. They are all located within the limits of New York City. The Wildlife Refuge is renowned as a prime birding spot where thousands of water, land and shorebirds stop during migration. More than 325 species have been recorded here during the last 25 years.

On the day we visited the visitors center there was a scheduled tour given by Park Ranger Dandelion (her real first name) to view Osprey that were nesting in the refuge. Ranger Dandelion was showing us the bird log box in this photo where visitors can record the species of birds they observed on their visit.

As you can see by the heavy grey skies hanging over the refuge trail, rain was threatening, but we were lucky and it never appeared.

"One of Jamaica Bay's biggest success stories is that of the osprey. On the verge of extinction in the 1970s due to DDT pollution, the osprey population has been increasing thanks to the efforts of the National Park Service and other agencies that work in the bay. Visitors can often spot these birds at their nests on one of the specially built platforms in the refuge." source

The ranger told us the Osprey chicks were close to "fledging," which means learning how to fly and leave the nest.

The Osprey is a large raptor, reaching 60 centimetres (24 in) in length, and its diet consists almost exclusively of fish.

As we were viewing the Osprey an Egret flew over our heads!

One of my favorite photos of our visit was this shot of the bucolic pond with the towers of Manhattan about 12 miles away in the background. There were many Canadian Geese and other shore birds in view.

According to this web site "the refuge is also home to an impressive array of native reptiles, amphibians, small mammals, over 60 species of butterflies and one of the largest populations of horseshoe crabs in the northeast."  The ranger told us that the orange flags mark the location of the eggs of the terrapin turtle.  There was some concern because raccoons were digging them up and eating them and the rangers were trying different methods to protect the eggs.  If you enlarge the photo you can see some of the egg nests were protected by a wire mesh cage.

Egrets in a marsh alongside the trail. Enlarge this photo to view their long spindly legs.

Can you see the Egret flying by in this distant Manhattan skyline photo?

We saw many wildflowers, wild berries and milkweed along the trail and some of this, "Leaves of three - let it be."

 Poison Ivy! So please remember the Jamaica Bay Wildlife refuge is truly a wild environment in New York City!

I'm adding this post to "Outdoor Wednesday" on Susan's blog A Southern Daydreamer. Please visit Susan today to see her outdoor post and links to many blogs that are participating today.

The Unexpected Wilds of New York City

Did you know that a portion of New York City contains a National Park Recreation Center?

 The Gateway National Recreation Center is located in sections of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and New Jersey in areas that are shaded in green in the map below. (All photos will enlarge when double clicked on)

 

map source

The National Park's website states:  "Gateway covers more than 40 square miles in New York and New Jersey. That’s an area nearly twice the size of the island of Manhattan. The park attracts over 9 million visitors a year—making it the third most visited National Park in America  The woods, waters and beaches at Gateway are the perfect place for ocean swimming, nature walks, sailing, bicycling, bird watching, camping, astronomy and fishing. In the middle of these natural areas, you can stroll through an historic aircraft hangar or tour forts that reveal important stories in our nation’s history."

In Brooklyn, Floyd Bennett Field is part of Gateway.  This historic airfield opened in 1931 as New York's first municipal airport and was named for naval aviator and Brooklyn resident Floyd Bennett, who was the first person to fly over the North Pole. In the early days of aviation it was a point of departure for record-breaking flights of famous aviators, including Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes.

After serving as the city's municipal airport, Floyd Bennett Field was converted to a Naval Air Station in 1941. It was the most active airport in the United States during World War II, and it has an important place in the history of military aviation. In 1971, the U.S. Navy deactivated the Field. Soon thereafter, the National Park Service made the location part of Gateway National Recreation Area. .

The historic control tower and terminal at Floyd Bennett Field had been converted into the site's visitor's center and is now undergoing extensive renovation.  Volunteers are working on the park's collection of historic aircraft in Hanger B for future display. If you'd like to learn more about the history of Floyd Bennett Field as a municipal airport you can read a National Park's Service brochure on PDF at this link, and for a PDF on its history as a Naval airport click on this link.

One of the special places I like to visit in Gateway are the community gardens. The gardens at Floyd Bennett Field are probably the city’s largest, and currently hold more than 400 garden plots. The community gardens program offers a picnic area, a "Champions of Courage Garden" with wheelchair access, and a "Children’s Garden."

Garden plots are available to residents of all the boroughs of New York City through an application, although there is a long waiting list for new members at present.

Most of the community plots are well maintained and neatly gardened.

One of my favorite garden plots was the one in this photo collage. This gardener obviously spent a lot of time making brick pathways along their neat vegetable beds and they even made a shady nook for their picnic table.

Some more scenes from the community garden.

I liked the varied and creative ways each gardener enclosed his plot. One of the gates (top middle in the photo collage) was a recycled wooden side of a baby's crib!

I took a hike this weekend on one of the Gateway park paths that leads to Dead Horse Bay.

 

Why is the area called such a grusome name? According to the New York Times, "From the 1850's until the 1930's, the carcasses of dead horses and other animals from New York City streets were used to manufacture glue, fertilizer and other products at the site. The chopped-up, boiled bones were later dumped into the water. The squalid bay, then accessible only by boat, was reviled for the putrid fumes that hung overhead.

The number of horse carcasses in Dead Horse Bay dwindled as the automobile grew in popularity, and by the 1920's only one rendering plant remained. Sand, coal and garbage were used as landfill to connect Barren Island to the Brooklyn mainland in the 1920's, and the Barren Island Airport, later renamed Floyd Bennett Field."

The bay now looks reclaimed by nature, except when you begin to walk along the shore where you'll see hundreds of old bottles washed to shore, some that are over a hundred years old, from the city garbage that was once dumped here and from the garbage used as part of the landfill to fill in the marshlands and islands to form Floyd Bennett Field.

It is a sobering reminder of the permanent impact garbage makes on the environment, and I'm happy that New York City now recycles glass, plastics and paper.  Scavengers, collectors and the curious often visit Dead Horse Bay at low tide looking for antique and rare bottles.

Another sight often seen on the beaches around Gateway are the very unusual looking horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus).  As a species, horseshoe crabs are estimated to be at least 300 million years old. They are most closely related to trilobites that existed 544 million years ago. Horseshoe crabs are often called "Living Fossils" for this reason.

This is another wild protected beach of Gateway National Recreation Area on the Rockaway inlet. The Marine Park - Gild Hodges Memorial Bridge connects Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn with Fort Tilden in the Rockaways in the borough of Queens. Both areas, along with Jacob Riis Park on the Rockaway Peninsula, are now part of the Gateway National Recreation Area. This bridge is a popular route for NYC bike clubs and other cyclists to get to the Rockaway beaches in the summer.

I hope you enjoyed seeing a little of the little known wild areas that exist around New York City.

Today we will be having heat and humidity in NYC that will climb into 100 degrees!  I'll be trying to stay cool and hope the power grid will keep working in our community and all of NYC. It's always a challenge to keep all the air conditioners going in such a large, populated city.

I'm linking this post to Diane's " Second Time Around" event on her blog A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words, and  Susan's "Outdoor Wednesday" on her blog A Southern Daydreamer. Please visit Susan tomorrow to see many blog links with wonderful outdoor posts