Last week, I found one of my new favorite campsites that you can travel to from New York City by train (actually subway to train to ferry)! In just under 3 hours I had left my apartment steps and had reached a designated wilderness area. The National Park side of Fire Island, a long linear barrier island off of Long Island, is home to the Otis Pike High Dune Wilderness. It offers 7 miles of desolate beaches and free wilderness camping! It is meant to protect the fragile native dune ecosystems that have since disappeared along with the development of the eastern shore and with the popularity of beaches.

Even if it was just for a night, camping on the beach, under the stars made me feel far far away from my urban home. If you go, just remember bug spray!

I spent the morning at marine park in south Brooklyn. Over the past few years invasive plants have been removed and native trees and grasses planted. Before this area was a park it was a landfill, specifically a glass dump. When we planted the area I clearly remember all of the glass and trash in the soil. This morning I found a young healthy coastal forest and equally as important a native understory-and honestly i was hard pressed to find the abundance of glass and trash that was there just a few years ago. This snowy egret was wading close to the wetland restoration.

It is very hard to see but on the thin branch sticking out of the water is what I think is a Kingfisher-I only got a glimpse before it flew off.

Natural sassafras  (Sassafras albidum) regenerat

I took this shot last January after one of our only snowstorms.

To celebrate earth day online I decided to post some of my favorite New York City nature pictures from this spring.

Above is Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) a native wetland plant that has a foul namesake odor I found growing in Staten Island. The odor attracts pollinators but discourages larger mammals.

One of the most abundant and well studied birds of North America, the Red Winged Blackbird ( Agelaius phoeniceus). 

Above is a discarded Oyster shell in Conference House Park which was historically a popular oyster farming location, it was so popular it was the boroughs most important industry from 1880-1905 and the evidence remains scattered  above and buried just under the surface of the soil.

This Eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) was likely planted considering the location I snapped this photo-but is one of my favorite trees mostly because of the heart shaped leaf and tree architurture as well as reminding me of western riparian areas I studied for so long and it’s close relative Fremont Cottonwood-my all time favorite tree.

Even in New York City there is an abundance of diversity and nature and we need to work together to protect and celebrate it! Happy Earth Day!!

Conference House Park is the southern most tip of New York City (and also New York State). This is a stand of native Sumac (Rhus spp.) along the Arthur Kill tidal strait and the Atlantic Ocean.

I saw this little guy resting in a stand of invasive phragmites and elderberry on a walk around a former staten island landfill last week.

I love finding trillium’s in the spring. They are a sign of a healthy forest-I saw this great white trillium in the woodlands in Wave Hill nature center in the Bronx.

I went to the taping of “Science Friday” under the great blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History.

The taping of Science Friday under the whale

What is amazing is that because of the chaos of New York Cities landscape there is actually creates a more diverse ecosystem then a more uniform suburban landscape.  From marine life, coyotes, plants, salamanders and soil microorganisms New York City’s got ‘em! Listen to the full taping to hear Mayor Bloomberg and some of the experts speak on this topic.

What can you find in between a MTA subway yard and the Van Wyck Expressway? A nature preserve! Willow Lake Nature Preserve is a 106 acre nature preserve owned by the parks department and is deemed a “forever wild” site. I found myself on a tour of the area this week and what struck me the most was that amidst the traffic and surrounding apartment sky rises and Queens tudor homes was a transforming landscape. Willow lake was carved out glacially and one of the largest freshwater sources in the city. It has been owned by the city since the 1930s but has been subjected to a fair amount of human abuse including a sewage spill and concrete dumping. Recent managment has led to the planting of 13,000 trees and over 5,000 shrubs and 50,000 herbaceous plants.

It is one of the best places for birds to take a break from the cityscape. When I was there I even saw one of my favorite birds, a killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) resting on its’ nest.

Here is a list of the sighted bird species at the preserve: Northern shovelers (Anas clypeata), yellow warblers (Dendroica petechia), black-throated green warblers (Dendroica virens), savannah sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis), rough-winged swallows (Stelgidopteryx serripennis), yellow-shafted flickers (Colaptes auratu), white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys), swamp sparrows (Melospiza georgiana), eastern meadowlarks (Sturnella magna), water pipits (Anthus rubescens), marsh wrens (Cistothorus palustris), red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus), great egret (Ardea albus), mallards (Anas platyrhnchos), and ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus colchicus).

In and around the lake one can also spot the eastern painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus), carp (Cyprinus carpio), and killfish (Fundulus spp.).