Happy 4th!!

After a night of locally heavy showers and thunderstorms, Cape May Point is looking just slightly less like a desert than it had been rapidly becoming. The lack of rain here for some weeks has left many areas looking decidedly parched, with the fields at Higbee's Beach in particular really suffering. The Buckwheat sown to provide food for birds in the fall is looking very sorry for itself, but hopefully will recover to produce a bumper crop of bird food. If there's one benefit from a dry summer, it's that the plants often produce copious amounts of fruit to compensate for the fact that they might not make it through - and there is certainly a bumper crop of blackberries and raspberries in the hedgerows at the moment.

Today's highlight was a Black-bellied Whistling-duck, found by a visitor to the Northwood Center as it fed with Mallards near the island on Lake Lily. It stayed to the end of the day so could be a nice bonus bird for anyone birding Cape May Point on July 4th.[Photo by Mike Crewe]

The local townships share out the fireworks displays over the weekend so we get rather spoiled at Cape May! Wildwood on Saturday, Lower Township on Sunday and Cape May on Monday. We enjoyed Lower's July 4th celebrations from our own back yard, accompanied by a Chuck-will's-widow and quarrelsome Opossum - Happy 4th of July everyone! [Photos by Mike Crewe]