Birding friend Nancy and I arrived at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm nearly simultaneously this morning, and we had a feast-famine-feast kind of day.
As we worked our way up from the Cold Soil Road parking lot, we spotted a few palm warblers chasing each other about.
That was a great start, but our walk up the central trail surprisingly turned up nothing more. As we made our way into the woods, we turned right to the AT&T Building One site and looked up hopefully into the wall of trees well lit by the sun.
Things started happening quickly. Yellow birds were darting here and there, and I fixed my binoculars on one of them, not immediately able to make the ID. The birds kept flying, and Nancy and I laughed as we tried — mostly in vain — to get a focus fix on them.
Both of us kept shooting, hoping that we’d get at least a few sharp shots. We decided to move along, and then encountered our friend Jim coming up the trail. Jim looked at one of my photos and decided on black-throated green warbler for the ID.
Jim also surmised that another bird I shot was a Philadelphia vireo, which I’d confirm in bringing the images up on screen at home.
On the way back to our cars, we didn’t spot the Savannah sparrows that Jim had seen on the way up the trail. But we did see a song sparrow set amid some of the changing leaves just off the trail.
Considering that the day before I shot just one bird individually, I was thrilled to be able to shoot a couple of warblers and the Philadelphia vireo while walking the trails with two good birding friends.
That’s the best kind of birding day. 🦅
A good day indeed!
I have to ask, what is the Pole farm? 👍
It’s a park at what to used to be the antenna field through which AT&T routed outgoing international telephone calls via radio signal transmission.
The site was studded with 30-foot tall wooden poles over which the antennas were draped. As a result, the site was waggishly called “pole farm.”
The site was active from the 1920s until the 70s, dying off once trans-Atlantic cables carried most calls.
Mercer County converted the land to a park. Only one pole remains.
Thanks for asking — I need to remember to link to its history.
https://hopewellhistoryproject.org/2022/10/01/pole-farm-history-1929-1975/