Practice photographing these fairly common birds
to be ready to shoot other fast-flying species
STORY AND PHOTOS BY WILLIAM JOBES
it
first appeared as a tiny moving
spot in the distance, an object
gliding effortlessly on invisible waves of
wind just a few feet above the rural
meadow. With elegance and grace, it
f lew in a methodical and relentless
pattern, evoking images of a military
reconnaissance aircraft on a surveil-
lance mission.
Although the bird was still too
distant to make out its features, I knew
from experience that my quest that day
to photograph the Northern Harrier
was about to bear fruit. While the
destination was reminiscent of images
of a barren windswept tundra in the
farthest reaches of North America, it
was in fact smack dab in the middle of
the most densely populated state in
America — New Jersey.
I was standing in a field in a public
park known as Mercer Meadows, just
outside of Lawrenceville, Mercer
County, in central New Jersey. The spot
was once known simply as the Pole
Farm — the place where, in the early to
mid-20th century, AT&T erected
dozens of tall telephone poles to anchor
its wire antennas that transmitted
overseas phone calls via high-frequency
radio. When AT&T abandoned the site
some years ago, it was granted to the
county government, which successfully
resisted powerful interests determined
to populate the natural setting with
housing developments. (I wrote about
Mercer Meadows in BirdWatching in