Pemberton Recreation

05/30/2026

05/29/2026

The Pemberton Junior Police Academy is right around the corner. This is a chance for community youth to participate in a meaningful experience that provides mentoring, leadership and discipline. The opportunity is amazing and the potential for learning is endless. Please sign your youth up today!

05/20/2026

05/19/2026

Most people hang one feeder at one height and wonder why they only see the same five birds.

The birds you're missing aren't avoiding your yard. They're avoiding your feeder height 🐦

Different species feed at different levels — not because they're picky, but because they evolved foraging at specific positions. A mourning dove walks and pecks on the ground. A nuthatch clings to vertical bark. Asking both to eat from the same tube feeder is asking one of them to do something she never would in the wild.

🌿 Ground level — scatter seed on a low tray or directly on bare ground:

- Mourning doves — they walk, they don't perch. Ground is the only place they'll eat
- Dark-eyed juncos — ground foragers, especially along leaf litter edges
- White-throated sparrows — kick backward through debris to find seeds
- Eastern towhees — scratch loudly in leaf litter. They won't fly up to a tube feeder

🐦 Standard height — tube, hopper, or platform feeder around chest to eye level:

- Northern cardinals — prefer a platform or hopper where they can sit and crack seeds. Tube feeder perches are too small for them
- House finches — comfortable on tube feeders with perches
- Chickadees and titmice — grab a single seed and fly to a branch to crack it. Quick visits, constant rotation
- Blue jays — need a sturdy platform. They're heavy and loud about it
- Rose-breasted grosbeaks — brief spring visitors. Sunflower seeds on a platform feeder

🌿 Specialty placements:

- Suet feeder on a tree trunk or pole — woodpeckers, nuthatches, and brown creepers cling to vertical surfaces to feed. A suet cage mounted against a trunk mimics how they naturally forage on bark
- Hummingbird feeder near flowers, away from other feeders — she's territorial and won't share the space with house finches crowding a nearby seed feeder. Give her distance
- Oriole feeder at eye level in an open area — orange halves, grape jelly, or nectar. Place it where it's visible from a distance. Orioles find food by sight when they first arrive in spring

🌱 The difference between one feeder and three at different heights isn't just more birds — it's different birds. Species that never visited your single tube feeder will show up at a ground tray within days.

Same yard. Same seed budget. More of the neighborhood shows up when you meet them where they actually eat 🌿

05/12/2026

Want to know what resources exist throughout Pemberton? Come out this Saturday to the Nesbit Center, 1 Anderson Road for the Community Resource Fair!

05/12/2026

The coyote trotting through your neighborhood at dusk isn't a threat to your yard. She's managing it.

Most people see a coyote near a suburb and think something is wrong — that she's lost, starving, or dangerous. She's none of those. She's hunting the rodents, rabbits, and groundhogs that would otherwise multiply unchecked in the spaces between houses.

🌿 A single coyote family removes a remarkable number of mice, voles, and rabbits from a neighborhood each year. The rodents that eat your garden seedlings, gnaw irrigation lines, and nest in sheds — the coyote is the only common predator keeping those populations in balance in most suburban areas.

She's also one of the few native predators that adapted to suburban landscapes instead of retreating from them. She didn't invade the suburb. She followed the prey that was already thriving there.

🐾 If a coyote is in your area:

- She's almost certainly not interested in you. Coyotes avoid people and hunt at dawn, dusk, and after dark when yards are empty
- Keep small pets supervised outdoors during dawn and dusk — this is when coyotes are most active
- Don't leave pet food, fallen fruit, or unsecured garbage outside — these are the attractants that bring her closer to the house than she'd otherwise come
- If you see one during the day, she's likely a nursing mother foraging extra hours to feed pups. This is normal spring behavior, not a sign of illness

The coyote passing through at dusk isn't a problem in the neighborhood. She's one of the few things keeping the rodent problem from becoming one 🌱

05/11/2026

Every egg costs the female something she can't easily replace.

The calcium in the shell comes from her skeleton. Each egg is almost entirely calcium carbonate — the same mineral that makes up her bones. A robin laying a full clutch in consecutive mornings pulls a significant amount of calcium from her own body in less than a week.

🌿 She compensates by eating snail shells. Crushed eggshells left on a dish. Limestone grit from a driveway edge. Anything calcium-dense she can find between laying days.

If the calcium isn't there, she pulls it from her bones anyway. The egg forms on a schedule her body controls — she doesn't get to wait.

A cardinal laying a full clutch draws down her bone reserves. A bluebird on her second clutch of the season is running on what's left. A chickadee is doing all of this while weighing less than a first-class letter.

The nest isn't free. The eggs aren't free. Every clutch is a withdrawal from a body that doesn't carry a surplus.

🐦 What helps — and it's simple:

- Crushed eggshells on a platform feeder — rinse, dry, and crush to small pieces. She'll find them
- Cuttlebone from a pet store hung near feeders — the same one sold for parakeets
- Oyster shell grit in a small dish at feeder height

One handful of crushed shell on a dish can change the cost of an entire clutch.

The calcium you leave out might be the reason she doesn't have to take it from herself 🌱

05/09/2026

It’s a wrap! Pemberton Township hosted a well attended community yard sale. See you next time!