At 7:37 on Sunday morning, October 18, Julie McCall started an eBird checklist at the Celery Farm. By the time she finished she had 57 species. The list included a Northern Harrier, an American Pipit, and a shorebird she thought was probably a late Spotted Sandpiper but couldn't confirm. Six days earlier her October 12 checklist had an Orange-crowned Warbler, a Lincoln's Sparrow, a Tennessee Warbler and 90 Yellow-rumped Warblers.
That's the tail end of fall migration around Lake Appert. The weeks right after it are the ones most worth a walk, and Fyke Nature Association's own records show it plainly. On the preserve's checklist, a group of ducks rated common in fall falls to rare once December starts. For anyone who walks the 1.1-mile loop, the Sundays in November are the last good ones for waterfowl until spring.
The Ducks Are on a Clock
Fyke's 2026 Celery Farm Bird Checklist lists 225 species, built from eBird reports at the preserve over the 12 years before June 2025. It defines fall as September through November and winter as December through February. "Common" means a bird should be seen or heard in suitable habitat. "Rare" means it might be present but isn't seen every year.
Here's how those two columns compare for the ducks people come to the lake to see:
| Species | Fall rating | Winter rating |
|---|---|---|
| Wood Duck | Common | Rare |
| American Black Duck | Common | Rare |
| Green-winged Teal | Common | Rare |
| Hooded Merganser | Common | Rare |
| Ring-necked Duck | Uncommon | Not listed |
| Ruddy Duck | Uncommon | Rare |
| Mallard | Abundant | Common |
| Canada Goose | Abundant | Common |
Once winter arrives, the Mallards and Canada Geese mostly have Lake Appert to themselves. The fall column covers every November day, so the Hooded Mergansers and teal you can still find this month are the last ones in that season's count. These ratings come from 12 years of history. They aren't a forecast for this year. Still, the pattern holds so consistently across the duck rows that November works as a deadline.
Fyke has used this window before. Its events page still shows the last "Ducks at Dusk" gathering, held October 24, 2025 at the Warden's Watch platform with Mike Limatola, and calls it a wonderful time to see migrating waterfowl. No 2026 date was posted when this went out, so plan your own trip at dusk.
Where to Stand When You're Watching Water
Three viewing platforms circle the lake, and in a duck month, where you stand matters most. Starting from the main entrance on Franklin Turnpike, the loop runs roughly like this:
- Entrance Bridge, just in from the Franklin Turnpike parking area. It started as an old farm bridge, and its steel I-beams are still visible underneath.
- Warden's Watch, near the southwest corner of Lake Appert and the platform closest to the parking lot. Rob Pirie built it in 1999.
- The Boardwalk, across a wet stretch on the lake's west side. An Allendale Boy Scout Troop 59 Eagle project built it around 2010.
- The Boy Scout Platform, which Stiles Thomas nicknamed "the Troop 59 Look Out!", on the north side, with the Pink Potty Bridge just east of it.
- Pirie-Mayhood Tower, on the east side. The original deck went up in 1985. A north extension added in 2014 doubled the viewing area and was named for Charlie Mayhood, one of the original Hour on the Tower regulars.
- Spillway Bridge, back toward the start. In July 2025, Mike Limatola and Sue Doherty noticed it sagging and found carpenter ants had eaten through the joists. Limatola, Bill Drummond, Frank Alcaide and other volunteers capped and reinforced it that October.
Seventeen benches line the trail, which makes a slow November loop easy. The preserve is open during daylight hours every day of the year. On a short late-fall afternoon, that makes the dusk duck window tight.
What Stays Is Smaller and Closer to the Path
As the ducks leave, the birding moves off the open water and onto the margins. The checklist rates Dark-eyed Junco and White-throated Sparrow as common in both fall and winter. American Tree Sparrow stays occasional through both seasons, and Fox Sparrow drops from uncommon to rare. Rusty Blackbird is rated uncommon in fall and in winter.
Last season's notes show what that looks like. Fyke's Spring 2026 newsletter says the preserve produced several fall and winter birds that are easy to miss on a year list, including Rusty Blackbird, Winter Wren, Fox and American Tree Sparrows, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and Red-breasted Nuthatch. According to the same newsletter, Julie McCall, Brian Kenney and Neil MacLennan all detected a Virginia Rail at the No-Name Culvert through fall and winter, even when most of the water was frozen. The culvert is on the path south of the Butterfly Garden, and Stiles Thomas gave it its name.
The edges also changed last fall. Fyke's newsletter reports that fall sparrows had long been found along the phragmites bordering the lake, but in 2025 the reeds were cut far back, which removed that cover and the sparrows that relied on it. For this November, that makes the meadow edges and woodland paths a better bet than the lakeshore reeds.
Some of the best late-fall sightings happen overhead. On November 16 of last season, Brian Kenney reported eight Sandhill Cranes flying high over the preserve, heading southwest. As the Fyke newsletter tells it, McCall described them this way:
"comparable in size to Great Blue Herons, long legs and long necks outstretched"
The tower group's list that morning also had an American Woodcock, a Cooper's Hawk, two Bald Eagles, both kinglets and a Brown Creeper. The checklist lists Sandhill Crane only as very rare in spring, with no fall rating at all, which made that November flyover stand out. Raptors hold up better than ducks into winter. Red-tailed Hawk is common in both seasons, and Cooper's Hawk and Bald Eagle are uncommon year-round. Northern Harrier, like the one on the October 18 list, slips from uncommon in fall to rare in winter. Eastern Screech-Owl, Great Horned Owl and Barred Owl are all rated uncommon in winter. There's even a large nest box inside the Deer Exclosure built to attract a Barred Owl.
The Meadow by Green Way Is New Ground This Winter
The preserve's second entrance, off Green Way, opens onto ground that changed this month. Over four weekends ending October 17 and 18, Fyke volunteers planted 15 native species and more than 4,500 plants by the Green Way entrance. That builds on a planting done there the fall before. Fyke describes the work as removing invasive species and growing an expanding native-plant area.
This winter is the first one for those plants. With the lakeshore reeds thinned, this new meadow and the nest boxes in the Green Way Meadow and the Back Meadow by Phair's Pond are the kind of edge habitat that winter sparrows use. Carol's Crossing, built in 2005 for longtime Fyke newsletter editor Carol Flanagan, spans the ditch beside Phair's Pond and links to the path into the Klomburg Woods, so you can do a meadow loop and a woods loop on the same walk.
Sunday at Eight, With the People Keeping Count
Fyke runs the Hour on the Tower every Sunday from 8 to 9 a.m. A group of regulars lists every bird species they can identify in that hour, and beginners are welcome. Depending on the week, they meet at the Pirie-Mayhood Tower or at Warden's Watch, so contact Julie McCall through Fyke's events page to find out where. The November Sundays after this post goes up are the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th. That's five chances to watch the duck rows on the checklist thin out, with people who have been keeping the count for years.
Volunteers also do habitat-restoration work on most weekends, usually Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dates and locations go to people who sign up on Fyke's volunteer registration form. For a hawk-watch side trip, Fyke's Mount Peter and State Line watches run through November 15. Both are outside Allendale, and Jim Wright coordinates State Line. Wright is also a marsh warden at the Celery Farm, and he wrote the preserve's history. That history credits naturalist Stiles Thomas as a prime mover in saving the land and notes that Allendale took possession through Green Acres in 1981.
A few house rules for every visit: no dogs, and no fishing, boating, feeding wildlife, littering, picking plants, or flying model aircraft or drones. Fyke's Celery Farm page links to its ethical-behavior guide for photographers and birders, and to the eBird hotspot where checklists like McCall's October 18 list are posted.
Doreen has spent more than 30 years helping neighbors settle into the places they love, and she's glad to share what she knows about Allendale's preserves, parks and weekend routines with anyone new in town or thinking about the area. If you'd like to talk about life near the Celery Farm, reach out to Doreen Darquea.
