State guide

New Jersey Nature Guide

New Jersey is the Garden State in earnest — a small, densely settled crossroads that nonetheless packs in an extraordinary range of nature, from the salt marshes and barrier beaches of the Atlantic coast to the sandy pitch-pine plains of the Pine Barrens and the forested ridges of the northwestern Highlands. Its position on the Atlantic Flyway makes it one of the continent's great migration funnels: Cape May concentrates hawks, songbirds, and monarchs each fall, and Delaware Bay hosts the globally significant May gathering of Red Knots and other shorebirds feeding on horseshoe-crab eggs. Spanning USDA zones 6a in the Highlands to 7b along the southern shore, the humid, four-season climate gives a cold but rarely brutal winter, a long migratory spring, a warm farm-and-shore summer, and a slow oak-and-maple autumn.