[May 12, 2016; Closter Nature Center, Closter NJ]. I arrived at the Closter Nature Center in the evening, having brought along an anchovy pie that I had purchased at Broadway Pizza in Northvale. I sat eating it on a stone bench by the shore of Ruckman Pond. This pond is a small anthropogenic impoundment perhaps fifty yards across, created by a small dam on Smith Brook. The bench is made of a large sandstone slab and has slickenslides (fault streaks) on its top surface, with is parallel to bedding. I watched Pumpkinseed Sun Fish tend and protect their nests (mostly from each other) as I ate my pizza. One fish, with a next in a particularly choice hollow between two stones, spent about half of its time on the prowl for trespassers. I then took a short walk around the grounds, limiting my hike to smaller section of the woods that are south of Ruckman Road. I first walked past the dam and along Smith Brook as far as the footbridge. I then circled the pond, passing a group of three geese. These were domestic geese, mottled black and white in color, and not the Canada Geese that are so common in the area. I passed several blooming Dogwood Trees; their flowering has been late in this unusually cold spring that we’re experiencing. The woods are very green and the ground very damp and in places swampy. I passed a small farmyard adjacent to the Nature Center building, sighting a rooster and some rabbits. A group of schoolchildren were also having pizza of their own, on benches set beneath the building’s awning. I sat back on the stone bench for a few more minutes, watching the geese paddle across the pond, and then headed off. 0:40.