Ailanthus (Tree of Heaven) was imported from China and widely distributed in the United States as an ornamental in the late 1700s and 1800s. Its behavior, though, is far from heavenly.
On Saturday, October 4, 22 birders awoke before sunrise, loaded into vans, and began our journey from Northern Virginia to Cape May, NJ, our eyes set on this faraway destination perfectly aligned with the Atlantic Flyway, one of the four “avian superhighways” in North America.