Long Island Books: Sound And Shore

"Margins"

Mary Parker Buckles

North Point Press, $23

Recently, I've been staying at a friend's house on Gardiner's Bay while some work is being done to my own house deep in the woods. And so it was with a keen sense of familiarity that I delved into Mary Parker Buckles's new book, "Margins."

She begins the book by sharing her discoveries when she and her husband move into a house on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound.

As an inlander from Mississippi and self-trained naturalist, she makes discoveries 24 hours a day and is filled with wonder and excitement at the ever-changing landscape of the Sound. She says, "Simply to stand here and look out is to be entertained."

Science And Magic

So too I have been waking up every morning to something new: a huge flock of double-crested cormorants only in front of my house, as if a special gift to me; the arrival of the winter sea ducks, driving whitecaps and the ever-present wind.

This unique book, which is enhanced by beautiful photographs, all by the author, explores the shores of Long Island Sound in a nontechnical but quite scholarly way. The author refers to her approach as idiosyncratic and intended to "complement those voices that speak out for the Sound in more technical or political tones. . . ."

It is organized into four sections - land, air (really birds), water, and intertidal zone - which she weaves together artfully with her sometimes journalistic and sometimes artistic observations. Or, in her own words, "the work is about both science and magic."

Wild But Altered

I particularly enjoyed her descriptions of the setting of Long Island Sound and her review of its glacial history. Throughout the book she connects the land to the sea and reinforces the importance of thinking and planning for the Sound's protection by linking the land and the sea:

"The Sound and the land that holds it evolved together, having been conceived together in the earth's womb, then delivered in stages - of land that was first scarred, smoothed, and shifted by the passing glaciers and later set pulsing with salt tides."

Much of the land section of the book is entertaining and should be familiar to most of us on the South Fork. She describes learning to live in an area that is still wild but altered - that is, living with Canada geese, deer, and Lyme disease.

Great Horned Owls

Throughout the book, her own observations are augmented by a remarkable range of references from Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Chaucer to contemporary colleagues such as the East End's own Sam Sadove and Mike Scheibel of the Nature Conservancy's Mashomack Preserve.

In fact, there are so many interesting and diverse references to nature that it would have been interesting to have included a bibliography of her sources in the book.

A very unfamiliar account is the chapter titled "Owls." By an incredible stroke of good luck the author was able to witness an extraordinary act between two great horned owls. Great horned owls are large, conspicuous, and probably our most common owl.

Spellbound

The author cites a biologist who estimates that in parts of the Sound's northern and western shores, these owls nest every two to five miles. But despite the conspicuity and commonness of great horned owls, we really know very little about them.

The author attributes this to "the most familiar elements of owldom - mystery, ferocity, and dramatic vocal sound." We lack a holistic view of the bird because of the "owls' nocturnal lifestyle and penchant for privacy."

I was spellbound as the author described watching one owl pin down another and gouge out one of its eyes with its stiletto-sharp beak. This fight to the death between two males occurred on Jan. 8, around the time when this species begins to set up mating territories.

Owl Pellets

The author believes that her presence eventually broke up the fight and the subjugated bird won its freedom. Questionable freedom for a bird that relies on excellent binocular vision to hunt.

The trills, screams, and calls of owls are so transfixing that I have noticed that once people have heard them, they seem subtly changed for life. You can't really have a chapter on owls without describing owl pellets - the regurgitated remains of the owl's feast of mice, rats, small birds, and sometimes frogs.

I have even witnessed a great horned owl take a small rabbit. A photograph of an owl pellet resting daintily in an oyster shell is typical of Buckles's artistry.

The Osprey's Recovery

The story of the osprey and its heroic recovery from D.D.T. contamination is told. Anyone not familiar with this remarkable tale and the importance of the East End of Long Island, particularly Gardiner's Island, will learn a lot from this chapter.

Dennis Puleston, a Long Islander and founder of the Environmental Defense Fund, is the author's main resource, although she cites many other osprey experts. Puleston has studied the Gardiner's Island ospreys since 1948 - a record for continuity.

Although osprey numbers are back significantly (not to pre-D.D.T. levels, however), the protection of the water quality of our local waters and thus the fish on which this bird entirely feeds, as well as their Southern wintering grounds (East End ospreys have been documented to winter as far south as Brazil) is far from assured.

The Value Of Seafood

There is something truly majestic about the osprey and the author rightly asks, "Does anyone who can recognize the birds not love them?" An ornithologist is quoted as saying even "New England clammers, normally reticent men, wax garrulous when ospreys are mentioned."

One of the things we've learned from local polling is that people value open space and clean water because it provides fresh seafood. This value rates as highly as drinking water and higher than recreation. Obviously we all enjoy eating.

Ms. Buckles provides a fascinating description of the Long Island Sound oyster industry, including interviews with Frank M. Flower and Sons in Oyster Bay and the Tallmadge Brothers company in Norwalk, Conn.

Chilly Soft Sculptures

As in the rest of the book, she provides an amazing collection of facts (adult eastern oysters filter 100 gallons of water a day) with a wonderful personal experience: "I absolutely love this food. Being presented with a dozen oysters on the half shell is like being given a collection of edible, chilly soft sculptures, each of them unique." She does not comment on whether oysters are aphrodisiacs.

Speaking of sex, in what could have been a technical, dry explanation of the salt marsh - the true margin between the land and sea - the author recounts the wild sex in the novel "Spartina" by John Casey:

Place And Process

"In the night love scene, he and the woman who shares his passion for the marsh rise from its primordial ooze like humankind emerging from the sea. But not before they've painted each other invisible with the slick black mud . . . mud is erotic stuff, as spa owners and other professional mud merchants well know."

The salt marsh has been described so often that I was somewhat skeptical about what Ms. Buckles could possibly add that was new. I was pleasantly surprised. Ms. Buckles makes an important statement reminding us that a salt marsh, in addition to being a place, is also a process. Her description of a marsh is poetic and accurate:

Optimistic And Energizing

"It is an open yet private world - part prairie, part water - with much of its life bound up in particles too small to notice or too quick to catch."

"Margins" is an enthusiastically optimistic book. Ms. Buckles refers to it as her love letter to the beauty and vitality of the Sound. It is an energizing book and truly fills a niche in our natural history literature.

After finishing it, I kept thinking how quickly we could solve the many problems confronting the Sound and other local waters if all 8.5 million people who live in the Sound's watershed would read "Margins."

Sara Davison is executive director and vice president of the Nature Conservancy on Long Island.