Nature Notes: Nature’s Memorial?
By all accounts, winter has finally descended upon us. But as of the date for this column, there are only 39 days until crocuses begin blooming. It’s one of the oddest winters I can remember, one with very few winter birds, only a handful of waterfowl, and, as of yet, no ice skating. One wonders if such a winter will be good for all of those coastal ponds of our area that are in trouble, or will it worsen them?
Karen and Barbara Rubinstein did part of the Long Island waterfowl count on Sunday. Can you imagine, not a single duck or goose on Shorts Pond south of the moraine in Bridgehampton, which is normally chock-full of them at this time. And there were very few ducks around in general. Victoria Bustamante covered Montauk water bodies and only reported a handful of them for Fort Pond which is annually one of the duckiest spots on the whole of Long Island.
While checking out Big Reed Pond east of Lake Montauk, she spotted and photographed a great blue heron standing tall on a muskrat wickiup made of phragmites. Muskrats on Long Island generally live in burrows in waterside banks, but in the absence of them, they occasionally build lodges, and what better material to fashion them out of than phragmites stems and leaves. Maybe, they got the idea from waterfowl hunters, who have been making blinds out of phragmites stems for generations, at least ever since I was a boy.
The great blue heron better pick up and head south or it will be a goner. It is a sign that a lot of the northern songbirds and waterfowl have yet to reach this latitude and that water bodies north of Long Island in New England have yet to be iced over. Next week, following this Arctic blast, we might see an influx of both.
The Rubinsteins did find two of my favorite waterfowl in Hook Pond in East Hampton Village, two tundra swans. These graceful native birds that get their name because they breed on the tundra of northern Canada, are rare visitors to Long Island. Hook Pond is one of their favorite spots to spend the winter. Apparently, while they are here they get along peacefully with our year-round mute swans. They can be told from the latter by their straight-ish necks and black bills.
One of the few places that was hopping with geese, Canada geese, on Sunday afternoon was the grassy cover crop areas of EECO Farm on Long Lane across from East Hampton High School. I counted about 150 on the way to Stuart Vorpahl’s viewing at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton. They were there grazing away on my way into the village and there still on my way home two hours later.
Last year, you may remember, was a bumper year here for snowy owl. This year they have yet to appear, with the exception of a very beautiful one that Diane Ryan photographed at Lazy Point last week. Diane and her husband, Gordon, were two of Russell Drumm’s best friends. They used to mountain bike together every Sunday for years on end. Rusty died on Saturday of cancer.
The owl in Diane’s photograph has an all-knowing look, combining the countenances of all of the great prophets — Buddha, Lao Tzu, Mohammed, Jesus, Moses, and the others — into one beauteous, sublime face. Owls are supposed to be wise, this one is surely one of the wisest. One wonders if its appearance on the South Fork in such a timely way is nature’s memorial to three of our wisest neighbors who were prophets in their own right and at one with nature and the world around them. Richard Hendrickson, Rusty, and Stuart, all three of whom passed away last week.
Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].