Nature Notes: Spring Marches On
After two major retreats spring marches on. There is no turning back, or is there? In this millennium there have been several spring northeasters, and in March 2010 the East End got more than seven inches of rain in two close-together storms.
Along the roadsides, as the last bit of snowplow snow and ice melts away, groups of grackles, robins, and red-winged blackbirds are searching for things to eat. The earthworms haven’t come up yet, so pickings are meager. Redwinged blackbirds are singing, grackles are croaking, robins have yet to sing. The red-bellied woodpeckers have been staking out territories for more than a week using their meow-y calls to attract mates.
Some ospreys are finally back. Margaret Smythe gets the prize for seeing the first one locally. It was on March 13 when she was motoring along Long Beach Road and saw an osprey visiting a familiar haunt at the edge of Sag Harbor Cove. On St. Patrick’s Day Al Daniels, a fellow nature observer, saw perhaps the same osprey in the same area. On the 18th Vicki Bustamante saw two — a conjugal pair? — flying side by side over the outflow of the Peconic River in Riverhead.
The ospreys are trickling back, but the bald eagles, which strutted the stage a week earlier, are ebbing. Waterfowl of several species are becoming common in the coastal ponds as they slowly give up their icy coating. Terry Sullivan observed a flock of ruddy ducks at the north end of Sagaponack Pond on Saturday. When he looked closely there was a red-necked grebe in the center of them. Red-necked grebes are seen here and there from time to time, but they are rarely encountered in numbers here like the horned grebes are.
On Friday Chris Chapin saw one of the first pairs of plovers to return. No, not the fabulous piping plover that hangs around the seashore, but one of the upland plovers, the killdeer, which nests in fields and is the earliest of the plover group to nest on Long Island each year. Jean Held was in her Sag Harbor yard on Saturday when a turkey vulture flew over, another early spring arrival. She even saw one of her chipmunks up from underground making a dash along the side of her house.
On Thursday afternoon I caught a glimpse of two adult mute swans flying over Montauk Highway toward Mill Pond in Water Mill. Vicki Bustamante came upon a pair in an open water spot near the inlet to Oyster Pond from Block Island Sound in Montauk. So, at least we know some of the swans made it through the record cold and snowy iced-over winter. Ironically, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is starting on a two-year elimination of this beautiful creature, the largest of our waterfowl. Governor Cuomo vetoed bills sponsored by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Senator Kenneth P. LaValle to postpone enacting a management plan until the state’s population is better assessed.
At least the D.E.C. says it won’t kill them outright, just neuter their eggs and the like.
On Monday the treetops of the tall black willows, which are so plentiful in Sag Harbor because of its high water table, were beginning to leaf out. It won’t be long now before red maples, shads, and beach plums follow.
And, oh yes, I forgot the lovely plant photographed so wonderfully by Carissa Katz in last week’s Star, the skunk plant. It can remain green under snow and ice like vinca, or myrtle, and it is genuinely native to Long Island. It has an antifreeze component, which keeps it going and gets it up to flower earlier than the other natives at the end of winter.
Look for the first butterfly to emerge from its winter leaf mulch bed each spring on your next walk in the woods. It’s the mourning cloak and it’s bigger than the monarch, which won’t arrive until mid-May or later. And beware the ticks! They come out during the first dry days in the last week of March and remain out until the end of October.
Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].