Shangri-la on the Sound
Monday was the first really cold day of fall. Frost had formed overnight on lawns, but it was sunny. Victoria Bustamante picked me up and we were off to Caumsett State Park at the very northwest end of Suffolk County and the Long Island Sound. Once the estate of Marshall Field, complete with a dairy farm, it is now a beautiful 1,500-acre preserve with a local Matinecock Indian name meaning “place by a sharp rock.” The sharp rock was one of several glacial erratics left when the last advance of the Wisconsin glaciation swept down across the whole of northern America more than 10,000 years ago, creating the North Fork and the morainal line of Harbor Hills that runs along the Sound from Southold on the east to beyond Great Neck at the edge of New York City on the west.
We were to meet up with Sue Feustel, the environmental chairwoman of the Caumsett Foundation. Since the idea arose in 2008, she has overseen the transformation of more than 50 acres from old pastureland into a new Long Island grassland. Two other western Long Island grasslands are being saved and restored in Nassau County a few miles away, among them the 17-acre remnant of the Hempstead Plains, which once occupied a third of the county. Victoria and I had first heard of this third grassland project at a meeting at the Vanderbilt Estate the previous year and we were excited about the prospect of seeing it in progress. Neither of us had been to the park previously. It was an exciting adventure.
We met Sue and another botanist and habitat restorer, A.W. Cafarelli, in the park’s parking lot shortly before noon and spent the rest of the day touring the parklands, first by foot, then by car, as the park is very large. It varied from tidal wetlands and sandy beaches, where it touched the Sound on the north, to rich hardwood forest behind the shore running all the way up to a plateau, where the historical old farm buildings, now park headquarters, and the grasslands stood.
Sue, a former grade school teacher, is an avid birdwatcher as well as a self-taught botanist, and proved a knowledgeable guide as we explored the new fields covered with the primary grasses that made up old Long Island grasslands: little bluestem, big bluestem, and Indian grass. Vicki and I were well familiar with these grasses as they covered a third of the hamlet of Montauk. Vicki’s abode backs up to such a combination, part of Suffolk County’s Montauk County Park east of Lake Montauk and west of the lighthouse.
Other prairie species such as switch grass, goldenrods, and asters were also present, as were several weedy species, including the very aggressive and not-too-pretty mugwort, which has made its way all the way to the Montauk grasslands and the famous lighthouse beyond from New York City in a matter of a three or four decades. The presence of weeds from abroad is part of the challenge of fashioning a native grassland from old farmland or woodland. In this situation, several nonnative trees including the weedy tree-of-heaven had to be removed along with some native ones, including walnuts, or the grasslands now in progress would have been stymied from the onset.
One of the motivations for this undertaking happened by chance — the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly, rare to the North, showed up in 2008, a first on Long Island as a local breeder. It is believed to have come from Connecticut across the Sound. It needs plantain and a few other weedy and/or native plants to survive and these are often found near grasslands. The checkerspot has yet to be found breeding in Montauk. It is not migratory like the monarch; its larvae (and pupae) remain in the area where first deposited, survive the winter, and then emerge as adults the following spring.
Producing a new grassland is not only challenged by a panoply of weedy species, it is also challenged by some of the critters that come to live in it. In the case of the Caumsett Park grasslands, a chief culprit is the woodchuck. We saw several fresh holes during our walk. Deer can also be problematic, but can also help, as they prefer chomping on some of the weedy species over the grasses.
Evidence that the grasslands restoration is working is seen in the birds that have come to populate them. Both meadowlarks and bobolinks breed in the park, as do Savannah sparrows. On our walks and rides we saw goldfinches, golden-crowned kinglets, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, song sparrows, chickadees, white-throated sparrows, and pine siskins. A merlin is resident as well as a red-tailed hawk or two.
At the end of the day we drove down to the water through the rich woodlands. We encountered several oak species, beeches, red maples, sassafras, and other hardwoods familiar to us, as well as Christmas ferns and mapleleaf viburnums, partridge peas, and silverrods (the white-flowered goldenrod that is also found in Montauk woodlands). Some of the trees were two or more feet in diameter and seemingly reached as high as 100 feet. They were taller than any of the tallest on the South Fork.
We worked our way down to the sandy beach with its high wrack line and adjoining salt marshes. There was a bit of Eurasian phragmites here and there, but nothing like what Vicki and I were accustomed to seeing when visiting South Fork wetlands.
It was getting dark when Sue drove us back to the park headquarters, where a couple of song sparrows greeted us. We parted with embraces and smiles. It had been a wonderful experience. We would come back again to this Shangri-la in the midst of busy development, malls, and more vehicular traffic than you could shake a stick at. With Vicki at the wheel, we made our way home on the Long Island Expressway, talking over the trip, not minding the heavy traffic.
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Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].