A knot of glossy ibis turned up in numbers this year in the salt marsh across the street. I have been watching this stretch of wetlands long enough to notice changes like this. From year to year wading birds, such as ibises and great egrets, increase, while others disappear. Smaller snowy egrets are rare now, at least here. It was the ibises that most caught my attention.
The marsh has been underwater more often this year than the last. I suspect that sea level rise has a lot to do with it. As in Miami, tidal flooding happened even on windless days; in the past there had to be a storm for the marsh to fill.
All spring, the ibises poked their long, curved bills into the mud for invertebrates to eat. They seemed to operate in groups, clustering where the picking was easy, spots with bare ground, where the spartina and other marsh plants had ceased to be. These places can be the result of rising seas. Their name, anchialine pools, is sonorous. Think of an enclosed, small pond connected to the bay underground, rather than fed by a spring or a stream. The curious can see one on Lazy Point Road a few hundred yards eastward from Napeague Meadow Road in Amagansett, and I am sure there are others.
So far, the new pools have not had an effect on the mosquitoes. There are fewer of them and they seem less ravenous. What this is caused by is anybody’s guess. There are fewer beach plums this year, too, which may or may not be related.
It’s not just seawater that creates anchialine pools. Groundwater is also pushed upward, creating standing water at higher elevations. Look to the west along Bendigo Road, where an occasionally flooded area has taken on a similarity to a Louisiana swamp.