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John Turner

By John L. Turner

John Turner

It’s late morning on a deeply overcast day in early February and a uniform sky of pewter grey threatens rain but, so far, it’s held out. So, wanting to get away from yet another day of news as gloomy as the weather, I decide to do something that always works to pull me out of melancholy — a hike in nature’s realm — knowing that at some point I’ll connect with something seeing or feeling, something that ushers in elation.

Given the season, I won’t gain this expected happiness from seeing colorful things — nature’s color palette this time of year is too subdued, basically a mosaic of brown, black, and grey. Instead, my mind latches on to the concepts of textures and patterns and I’m quickly rewarded by focusing on the skin of trees, many of which possess bark patterns distinctive enough to identify to species. From decades of hiking the Island’s forests they are like familiar friends.  

The heavily wooded preserve doesn’t disappoint as I immediately pass several black or sweet birch trees of varying age. Black birch is widespread in the richer soils of Long Island’s north shore. When young, black birch has generally smooth reddish-grey bark with distinctive horizontally parallel rows that are slightly elevated. These rows are known as lenticels and are thought to help the tree “breathe” by allowing gas exchange through the bark. In older specimens the bark becomes more three dimensional with cracks and fissures that look as if a black bear (or mythical dragon) ran its sharp claws down the trunk. 

A few of the larger trees are afflicted with the Nectria fungus, or black birch canker, a disfiguring condition that can damage the tree and kill it in severe cases.  When growing on the main trunk and larger branches it can cause hollows — while hiking the Tiffany Creek Preserve in northern Nassau County several decades ago, I spied a screech owl sitting in just such a canker-created hollow. The tree’s loss was the bird’s gain. 

Another well-known aspect of black birch is that it was once a critical source for a tasty flavoring — oil of wintergreen. Indigenous people used the oil to treat muscle aches and to “purge the body,” while its oil was used in a wider variety of foods and medicines. If you come across a black birch and break off a twig and begin to chew on it, you’ll immediately taste the refreshing flavor of wintergreen.  

Moving further along the trail I pass by four of the ten or so oak species native to Long Island  — white, black, scarlet, and red oaks. White oak, as its name suggests, has pleasant light-colored bark consisting of thin vertical plates. As the tree ages the bark gets a bit thicker (true for almost all trees) and more “sloughier” with the top and bottom of the bark plates curling a bit.  

The other three are a tougher group to identify to species absent their leaves, especially distinguishing the bark of black oak from scarlet oak. Red oak can be distinguished from the other two by its longitudinal “ridges and valleys”; as one botanist has insightfully noted, the surface of red oak bark is reminiscent of what a ski course looks like from the air, the valleys serving as the ski courses while the ridges are the forests left intact in between. 

Continuing the amble, I come to another medium sized tree standing alone although surrounded by oaks a little distance removed. I can tell from its somewhat smooth and attractive light grey bark with shallow fissures that I’ve not come across another oak but rather a pignut hickory, one of several hickories found on Long Island.  The ridges diverge and blend in a random way creating an intriguing pattern that is fun to look at. This is the group of trees of barbeque fame, their wood imparting a distinctive smokiness to backyard barbeque fare. 

While I don’t see any on my walk through this Setauket forest, a cousin to the pignut hickory has among the most distinctive bark of any you’ll see on Long Island — that of the shagbark hickory. If you see the tree you’ll immediately know why it got its name with large patches of shaggy bark curling away from the trunk. It is uncommon on Long Island. A more common hickory which I didn’t see on the hike is mockernut hickory, so named because the very small nut “mocks” the person making the effort to harvest it. 

A bit further on and from some light tan leaves fluttering lightly in the understory I knew I had yet another tree species — an American Beech. The bark of beech is light grey and is smooth, making it often an unfortunate target of etched initialed inscriptions. It’s hard to look at the bark and trunk of a large beech and not think of an elephant leg, especially if the wood beneath the bark has a little wrinkle as it often does. The elephant leg analogy is even stronger at the base where the roots flare, looking like elephant toes. Over the past few years many beech trees have been afflicted with beech leaf disease which can be fatal; fortunately this tree shows no signs of the affliction.

One of the main purposes of bark is, of course, to protect the living tissues just underneath from pathogens such as numerous fungal species. But it can also help to protect it from another force — wildfire. And nowhere can you see a better example of this than the bark of pitch pine, the dominant pine of the Long Island Pine Barrens. Pitch pine has very thick bark which provides an insulating layer to protect the living cambium tissue.    

Near the end of the loop walk I hit a bunch of medium sized  trees of another oak species — chestnut oak, including one multi-trunked specimen sending five, foot-thick trunks skyward. It’s the largest tree in the preserve. Chestnut oak, common in rocky soils found on the Ronkonkoma Moraine, gets its name from the similarity of the leaves to those of the American chestnut, except in the oak the marginal lobes are rounded rather than having little bristles. Its bark is dark grey and deeply furrowed. 

At the end of this grouping is another smaller chestnut oak, or so I thought at first. Deeply furrowed bark with inch high ridges, it looks like chestnut oak but I realize the identification is wrong when I look up into the finer branches in the canopy and notice a few of them have smooth green bark (yet another function of bark is, in some trees, to photosynthesize). Suddenly it dawns on me I’m not looking at an oak but rather a mature Sassafras tree, a common species throughout Long Island.  I realized I had been barking up the wrong tree … 

A resident of Setauket, author John L. Turner is conservation chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, author of “Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Nature Guide to Long Island” and president of Alula Birding & Natural History Tours.

Pixabay photo
A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

While progress is being made in reducing the amount of food that’s wasted in the United States, for example in 2022 New York State passed important legislation — the NYS Food Donation and Food Scraps Recycling Law, we have a long way to go. 

Two informative websites where you can learn more about how to reduce wasted food are: “Save the Food” and “Love Food, Hate Waste.” These sites offer tips on better ways to store food to prevent spoilage and how to better plan the exact amount of food that’s needed for your family and for hosting guests at dinner parties, picnics, and other gatherings. They also offer many tasty recipes on using leftovers or food that you might typically throw out, like the stale ends of a bread loaf, tops of beets, extra ripe bananas, or bruised pears. Anyone for some killer banana bread or how about some “Bruised Pear Pandowdy”?   

The sky’s the limit on ways to use all the food in your pantry and refrigerator.

A resident of Setauket, author John L. Turner is conservation chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, author of “Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Nature Guide to Long Island” and president of Alula Birding & Natural History Tours.

 

The banning of DDT in the United States in 1972 helped the bald eagle population rebound. Photo by John Dielman

By John L. Turner

John Turner

If ecologists have revealed anything from the thousands of studies of nature and its countless components, relationships, and interactions, it is the extent to which life is interconnected, with the fate of so many living things interwoven with the fate of others. Many of these studies have shown how species are tied together in many unforeseen ways, built on complex webs and relationships. 

John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, knew this truism when he wrote about the “intricate tapestry of the natural world” and perhaps best reflected by his famous comment “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” 

Aldo Leopold, perhaps the most impactful conservationist this country has produced, understood this too, expressing it in a slightly different way: “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” Leopold recognized that adversely affecting one species in a natural community can trigger a set of undesirable ecological actions that  ripples throughout the community. 

There are many straightforward examples illustrating the ecological “ties that bind.” 

One basic concept involves food chains, constructs that help us to understand the connection of one species with another in “eat and be eaten” relationships and the pesticide DDT, banned long-ago, illustrates how species along a food chain can be connected.  DDT was once widely used throughout the United States (and still is used in other parts of the world) and commonly applied on Long Island in the 1950’s and 60’s in an effort to control mosquitoes, especially salt marsh species. 

The DDT in water was assimilated into algae and other phytoplankton, that were fed upon by zooplankton, and many species of zooplankton were, in turn, eaten by small fish who were consumed by larger fish. The larger fish were consumed by fish-eating birds like ospreys, bald eagles, pelicans, and cormorants. 

DDT is fat soluble and not easily excreted so it increased in concentration in the animals higher on the food chain, to the point that in birds it interfered with their ability to lay viable eggs. A loss of viable eggs meant declines in the abundance of these species.  DDT served as an unfortunate illustration of how food chains and webs worked, connecting phytoplankton and zooplankton (species lower on a food chain) to fish and ultimately to birds (higher on the food chain). 

In reality, the world is a much more complicated place and an ecosystem can have numerous food chains that interconnect in a larger and more comprehensive food web, resulting in “cause and effect” relationships that might not be apparent at first. 

As an example, let’s take Yellowstone National Park. For much of the twentieth century the National Park Service had a wrongheaded and myopic  policy of eradicating timber wolves within park boundaries, resulting in burgeoning populations of elk and deer that, in turn, increased browsing and grazing of the Park’s small trees, shrubs and grasses.  

The reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone Park restored the park’s ecosystem. Photo from Pixabay

Wolves were reintroduced into the Park in 1995 and almost immediately created a cascade of effects that rippled throughout Yellowstone. Wolves disrupted elk herds, their primary prey, allowing for their preferred habitat — riverbanks of willows and aspens — to recover. This new growth provided breeding habitat for a variety of songbirds and the shade the trees created helped fish populations. Beaver increased (there was but one beaver colony when the wolves were brought back; now there are nine) responding to the new, fresh tree growth. Their constructed dams created impoundments for aquatic invertebrates and fish and freshwater marshes where moose and mink occurred. 

Coyotes declined due to wolf predation which allowed for foxes to increase and wolf introduction also benefited grizzly bears who had more berries to eat due to lessened browsing by elk. Prey carcasses also sustained a number of other species like lynx, wolverines, eagles, raven and magpies, grizzly bears just emerging from hibernation, and even beetle species. Ecologists have documented changes down to the diversity of microbes in the soil as a result of wolves reestablishment!   

Closer to home we have the case of the diamondback terrapin. A beautiful reptile with strongholds in the bays and harbors of Long Island’s north shore, it plays an important role in maintaining the health of salt marsh environments in which it lives. With very strong jaws, hard food objects are fair game and terrapins routinely eat several snail species, helping to keep them in check. A good thing because some of the snails feed on marsh grass (Spartina) and if their populations were not controlled it could result in the loss of marshes and the numerous attendant benefits salt marshes provide in the form of food production, attenuating coastal flooding, softening the impacts of coastal storms, and providing habitat for so many plant and animal species.  

A last example underscores how a species can help knit together two distant places with ramifications on human health — in this case India and East Africa. There’s a dragonfly known as the wandering glider and remarkably millions migrate across the Indian Ocean each year, leaving the rice patties and other wetlands where they were born and overwintering in East Africa. Here, they are voracious predators of mosquitoes, many of which carry malaria, an affliction which can be fatal if untreated. Scientists noted an increase in malaria cases in East Africa and tied it back to a reduction in dragonflies caused by pesticide use in Indian wetland pools.   

As these examples illustrate the natural world is an exceptionally complex interwoven tapestry of life with many unforeseen connections. You can understand why Frank Edwin Egler, an American botanist, observed “Nature is not more complicated than you think, it is more complicated than you CAN think.” 

A resident of Setauket, author John Turner is conservation chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, author of “Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Nature Guide to Long Island” and president of Alula Birding & Natural History Tours.

A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

Are you in the market for a new cooking stove? If so, take a look at purchasing an induction stove rather than one with a regular electric coil or gas burner top. According to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA; www.nyserda.ny.gov), induction stoves are 15% more efficient than regular electric stoves and 3x more efficient than gas stoves! They use an electromagnet to heat the cooking pan itself rather than heating a coil or burner on the stove top so it is safer and spills are cleaned up more easily since they don’t bake onto a hot stove top (I know the annoyance of cleaning up baked-on stove top spills while recently making some soup that spilled over!). 

That’s a triple win — money saved from less energy used, less chance of burns, and easier kitchen clean-ups!

A resident of Setauket, author John Turner is conservation chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, author of “Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Nature Guide to Long Island” and president of Alula Birding & Natural History Tours.

 

Disposable plastic utensils can take hundreds of years to decompose.
A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

Earlier this year New York City passed an ordinance aimed at banning utensils in take-out orders from restaurants unless specifically requested by the customer. This common sense waste reduction measure, called “Skipping the Stuff,” will keep millions of plastic utensils out of the waste stream where they’re either burned or buried. Similar legislation is likely both in Suffolk County and New York State.   

There’s no reason, however, to wait until additional laws are passed to reduce your use and disposal of unneeded plastic utensils by simply remembering when you next order take-out food to tell the restaurant to “skip the stuff.”  After all, the extra plastic spoons, knives, and forks, probably individually wrapped in plastic film, aren’t needed in most situations, are not recycable and take hundred of years to break down. A benefit to the law, in addition to it being better for the environment, is it saves local businesses money; not a bad thing! 

The “Skip the Stuff” effort and city law is an excellent illustration of waste reduction, the highest priority in waste management — reducing the amount of garbage produced in the first place. Its value is captured in the phrase: “There’s no environmental impact from garbage that’s not created.” So, since those plastic utensils are unneeded by you and yet another burden on the environment, let’s make an effort to “Skip the Stuff”!

A resident of Setauket, author John Turner is conservation chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, author of “Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Nature Guide to Long Island” and president of Alula Birding & Natural History Tours.

 

By John L. Turner

John Turner

Walking along the edge of an uneven row of withered goldenrods, adorned with countless fuzzy heads brimming with seeds, I noticed some bird movement in the lower branches of the shrubs interspersed among the flowers. Lots of movement in all directions as the small earth-toned birds flitted up and down, toward and away from me. I was in the presence of a flock of fourteen white-throated sparrows actively feeding on the ubiquitous goldenrod seed. Their presence was a nice welcome to my morning. 

The white-throated sparrow is a most handsome bird, possessing, as its name makes clear, a distinctive white throat patch (its Latin name is Zonotrichia albicollis with albicollis meaning “white-necked”). Even more prominent in this species are the five bold longitudinal black and white head stripes (three white and two black) with a pretty splash of yellow just behind the bill in a place known as the lores on the two lateral white stripes.   

There’s an interesting story about these light-colored head stripes that underscores how the natural world is much more complex than it may, at first, appear.  These stripes come in two distinct colors: white and tan, so a sparrow may be a tan-striped white-throated sparrow or a white-striped white-throated sparrow. This color difference is genetically based, apparently due to a single chromosome part inverting while going through mitosis — remember genetics from high school biology class? In a case of mistaken identity John James Audubon thought white-striped individuals were male while tan-striped birds female, a reasonable assumption given the fact more colorful birds are typically male. You can see this mistake in his illustration of the species in his famous “Birds of America.”

Birds of the same species that display different plumages are referred to as “morphs” or “forms.” The Eastern Screech Owl is another local example of a bird species that exhibits morphs, having two colorful forms — grey and rufous birds. The Parasitic Jaeger, a gull-like bird occasionally seen in the ocean off the island’s south shore has three color morphs — light, intermediate, and dark.

White-throated sparrow

And you might reasonably think that white-striped males would always select a white-striped female as a mate and the same with tan-striped individuals, but it’s actually just the opposite. White-striped males overwhelmingly prefer tan-striped females (and vice versa) while tan striped males select white-striped females (also vice versa), a concept ecologists fancily refer to as “negative assortative mating.” Researchers have determined the morphs behave differently with white-striped birds being more aggressive but with less adept parenting abilities than tan-striped birds.  These two traits seem to balance out as the two morphs are about equally represented in the species overall.  

White-throated sparrows don’t breed on Long Island (with very few noted records) but are common winter visitors and one of the more common species to visit bird feeding stations, often feeding on the millet and other grain that spills to the ground.  If white-throated sparrows come to your feeders try to distinguish the two color morphs and note any difference in behaviors. As mentioned above, research suggests the white-striped forms are more aggressive and tend to dominate tan-striped individuals. Have you observed this? 

As winter melds into spring you might hear the distinctive song of this sparrow. One of the bird’s colloquial names — Old Sam Peabody — comes from its song that seems like it’s saying that fella’s name with a few extra Peabody’s thrown in at the end. Others liken it to My Sweet Canada, Canada, Canada. I think the second description is a wee bit more accurate both because it sounds closer to the bird’s song and because the species breeds across a broad swath of forest in our country neighbor to the North.  

Another common winter visitor to bird feeders is a sparrow that doesn’t much look like  one, as it doesn’t have the earth-tone browns and tans typical of most sparrow species.  It’s the Slate-colored or Dark-eyed Junco or as the famous New York naturalist John Burroughs called them  “snowbirds” since they often appear in New York around the time of the season’s first snowfall.  

A widespread breeder across North America (but not Long Island as it breeds further north) this species consists of 15 subspecies many of which look different, giving rise to distinctive names such as the white-winged, pink-sided, red-backed, and gray-headed juncos. Given their distinctive morphological differences, which is thought to have occurred a few thousand years ago, this species appears to be on its way to evolving into several other species. If we can hang around for a few thousand more years we might find out the answer. 

The junco (it’s Latin name is hyemalis meaning “of the winter”) is a handsome bird with “our” subspecies being dark grey on top with white on the belly and under the tail.  Females are tinged with brown on top. Both sexes have triangular pink bills, the color of bubble gum, which they use to capture insects, collect seeds and berries, and/or the food you put out in your feeders.   

Dark-eyed Junco

Speaking of feeders, according to Project FeederWatch, run by the Cornell University’s Project Laboratory of Ornithology, the Dark-eyed Junco is recorded at more feeders in North America than any other bird. 

Another plumage trait all juncos share are outer tail feathers that range from partially to fully white. These bright white “banner marks” are examples of deflective coloration and are a feature commonplace in birds. It’s hypothesized their function is to confuse predators or deflect their attack to a non-lethal part of a bird’s body but this purpose has not been proven experimentally beyond a reasonable doubt so the purpose remains  conjectural. The Eastern Meadowlark and American Robin are other examples of birds exhibiting banner marks. 

Another interesting aspect of junco life is that not all birds overwinter in the same area. Generally male juncos, both adult and young, overwinter in more northern locales while females migrate further south. The reason for this seems to be the desire for male birds to be closer to prime breeding territories, the adults to reclaim them and younger males in an effort to quickly find an available territory. Females have no such worries and can benefit from more moderate climates to the south.

So, what at first appears to be two nice uncomplicated winter visitors visiting your feeding station actually reveal, like when the layers of an onion are peeled back, a reality with complexity and depth possessed by all living creatures that share our world.

A resident of Setauket, author John Turner is conservation chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, author of “Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Nature Guide to Long Island” and president of Alula Birding & Natural History Tours

Reviewed by John Turner 

We humans have done a pretty good job at mucking up the planet, scraping away the planet’s skin for minerals and timber, farms and ranches, not to mention the type of development that characterizes so much of Long Island — shopping centers, industrial parks, and residences. These impacted places, especially the first few, lend themselves well to rewilding to restore the natural, living fabric that was once there.  

You might reasonably ask “What is rewilding?” not to mention what wilding means. As we learn in The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small (Bloomsbury Publishing  PLC) by Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell, it is a form of ecological restoration (to restore to the wild condition). What separates it from typical ecological restoration efforts, however, is that the rewilder may not try to restore exactly what was once there or definitively know what species end up colonizing a rewilded site. In this regard rewilding falls in between active, intense hands-on ecological manipulation and non-intervention or just letting “nature take its course.” 

The concept of rewilding developed in the late 20th century when several conservationists offered a vision of North America, rewilded through the implementation of three “C’s” as guiding principles — cores, connectors, and carnivores. Cores involve the expansion of national parks and other public spaces; connectors involve land protection work to connect these expanded public spaces so wildlife can move between sites to promote genetic health among species through genetic exchange and as a hedge again local extirpation in one area; and, lastly, carnivores means the introduction of predators such as wolves, bears, etc. where possible, recognizing the critical role they play in maintain the health of ecosystems.

In Europe, where there are not the expansive wilderness areas like those found in North America, rewilding has taken on a slightly different definition or tone. Here it is viewed as “kickstarting the ecosystem” or as the authors state: “Putting nature back in the driver’s seat.” They do this by restoring rivers and wetlands by restoring their hydrology, promoting keystone species (species that play a disproportionate role in maintaining the stability of a natural community just as a keystone in an arch keeps an entire arch intact), reintroducing missing species (or if they cannot be reintroduced due to extirpation introduction of surrogate species that behave in a similar way ecologically) and implementing strategies to promote biodiversity, which as its name suggests is the full suite of living things in a specific area.       

We learn this and so many other things in this rewilding guide. And what a guide it is, all 559 pages worth, providing both breadth and depth on insights, principles, ideas, and strategies on rewilding. It is easy to get intimidated by this book given its level of detail and the sheer amount of information it contains. However, it is written in a clear and straightforward style, the authors recounting years of experience in their effort to rewild  a 3,500 acre estate in West Sussex, Great Britain. 

The book is a “how to guide,” covering all the elements necessary to make places that have been compromised once again ecologically diverse and stable, thereby providing the numerous benefits in the form of goods and services intact wild areas provide (e.g. clean water and air, soil creation, timber and wild food production). 

While some chapters on wilding have limited applicability to Long Island or New York State, such as introducing large herbivores, a number of chapters in the book have specific relevance to Long Island.

One such chapter is the discussion on “rewilding water.” As the authors note,  wetlands — rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, bogs, marshes etc.  — cover a tiny percentage of the Earth’s  surface, estimated to be about 1 to 2%, but contain habitat for 10% of  all animal species and 30% of all vertebrate species. It is clear: wetlands are important from an ecological and biodiversity perspective. 

What are the elements of rewilding a wetland, say, a stream? 

◆ Restore naturally meandering, S-shape channels in the waterway if previously straightened (so many streams and rivers have been in an effort to carry water away); 

◆ Revegetate the banks to eliminate erosion and plant trees along the banks to create shade that create cooler water conditions conducive for fish like trout (the authors recommend 50% of the water surface be shaded);

◆ Leave tree trunks and branches that have fallen in the stream since they provide hiding places for aquatic wildlife; 

◆ Create pools in the stream bed so water remains for invertebrates and fish during low water periods and create gravel bars that provide microhabitat for invertebrates; 

“Daylighting” streams by unburying them and removing structural conduits; and

◆ Removing weirs, dams and other impediments to the movement of fish and other aquatic animals.  

This last recommendation has special relevance to Long Island as the overwhelming number of streams contain obstacles from past road and railroad construction and placement of grist mills. Dam removal would immediately help a number of species such as river herring and American eel. 

The book makes similar constructive recommendations relating to other rewilding elements such as vegetation and with animals. A section entitled “Rewilding Your Garden — Applying rewilding principles in a small place” may be of special interest to homeowners. It contains great tips on how to make the surroundings around a home more diverse and environmentally friendly, not to mention beautiful.  

Each chapter has an introduction and then for ease of reading has distinguishing green colored pages which highlight a separate but related section providing informative specifics of the rewilding effort; these are called “Putting It Into Practice”. This approach is useful in distinguishing theoretical and scientific underpinnings of rewilding from the practical steps needed to achieve the desired rewilding element.  

Underpinning this book is an optimistic perspective that with careful, sensitive and appropriate human intervention, nature can heal itself, if given half a chance. 

As the book makes clear, if the ideas, strategies, and recommendations flowing from rewilding principles are implemented in your backyard garden, neighborhood park, or on a much larger scale knitting together national parks, the natural world will be a more healthy, diverse, richer and beautiful place.  

The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small is available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

By John L. Turner

John Turner

Walking out to get the morning paper the other day I noticed a small flock of robins land in a large American Holly growing in a corner of the front yard. They had landed to get their breakfast — an abundance of bright red holly berries scattered in bunches throughout the tree that will fuel them through part of the 40 degree day. 

American Holly (Ilex opaca) is the most well-known member of the holly family on Long Island and one of our more distinctive native trees. Its leaves are unique, rigid with spines (to prevent browsing), and their dark green color gives rise to the Latin species name of opaca. Their flowers are whitish-green and are as inconspicuous as the berries are conspicuous. The attractive, tannish smooth-skin bark has distinctive “eyes,” locations where branches once grew. This is the tree — with its attractive contrasting colors of red and green — that’s seasonally associated with our holiday season. 

If you pay closer attention, you’ll soon realize that not all American Hollies display bright red berries. Some trees have an abundance of berries while many others have none at all. The former are female trees and the latter male trees. All hollies are dioecious, meaning they have either male or female flowers but not both on the same tree. 

This trait is fairly uncommon in the plant world (your garden asparagus is another example); more common are monoecious trees of which oaks, hickories, and maples are a few examples, in which a tree possesses both female and male flowers. And to complicate things a bit further: among plant species such as in the Rose family you have what are known as “perfect” flowers in which male parts (stamens) and female parts (pistils and ovaries) not only occur on the same plant but on the same flower.   

American Holly is widely distributed on Long Island and you can see scattered trees in many forest tracts but two places standout if you want to see a forest dominated by hollies: the maritime holly forest situated in the Sunken Forest at Fire Island National Seashore and the forests on the north side of the road in Montauk State Park (quite viewable along the trail that takes you out to the viewing blind overlooking the popular seal haul-out site located in the northwestern corner of the park). In the Sunken Forest, the unique forest that grows between the holly co-dominates the forest with shadbush and sassafras. It is a very rare type of forest known from very few locations, being ranked by the New York Natural Heritage Program as both an S1 and G1 community, in the state and world, respectively. Another fine example of a maritime holly forest is a two hour ride from western Long Island: the holly forests at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. 

American Holly has long been prized for its berries and foliage and there are accounts in older botanical books rueing the wanton cutting of holly foliage during the holiday season. One author remarks he was glad that the holly wasn’t often cut down, although its wood is hard and can be easily stained or shellacked, “since the depredations of the Christmas-green pickers take toll enough.”    

Inkberry (Ilex glabra), an attractive shrub that grows throughout Long Island, is a member of the holly family; it is especially abundant in low-lying areas in the Pine Barrens such as long streams and pond edges. An extensive stand of Inkberry is found along the Paumanok Path as it passes just north of Owl Pond in the Birch Creek/Owl Pond section of the Pine Barrens located in Southampton. 

Inkberry is a classic “coastal plain” species and, not surprisingly, its distribution in New York State is restricted to Long Island.  Inkberry prefers sand soils where the water table is shallow, i.e., not far below the surface. It is not typically found growing in standing water but right alongside wet areas where the roots can easily access moisture. The species name refers to the glabrous or very smooth nature of the attractive green foliage of the plant — hairy it is not! The common name refers, of course, to the dark blue berries that stain your fingers an inky-purple if you crush them.

The winterberries from the third group of holly members on Long Island and unlike the prior two groups are not evergreen, dropping their leaves each autumn. But they are holly members, nevertheless, as can be seen by a glance at their bright red berries. Smooth Winterberry (Ilex laevigata) and Common Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) are the two more common species; Mountain Holly (Ilex mucronata) and Mountain Winterberry (Ilex montana) also occur here.   

Back to the robins on a late November day: as their feeding demonstrated, while not edible to humans (in fact, they are poisonous to humans and their pets), birds, including the beautiful cedar waxwing, readily eat the brightly advertised holly fruits, especially later in the winter season when other more highly-preferred berries (read: higher fat content) have disappeared. Thus, hollies play a helpful role in keeping nature’s cafeteria open through the tough stretch of late winter through early spring, helping to sustain songbird flocks overwintering on Long Island.  

A resident of Setauket, author John Turner is conservation chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, author of “Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Nature Guide to Long Island” and president of Alula Birding & Natural History Tours.

Above, recycled wrapping paper from Wrappily.

A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

According to several Internet sources Americans throw away 2.3 million pounds (1,150 tons) of wrapping paper each year, much during the holiday season. This is enough paper to circle our fragile planet 9 times! So, this holiday season, why not give a gift to the Earth by wrapping your presents with wrapping paper made from recycled paper. Better yet, use existing paper such as easily recycled newspaper or place the present in a reusable bag or wrapped in a reusable cloth.   

Above, recycled wrapping paper from Wrappily.

There are a few companies that offer wrapping paper made from recycled materials. Wrappily is one company that offers recycled wrapping paper; it’s made from newspaper. For those of the Jewish faith, Uncommon Goods also offers wrapping paper made from recycled materials; their products contain various Hanukkah designs.

There are a number of options if wrapping cloths, which can be used over and over again, interests you. These cloths, known as furoshiki, are popular in Japan as a means to conceal presents and are growing in popularity here.  Many companies offer these products on-line. When thinking about those you love this holiday season, don’t forget Mother Earth!

A resident of Setauket, author John Turner is conservation chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, author of “Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Nature Guide to Long Island” and president of Alula Birding & Natural History Tours.

 

Author Carl Safina with Alfie

Reviewed by John L. Turner

Perhaps it’s due to an owl’s forward facing eyes, imparting a humanlike aspect to its face, that is the source of the long-held belief that owls possess great wisdom and intelligence. Actually other birds, most notably members of the crow family like ravens, crow, and blue jays do best in intelligence tests but you wouldn’t know it from the photo of Alfie, a screech owl, that adorns the cover of Carl Safina’s new book Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe. With an intense stare suggesting human level concentration possessing sickle shaped talons clutching the branch, Alfie is a vibrantly alive bird,  an impressive predator that fully “knows” how to be an owl.    

The book involves the author raising a young screech owl dealt a terrible hand that would have been a fatal one were it not for the intervention of the author. Along the way Alfie learns to become more independent, finds a mate and raises a family of three.     

Author Carl Safina

What becomes immediately clear and what I did not know despite being neighbors and friends of Carl and Patricia, but what I should have known given their abiding and deep interest in the natural world, is just how much time they spent closely watching Alfie reach her potential, blossoming into a fully functioning adult owl, one member of a five member family — all during the COVID pandemic. 

They both, but especially Carl, spent what must be hundreds of hours observing Alfie.  And as a reader of the book will soon discover, this world enlarges with the appearance of her mate Plus-One and the logical results of Plus-One appearing on the scene — three young baby screech owls. These babies, individually and together, are variously described as: “little spheres of fluffiness,” “a fat ball of a baby,” and a “fluff-jacketed cutie.” The quintet were named “The Hoo,” who together “remained down-jacketed, fluffy, light as the clouds above them.”

In this way the book is a classic story of a scientist delving deeply into the world of a wild animal, along the lines of Douglas Chadwick’s The Wolverine Way, Bernd Heinrich’s Mind of the Raven or Maria Mudd Ruth’s detailed study of the Marbled Murrelet in Rare Bird. There’s exploration and analysis, observation and interpretation, study and understanding, and most importantly the development of a strong relationship. 

What’s unique in Alfie & Me is this all takes place in an acre or so around their suburban home, and within that area most within a 50-foot envelope around the house. This story, the development of an intimate “around the house” wild bird-human relationship, ties Alfie & Me with Julie Zickefoose’s Saving Jemima, in which the author spends a good part of a year raising a blue jay to health and independence. There are many delightful parallels between the two books.  

Unlike Safina’s earlier books like Song for a Blue Ocean, A Sea in Flames, Voyage of the Turtle, and Eye of the Albatross, Alfie & Me, is more of an extension of, and elaboration upon, some of the concepts advanced in Safina’s three most recent books: The View from Lazy Point, Becoming Wild and Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. These later books explore the intellectual, emotional, and sensory world of animals, their societies and culture, and complexities in the relationship and attitudes of humans with other life forms, specifically, and the natural world generally. 

A fundamental aspect of the book is, of course, the interspecies relationship between a few humans and a few owls with colorful side notes on a few dogs and a flock of chickens; an overlapping connection between the one world of the two species, the author aptly emphasizing Alfie being able to place “a wing in ours, I, with a foot in hers.” Or “….the ability to walk the bridge Alfie had opened between their world and ours.”  

The Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio) is one of two common woodland owls that find breeding habitat here on Long Island. Along with their much larger cousin, and sometimes mortal enemy the Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), Screech Owls are surprisingly common in forests both large and small. Even parcels as small as ten acres are likely to host a breeding pair. Less common woodland owls here include Saw-whet (Aegolius acadicus) and Long-eared Owls (Asio otis) “whoo” are joined by open country visitors during the winter months — Snowy Owls (Bubo scandiacus) and Short-eared Owls (Asio flammeus), coastal and grassland inhabitants respectively.  

And unique to the owl species found in eastern North America, screech owls come in two color forms or morphs. Alfie and Plus-One are red or rufous morph individuals which is the more common form on Long Island. Or as Safina notes “a magical russet comet.” The grey form, however, is more common throughout the species range.  

Safina is a highly gifted writer, quite adept at turning a phrase and the book is replete with colorful imagery and strong sentences, to wit: “I have always felt that my generation existed in a time spanning the last good years and the beginning of the end of the world,” “The air was stock still. Leafy canopies of maples and the spires of cedars formed a denser darkness against the star-studded vault of space”,  and “If they fell to the ground, they’d still climb straight up a trunk, but they were also realizing that crossing distances involved flapping their interesting upper limbs. In a way, they were finding their inner owl.”  

This book would be a worthwhile read if all it presented was a highly articulate description of  screech owls and their behavior and ecology. But it’s so much more. Alfie provides a feathered springboard for the author to discuss how western thought, espoused by western thought leaders (think Descartes, Bacon, Dawkins, et al.) has led to the dangerous result and our current predicament where so many members of human society are estranged from animals and nature with the resultant deterioration of the global environment. Their “reductionist” thinking of animals as being nothing more than soulless machines incapable of thoughts, emotions, even the ability to feel pain, was all pervasive resulting in the view that humans commanded a lofty and unique perch above lowly forms of life that gave them full dominion over all animals.   

In contrast, Safina documents, Eastern and North American Indigenous cultures and religions held views that better harmonized humankind with the animal kingdom and the natural elements of the world. A world with more passion and less consumption. Clearly, the book is an exploration of proffered beliefs, strongly held. 

This book also is an exultation of life and living things, a fundamentally and qualitatively unique aspect in this otherwise lifeless universe, a concept that Safina notes and embraces and Alfie illustrates. Life is something worth celebrating, cherishing, and protecting. “The owls gave us the opportunity to pay attention. That was their main gift to us: to be present for a while in the always magical here and now.”

Through Safina’s prose we all can take delight in his decision to intercede and change what was clearly a fatal trajectory for Alfie. We are all the richer for his intervention. Safina ends: “It was amazing how quiet and empty the air could feel once you subtracted owls. But now I knew they were out there, livening up the nights with or without me. Yes, I felt an empty nester. But I’d been dealt a full house, a winning hand.”   

Both Carl and Alfie have a lot to say. And we gain pleasure in listening. Alfie & Me is a most important book and a most compelling and worthwhile read — we too have been dealt a winning hand.