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John Turner

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Children pose for photo-ops at Harbor Day. Photo by Rita J. Egan
State Assemblyman Mike Fitzpatrick (R-St. James) with the Sons of Norway. Photo by Rita J. Egan
The Algo-Rhythms performed during Harbor Day. Photo by Rita J. Egan
The event featured a touch tank. Photo by Rita J. Egan
Head of the Harbor Mayor Michael Utevsky stands with enviornmentalist John Turner, who is awarded the Dr. Larry Swanson Environmental Award. Photo by Rita J. Egan
Peter Scully, former Suffolk County deputy executive, accepts The Friends of Stony Brook Harbor Lifetime Achievement Award. Photo by Rita J. Egan
Peter Scully, former Suffolk County deputy executive, accepts The Friends of Stony Brook Harbor Lifetime Achievement Award. Photo by Rita J. Egan
Children admire a screech owl at the Sweetbriar Nature Center booth. Photo by Rita J. Egan
Mayor Richard Smith speaks at Harbor Day. Photo by Rita J. Egan
Village of Head of the Harbor Deputy Mayor Lisa Davisdon greets Suffolk County Legislator Steve Englebright as Head of the Harbor Mayor Michael Utevsky looks on. Photo by Rita J. Egan
A girl gets her face painted at Harbor Day. Photo by Rita J. Egan

By Rita J. Egan

Hundreds visited Long Beach in Nissequogue on Saturday, Sept. 7, to satisfy their curiosity about Stony Brook Harbor and the waterway’s inhabitants.

The villages of Head of the Harbor and Nissequogue, along with The Friends of Stony Brook Harbor, partnered to host Harbor Day at the Long Beach boat launch with Stony Brook Harbor as its background. Last year, the event returned after a 15-year hiatus.

Nissequogue Mayor Richard Smith presented Peter Scully, Suffolk’s former deputy county executive, with The Friends of Stony Brook Harbor Lifetime Achievement Award. “There is no better candidate,” Smith said.

The mayor congratulated Scully, who resides in Stony Brook and grew up in St. James, on his longtime commitment to improving the health of local waterways, including his work with nitrogen remediation during his tenure with the county.

Upon accepting the award, Scully, dubbed Suffolk’s “water czar” when he was deputy county executive, said he didn’t consider himself a water champion but someone who had been in the right place at the right time on many occasions “working with a lot of outstanding elected officials.”

Environmentalist John Turner, of Setauket and the Four Harbors Audubon Society, accepted the Dr. Larry Swanson Environmental Award from Head of the Harbor Mayor Michael Utvesky. 

“Name any endangered part of nature on Long Island, and John L. Turner will be there to help preserve it,” Utevsky said.

Turner said he was honored to accept the same recognition as the 2023 recipient, Suffolk County Legislator Steven Englebright (D-Setauket), and the award that bears Swanson’s name.

“I knew Larry and had a great deal of respect for him,” Turner said. 

In addition to the awards ceremony, attendees enjoyed various activities including live music, a talk by historian Vivian Nicholson-Mueller about harbor life in the 1860s and a dunk tank. Representatives from Four Harbors Audubon Society, Sweetbriar Nature Center, Turtle Rescue of the Hamptons and more were on hand with educational activities and to answer questions about Stony Brook Harbor and its aquatic animals.

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American Oystercatcher. Photo by Craig Turner
Ruddy Turnstone. Photo by Craig Turner
Red Knot. Photo by Craig Turner
Semipalmated Plover. Photo by Craig Turner
Greater Yellowlegs. Photo by Craig Turner
A flock of shorebirds. Photo by Craig Turner

By John L. Turner

John Turner

On a warm morning in early August, my wife Georgia and I climbed aboard a pontoon boat stationed along a canal in Freeport between two seafood restaurants, joining two dozen kindred spirits excited to explore the marsh islands dotting Middle Bay. While there were several purposes for the trip — getting to know other individuals committed to conservation through involvement in numerous downstate Audubon chapters being a prime one — once the boat began moving birds became the central focus. We were all interested in seeing what birds might be around as “fall” migration gets under way for a variety of coastal bird species. 

The first highlight was several Black-crowned Night-herons perched on large wooden pilings followed by a family of Killdeer standing around on some earthen mounds in a forgotten lot at the corner of the canal and bay. Killdeer derive their name from their ringing call which sounds like their name — kill-deer! kill-deer! killdeer! Killdeer are a species of shorebirds but typically aren’t found along the shore. Rather they are birds of open places like athletic fields and large gravel patches, vulnerable places that sometimes get them and their chicks in trouble.     

Speaking of shorebirds, this was the group I was most hoping to see. Even though we’re on a boat in mid-summer, many species of shorebirds have embarked on their southbound “fall” sojourns, some heading south from breeding grounds situated north of the Arctic Circle. And where might they be heading? Well, some species like Red Knots eventually make their way to Tierra Del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. Many others select other latitudes in South America and Central America while still others choose the southeastern United States or islands in the Caribbean. 

As all these migratory journeys illustrate, shore bird species —plovers, sandpipers and the larger ones like godwits — are indeed globetrotters of the Western Hemisphere.  Nearly two dozen shorebird species are known to undertake non-stop flights of 3,000 miles or more — that’s roughly the distance from New York to Seattle. The fuel? Subcutaneous fat stored under the skin. Take that you ultramarathoners out there! Long Island is one of the many “migratory motels” these highly mobile species depend upon during migration, a key stage in completing their annual life cycles. 

We soon saw a small flock of shorebirds sitting amidst a few common terns along a small pond in the marsh — a single Whimbrel and half a dozen Black-bellied Plovers. In full breeding plumage the latter species is one of the most striking birds in North America — jet black on the breast, belly, lower flanks and cheeks with a white cap on its head and upper neck (please don’t hesitate to pause your reading of this article to check out the image on the Internet). The back is speckled in a salt-and-pepper pattern. 

In comparison, the Whimbrel (once called the Hudsonian curlew), is a modest, understated bird with a back that contains flecking that’s medium brown in color, a lighter brown neck and a handsome crown with two prominent brown crown stripes and two more brown stripes running through the eyes. More prominent still is the long decurved bill, perfectly suited from pulling fiddler crabs from their burrows. The decurved bill gives rise to the generic part of its scientific name (Numenius phaeopus). Numenius means “of the new moon” a reference of the similarity to the crescent shaped bill to the crescent moon that forms right after the new moon. 

Moving south into the bay we slowly worked along the edge of an island and were rewarded by other shorebird species — some ‘peeps’ like Semipalmated and Least Sandpipers and a few Sanderlings. A pair of Greater Yellowlegs, living up to their name with long, bright yellow legs, stood nearby and in the marsh a few Willets were feeding, a larger shorebird species that nests on Long Island. They were soon joined by a few American Oystercatchers, highly distinctive and large shorebirds with long bright red bills that are also local nesting birds.  

We continued on and two more species were soon tallied — Semipalmated Plovers and the harlequin looking Ruddy Turnstone (another fine time to pause to look up the species on the Internet). This turnstone species, another shorebird with some populations breeding above the Arctic Circle, has a ruddy-colored back and tail with black barring, a white belly, bright orange legs, and a distinctive black and white facial pattern with two white spots between the eyes and the base of the bill. While this bold pattern makes the bird stand out while sitting on a rock, dock, or on the sand at a marsh’s edge, it helps the bird blend in while sitting on eggs in its vegetated tundra habitat in the Far North. Ruddy Turnstones get their name from the aforementioned ruddy back and their habit of flicking over shells and stones while foraging for food on the beach. This unique foraging behavior allows them to find food items other shorebirds cannot find.    

Semipalmated Plovers are a handsome shorebird species. A uniform chocolate brown back and top of head with a clean white belly and throat separated by a bold black bar, adults in breeding plumage have an orange and black bill and orange legs. Their name is derived from the fact their feet are partially webbed but not entirely webbed like the foot of a duck. They’re similar in appearance and shape to Piping Plovers, a small shorebird that nests on beaches around Long Island. In fact, one birder has noted that a Semipalmated Plover looks like a sandy colored Piping Plover after being submerged in water and its plumage darkens.

Along the East Coast shorebirds were once actively hunted for sport and to a lesser extent for food and such was the case on Long Island. There are many written accounts of hunting trips to mud- and sand flats, marshes and the outer beach to gun for shorebirds, often using wooden decoys to draw them in. (There were a number of famous decoy makers on Long Island and some of their decoys can be purchased online). The hunting pressure was so intense and relentless and so many birds killed that many shorebird species declined precipitously. 

One species, the Eskimo Curlew, closely related to the Whimbrel, is feared to be extinct from persistent hunting for the table, as the bird was considered quite delectable, containing lots of fat, a fact that led to their colloquial name of ‘doughbirds’. The last known flock of Eskimo Curlews was seen in Barbados in 1963. It was a common shorebird that passed through Long Island during fall migration. Today, almost all shorebird species are legally protected from hunting. One exception is the most ‘unshorebirdlike’ of all shorebirds — the American Woodcock, a forest dwelling shorebird that is still actively hunted.    

Today, shorebirds face threats of a different nature. Habitat loss, as shorelines are hardened or developed, reduces the availability of feeding habitat, compromising the quality of their ‘motel’ experience, and climate disruption adds a huge layer of concern that is hard to measure in how it might affect the welfare of these iconic species. But there are many individuals and organizations working to safeguard shorebirds — from ending shorebird hunting in the Caribbean to artisanal salt farmers in Honduras working to protect habitat for black-necked stilts (we get a few that pass through Long Island every year) to the creation of the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN) that identifies and protects sites critical as stopover habitat for shorebirds.   

For most of us, shorebirds’ lives are invisible, their existence dependent on remote and wild landscapes often in places so very distant from us that our paths rarely cross. When they do it’s a momentary gift — maybe it’s a scurrying flock of sanderlings retreating from the foam of a crashing ocean wave or the piercing tew! tew! tew! of a greater yellowlegs you’ve flushed from a shore edge while kayaking or watching the broken wing act of an adult piping plover trying to distract you away from its nest or young. As the boat experience illustrates, we are in the season of gift giving. 

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.

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A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

If you search “wildlife entanglement — six-pack rings” and then choose images you’ll see many animals that have become entangled in those blasted plastic rings — sea turtles, waterfowl, seagulls, and many other species, sometimes with fatal consequences. 

While it’s worth buying beverage packs that are packaged without rings whenever possible, and more and more companies are making other types of attachments that don’t pose the problems that the six-pack rings pose (there’s even one company that makes rings edible to marine life), if you find that your desired beverage pack comes connected with the six-pack rings it’s easy to ensure they don’t ever become a menace once you’ve tossed the rings in the trash. Simply take ten seconds to cut each of the rings! 

To reduce the chance at making smaller plastic pieces that could become a problem, cut each ring just once. Also be sure to cut the smaller middle holes once as they could cause entanglement too. The key is to have no holes that could become a problem to a wild animal.

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.

 

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Horseshoe crabs at Cedar Beach in Mount Sinai. Photo by John Turner

By John L. Turner

John Turner

Spending the first five years of my life in Flushing situated in central Queens, I knew nothing of horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus). My first encounter, after moving to Smithtown, was at the age of six during a visit to Cordwood Beach at the southern edge of Stony Brook Harbor. As I waded in the water these strange domed creatures were around us, moving slowly in the sand, animals so otherworldly different in appearance than any other thing I had seen in my young life.  

I don’t know when he learned this but my friend Tommy, a several year veteran of the beach scene, yelled loudly to watch out for their tails because they sting and I’d get hurt! Unfortunately, Tommy was perpetuating a false and unfortunate myth, one that has caused far too many crabs to be hurt and killed, as this remarkable and novel species is utterly harmless. In reality, as the passing decades have illustrated all too well, horseshoe crabs have considerably more reason to fear humans than we do them.    

This fear is borne out by numbers, numbers as alarming as they are staggering. Over the past quarter century more than four million horseshoe crabs have been killed in New York alone for use as bait in the American eel and whelk fisheries. As of now, the NYSDEC allows for 150,000 crabs to be “harvested” annually, as it has for each year of the past decade,  although to the agency’s credit, they could allow more than twice that amount based on the annual allotment of the 13-state Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) which sets crab quotas for the thirteen east coast states that are members of the Commission. 

This will change if Governor Kathy Hochul signs into law a bill (Assembly bill 10140/Senate bill 3185-A) the New York State legislature passed earlier this year which bans commercial crab harvest. It also bans the harvest of crabs for medical reasons but more about that later. 

Horseshoe crabs, which are not crabs at all but most closely related to scorpions and spiders, are often referred to as living fossils due to how far back they appear in the fossil record. Crabs reminiscent of the four existing species date back 450 million years ago to the Silurian Period of the Paleozoic Era and, remarkably, horseshoe crab fossils from the Mesozoic Era some 245 million years ago appear almost identical to modern-day species, a span many hundreds of times longer than humans have been on Earth. Now that’s an effective body design! 

Talking about the crab’s body, it consists of three basic parts: the horseshoe-shaped main body known as the prosoma to which is hinged a middle section, this part distinctive as each side contains half a dozen backward pointing spines. The middle is connected to the crab’s tail or telson, reportedly used by native Americans and early colonists as spear tips used for impaling eels and other fish. The telson is not used for stinging or stabbing (the horseshoe crab can’t do these things) but is used to right a crab overturned in a strong shoreline surf typically during mating. 

 If you turn a horseshoe crab upside down, cradling its prosoma in your hand, you’ll see other key body parts protected by the shell. Immediately jumping into view are the six pairs of legs, probably moving around wildly as you hold the animal in a position it finds disturbing. 

The first two smaller leg pairs are used to place food in the crab’s mouth which is situated in the middle of the legs, surrounded by them, and the other five pairs are used to help the crab walk, especially the legs closest to the tail. The first of these five pairs of legs, the ones next to the legs used for feeding, are different between males and females and are diagnostic in determining sex. With males, the ends of these legs contain claspers which look like tiny boxing gloves, making them distinctive from the other legs the male crab has; in females these legs look the same as all the others. Males use these claspers, well, to clasp the shell edge of the female with whom he is mating.   

Between the legs and the tail are the animal’s gills. Known as book gills because the gills are laid out like the pages in a book, the 150-200 “pages” per each of the five gills provide an amazing surface area the crab uses to absorb dissolved oxygen from the water — about 30 square feet of surface area! This is a major reason why crabs can survive in areas with lower oxygen levels. The crab also uses the gills to move through the water as it fans the gill covers synchronously.

Another distinctive aspect of horseshoe crab are their eyes — all ten of them! The two lateral eyes on each side of the body are, by far, the most noticeable and were closely studied for several decades, helping scientists to learn some basic aspects of animal vision. These are compound eyes with each one containing up to one thousand photoreceptors; these photoreceptors allow for the crab to see to each side, up and down, and forward and backward. They are about 100 times as large as the photoreceptors — rods and cones — situated in our eyes.    

And internally, there’s some pretty fascinating stuff going on. Take their blood. We humans bleed red, having blood that is iron based. Not so with horseshoe crabs. Their blood is turquoise colored because it is copper based. It is also extremely sensitive to bacterial endotoxins with the blood clotting in their presence. This clotting agent, known as Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL), is used on materials and medicines placed or injected in the human body such as vaccines or the fabricated joints used in knee and hip replacements to make sure they’re bacteria free.  If you’ve had an operation you can thank horseshoe crabs for ensuring your safety!

 Unfortunately, there is a downside to LAL — it is collected by bleeding horseshoe crabs via a needle inserted at the base of the tail — and approximately 15% die in the process and all survivors released back into the water are compromised at least temporarily. The good news is a synthetically manufactured alternative to LAL known as rFC has been developed which harms no crabs. rFC is widely used in Europe and is very likely to be approved for use in the United States later this summer, as well as in Asian countries.             

If you spend time along the shore you’ve probably seen the shells of horseshoe crabs. If they’re dark brown (and stinky!) you’ve come across a deceased crab. You might also find crabs that are tan-colored. These aren’t dead crabs but rather the “unstinky” molts of crabs that were very much alive when they shed their outgrown exoskeleton. If you pick up one of these fragile structures and pinch the sides you might see a crack along the edge of the shell where the top and bottom meet. It is through this seam from which the molting crab emerges, casting off its old skin, so to speak. Horseshoe crabs molt as many as eighteen times during their 25-year lives (assuming they’re not caught for bait) as they grow from tiny crabs to dinner-plate size animals.     

Drawn by the full (especially) and new moons in May and June, (actually the attraction is the higher than usual tides caused by these moons rather than the moon phases themselves) horseshoe crabs come to the water’s edge to spawn. You might find several smaller males swarming around a large female with one male attached by the aforementioned claspers. She lays the eggs in the well oxygenated sand at the interface of land and water. A healthy large female can lay upwards of 90,000 tiny green colored eggs per season. These eggs are vital food for a number of other animals.  At least one dozen species of shorebirds feed upon these tiny but protein rich little packets, including Ruddy Turnstones, Semipalmated Sandpipers, and  the federally threatened Red Knot. Many fish eat them too such as bluefish and weakfish. Loggerhead turtles, a federally endangered species, prey on the adults.        

We have a complex and ever evolving relationship with horseshoe crabs. We’ve harvested them by the truckload to be cut up into quarter pieces for bait, yet we spend time walking beaches to return stranded crabs to the water or flip right-side up crabs on their back in order to save their lives. We have ground them up for fertilizer but also lead moonlit “horseshoe crab appreciation” hikes highlighting their fascinating life histories. 

We still retain unfounded fears they sting, stab, or bite but delight in watching them during their annual mating rituals as they spawn billions of eggs, some of which provide sustenance to shorebirds traveling between hemispheres. But with the advancement of rFC and its promise to eliminate crab mortality from bleeding and the legislation to stop the commercial harvest awaiting the Governor’s action, we have a chance to write a new, much more positive chapter in the horseshoe crab-human relationship, one that no longer views crabs as only a commodity to be used and abused. 

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.

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Pixabay photo
A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

As mentioned in the May 2023 “Living Lightly” column, leaving grass clippings on your lawn is a great way to help a lawn and save you work and a little bit of money.  Research has demonstrated that grass clippings are high in nitrogen — an essential element your lawn needs — and by leaving clippings you’ve accounted for about 25% of your lawn’s annual nitrogen needs, meaning you can buy and apply less fertilizer. 

Clippings can also help your lawn retain moisture, resulting in less water use. It also means you don’t have to go through the laborious process of emptying the contents of the mower bag into refuse bags and lugging the bags to the curb.

And it should be noted that as the Brookhaven Town landfill nears closure, it’s a great idea for each of us to generate less garbage needing to be disposed of as we are the ones, through our tax bills, who will pay for increased garbage disposal costs resulting from the landfill’s closure. So as many lawn care professionals urge: “Cut it high and let it lie.

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.

 

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Photo by Raymond Janis

Unjustified dismantlement of West Meadow Beach cottages

I am writing in response to last week’s article concerning the new West Meadow Beach sign which memorializes the cottages that once stood there [“New West Meadow Beach sign evokes old controversy,” The Village Times Herald, July 25]. Like the sign, the article fails to reflect the more nuanced story of the West Meadow Beach cottages and their significance to our community. As someone deeply connected to this community, I must address the misrepresentations and the devastating loss we have suffered.

Steve Englebright [D-Setauket], the former state assemblyman [and current county legislator], has shown himself to be a disgrace. Even if his story from his 20s about landing on the beach and being chased away were true, his relentless pursuit to remove the beach cottages was an abuse of his office. Englebright’s personal crusade and the narrative he and his associates crafted used circumstantial evidence to paint a false picture of a community that I knew intimately.

The beach cottages were not the domain of a privileged few but a bucolic community of families who created memories and contributed to the fabric of Stony Brook. Englebright’s claim that “most of the people of Brookhaven Town were denied access to their own public land” is simply untrue. Instead of addressing a genuine community concern, he pursued a personal agenda with the help of a few local activists who exploited his political influence to achieve an extreme outcome.

Herb Mones, of the West Meadow Beach Advisory Committee and one of the privileged homeowners behind West Meadow Creek, pursued a hateful agenda rather than working with the community on solutions. His group started the first legal challenges against the cottages in 1991, resulting in rulings that public parkland didn’t belong to private interests. This act has torn a hole in our marvelous town and demonstrated a cruel use of legislation to destroy a special place for so many. Rather than seeking an alternative zoning plan to balance access and preservation, Englebright and his cohorts chose destruction.

Today, the strip of land where the cottages once stood is a barren wasteland, neglected and unprotected. The community that once thrived there is gone, and the town is poorer for it.

Englebright’s defeat from his Assembly seat is a small consolation, but he should be further removed from any position of power. His version of events starkly contrasts with the experiences of many other town residents. My stepfather, for instance, was welcomed and rescued by the cottage community when his boat ran ashore. Similarly, I witnessed my late father coming to the aid of a pilot who crashed his lightweight aircraft on the beach. We welcomed the pilot into our home, shared stories, and my father helped him repair his aircraft.

Englebright’s defensive claims and narrative paints a very different picture than The New York Times story from 2004 [www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/nyregion/long-island-journal-cottages-at-west-meadow-beach-face-end.html] reflecting a community of caring residents who became legislative victims. Nancy Solomon, a folklorist and executive director of Long Island Traditions, rightly pointed out that the bungalows reflected local architectural tradition and that tearing them down was a loss of history. George Barber, president of the Brookhaven Bathing Association, feared that the removal of the cottages would lead to the beach becoming a garbage dump, which we now see happening.

If there is to be a second sign, it should inform the community of Englebright’s abuse of office and the destruction of a cherished treasure of the Three Villages. He and his cronies should be ashamed of themselves, and their actions will not be forgotten.

Jen Schaedel, Stony Brook

Editor’s note: Our front-page story covered the erection of a new sign at the beach and was not a detailed history of the cottages controversy, which was still discussed.

An alternative view of the West Meadow cottages controversy

Last week’s Village Times Herald article, “New West Meadow Beach sign evokes old controversy,” reminded me that it’s been 19 years since the beach liberation. 

Back then, our local newspaper was besieged with letters, including those from owners who promised dire consequences if the cottages were razed — arson, crimes, drugs, pollution and increased traffic. I was one of the people who wrote letters arguing that they must come down, and that the beach be returned to the public.

I thought back to a Brazilian trip where all the beaches were accessible to the public. No hotels or houses were built along the waterfront. A local explained to me that such building was illegal because beaches belong to the public, not the wealthy, would-be homeowners.

Here on Long Island we have a system where, generally, people of means reside on the waterfront and the rest of us share the places that remain public. The West Meadow Beach cottages were one of the worst examples of beachfront land abuse, because it was rented at a discount to those who “voted correctly.” And, yes, I was approached by more than one cottage owner who menacingly advised, “We know where you live.”

A champion of the beach reclamation was Herb Mones who first brought the issue to the taxpayers. And Steve Englebright will always be considered a heroic figure to me because he risked his career against overpowering odds and personal threats in order to do the right thing.

The dire predictions never materialized. No arson, crime, crack houses or increased traffic — just less sewage. It’s a joy seeing people taking that beautiful, serene walk on our peninsula, which is slowly evolving back to its natural state. 

Bruce Stasiuk, East Setauket

Horseshoe crabs need our help!

To readers of this newspaper there is good news about horseshoe crabs but your help is needed.

Legislation to prohibit the harvest of horseshoe crabs has passed the New York State Assembly and Senate (A10140/S3185-A) and awaits action by Gov. Kathy Hochul [D].

Please take a moment to urge her to sign the bill into law. You can do this by either:

1.  Calling her office at 518-474-8390.

2.  Sending a letter of support to:

The Honorable Kathy Hochul

Governor of New York State

New York State Capitol Building

Albany, NY 12224

3.  Going to this website: www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form and type in a comment in the message box.

We have never been closer to stopping the killing of tens of thousands of horseshoe crabs —NYS regulations allow baymen to kill 150,000 annually for bait — and your voice is needed.

Horseshoe crabs have declined significantly over the past several decades and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission earlier in 2024 determined that New York’s horseshoe crab fishery is in “poor condition” — the only state along the East Coast with this troubling designation. 

This poor condition is borne out by our personal experience: Who over the age of 50 doesn’t remember our bay and harbor bottoms once being filled with these iconic animals? This species, known as a living fossil, plays a vital role in the coastal ecosystem with their eggs being eaten by a number of migratory shorebird species, including the red knot which is protected by the federal Endangered Species Act. Their eggs are eaten by many fish species too and the adults are consumed by sea turtles, also listed and protected in the Endangered Species Act. 

There are bait alternatives baymen can use that have proven effective. Over the past 25 years about 3.6 million horseshoe crabs have been killed for bait. It’s time that New York joins our neighboring state Connecticut, which recently enacted a statewide ban on the taking of these living fossils and stops the slaughter. These fascinating animals deserve better. We call on Gov. Hochul to sign the ban into law. It is vital the governor hears from the public by expressing your support for the ban. Please contact Gov. Hochul today!

John Turner

Four Harbors Audubon Society

St. James

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An electric weed wacker. Stock photo
A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

With the warm weather upon us homeowners are revving up lawn mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers and the like. If you find yourself in need of purchasing new equipment, now’s the time to go electric! Many types and models are available covering these tool choices (not to mention snow blowers) and more are coming on the market as we move away from a carbon-based economy. 

Electric yard tools have numerous advantages over gas powered tools. They require less maintenance, are quieter, and produce no pollution. As for this last benefit, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA for short) running a commercial gas powered lawn mower for one hour produces the same amount of pollution as driving a new gas powered car 300 miles and, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, lawn mowers collectively create five percent of the total air pollution generated annually in the United States while burning about 800 million gallons of gas. 

Another major benefit of going with electric yard tools at your next purchase?  The State of New York is offering financial rebates! A homeowner  can receive a 50% rebate up to $125 when the old gas mower is turned in or a 50% rebate of up to $75 for new mower owners.   

So whether it’s for cleaner community air, a quieter neighbrohood, and more green in your wallet, electric yard equipment makes sense.

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.

 

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Forest leaves in the canopy. Pixabay photo

By John L. Turner

John Turner

I had walked for 20 minutes before reaching the intended destination: Hunter’s Garden in Eastport, located in the eastern end of the Manorville Hills, an 8,000-acre section of the LI Pine Barrens. 

An opening in the forest, Hunter’s Garden is the spot of a longstanding tradition — where bay- and sportsmen, farmers, and others that live off the land, many bearded and sporting all patterns of flannel shirts, come together to share steaming bowls of chowder and camaraderie. The soup and socialization takes place each May in a secluded pocket in the Hills, reached via a sandy road coming off  County Route 51. An etched marker stone commemorates the event.   

I sat on the ground, leaned against the slanted marker stone, took a deep breath and began to listen. Birdsong soon surrounded me. A few seconds passed and I detected a robin singing in the distance followed by another song that sounded like a robin’s but richer — a Rose-breasted Grosbeak! Lucky for me the grosbeak came closer and I could see it moving around in a lower stretch of the tree canopy. 

Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Pixabay photo

I slowly raised my binoculars to enjoy one of the more beautiful songbirds found in eastern North America — a black and white plumage pattern with a bright red triangle in the middle of its breast which gave rise to its macabre common name of “Cut-throat”. (A bit of an apocryphal story told by Roger Tory Peterson, who more than anyone else popularized birding, is that he once was contacted by a woman in Texas wondering what she could do to help a bird in her yard that had been shot in the chest and was bleeding profusely; not to worry he reported, explaining it was just the bird’s natural plumage).  

As the minutes rolled by I heard and saw more birds — a Red-eyed Vireo sang incessantly from somewhere in the overhead canopy and much lower to my right came the “veer-veer-veer” of a Veery, a type of thrush. And then, as if almost on cue, its cousin the Wood Thrush began its ethereal song from deeper in the woodland. Scientists have learned that this species, as with many other birds, is actually capable of singing two songs simultaneously due to the complexity of its syrinx or voice box. Soon, the Veery came into view and I could see its distinctive plumage generally indicative of the thrushes — a spotted throat, white belly, and buckskin brown back.  These two thrush species are fairly common breeding birds in the Pine Barrens along with the less common Hermit Thrush. 

Other sights unfolded. A large glade of wood ferns with highly lacy fronds spilled away from me on the other side of the trail creating an interesting visual effect. It was if the ferns were always fuzzy and out of focus due to the highly dissected form of the fronds. No matter how I looked at them, even with squinted eyes, they appeared out-of-focus although, in reality, they weren’t. Being in the shade the tree canopy overhead formed another series of interesting textures and patterns and I appreciated the distinctive architecture of each tree species. The same held true for individual leaves. 

Tiger Swallowtail

Sitting still I began to more acutely pick up movement and soon came the butterflies. In quick succession I saw a mourning cloak fluttering through the understory and then a darker, more rapidly moving butterfly which I realized was a red-spotted purple. And then a tiger! as in Tiger Swallowtail, the largest butterfly found on Long Island, erratically dashing over shrubs in the understory.  

While sight and hearing were the two senses at first most triggered by the immersion in this extensive forest, smell and touch soon came into play. I began to feel the coolness of the earth I was sitting on and the texture of the slightly uneven ground. Scuffing a little of the leaves out of the way caused a pleasant earthy aroma to waft upward, an aroma very much like one experiences while planting vegetables in the spring garden. 

It also changed my focus from looking at trees and birds both distant and afar to immediate close-ups of soil creatures including a pill bug (which you may know by its more colorful name: a roly-poly). I was instantly transported back to my youth when I and friends routinely found roly-polys while turning over logs to investigate what creatures might be living beneath.  

I was practicing a version of what the Japanese refer to as Shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing,” an activity in which one immerses oneself in a forest and uses the full suite of senses — sight, sound, touch, smell and even taste — to take in the sights, sounds, odors, and textures of the forest, thereby achieving “sensory engagement.” 

Shinrin-yoku doesn’t have to  take place only in a forest although the practice is quite conducive there; it can be in a meadow or along the shoreline or other natural or mostly natural landscapes. And research, most conducted in Japan where the practice began in the early 1980’s and is widely practiced today, shows demonstrable mental and physical health benefits from regular episodes of forest bathing. 

Forest leaves in the canopy. Pixabay photo

These peer-reviewed, scientific papers indicate that practitioners are calmer and more relaxed, have lower stress hormones, and are generally happier from regularly “bathing” in the forest. According to the research “forest bathers” also sleep better and have an enhanced ability to focus.  The benefits also accrue to those who experience nature indoors — a study of hospital patients with a wall in their room displaying a forest scene, or who could visually see the outdoors through a window, spend less time in the hospital than patients with no visual connection to nature. 

To practice forest bathing you don’t have to sit still as I did. You also can gain benefits from a leisurely to mid-paced stroll through a forest. The key is to open your “sensory self” to the living landscape happening all around you.   

After an hour or so I arose from my stationary ground-level seat, stretched some lightly aching muscles and slowly walked the mile back to the car, feeling physically and mentally  relaxed yet with my senses quite alert to the surrounding forest landscape.  I wondered: Is this state what a wild animal like a deer, fox, or box turtle always experiences?  

I hope you take a bath soon.

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.

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A Greater Yellowleg searches for food during low tide. Pixabay photo by Steph McBlack

By John L. Turner

I first heard their piercing, three-parted “tew-tew-tew” calls while sitting on the slatted bench in the northwest corner of the Three Village Garden Club property on a day in early May. I’m looking out over the mudflats revealed during low tide at the southern end of Conscience Bay and on the far bank are eighteen Greater Yellowlegs, a highly migratory species of shore bird feeding on the west bank of the bay. 

Living up to their name, the birds have spindly, bright yellow legs that stand out amidst the brown background of the intertidal mud. Their piercing calls have led to a few colorful colloquial names: the telltale and the tattler. 

The flock could have begun their northbound journey as far south as southern Argentina in February or March and during the intervening weeks  moved north, soon passing the equator, all the while hopscotching from one fresh or saltwater wetland to another, like the ones at the southern sliver of Conscience Bay. By the next day they had departed to make their way another thousand miles to the north to nesting grounds — a wide swath across the middle of Canada. 

The bay was a waystation for these hemispheric globetrotters and I felt blessed to watch them live a tiny sliver of their wild lives and it reinforced an important concept in conservation — the need to preserve wild habitat, not just for resident wildlife like squirrels and box turtles, but also for species that depend upon these critical sites during some part of their annual cycle. As the Yellowlegs illustrate, Long Island’s wild habitats are a type of “migratory motel”  for many birds and other mobile species.    

Behind me I hear the season’s first Baltimore Oriole, its sweet but piercing whistle emanating from the top of a tall oak and toward the end of his song a newly  arrived Grey Catbird joins in, emitting a low-key series of sweet and jangled notes, as if practicing vocals for the first time.  And then, behind me to the left, the bubble-up song of a Parula Warbler. The presence of these birds and scores of other species announce that spring has arrived in the northern hemisphere.  

Each species’ wintering range, from which they depart as they begin their spring migration, is unique although many species have similar ranges. For example, both the oriole and catbird have a wintering range that includes the peninsular section of Florida, the Caribbean, and eastern Mexico and Central America, just dropping into South America, although the oriole goes a bit deeper into this southern continent.  

You might think that spring and fall migration are mirror images of each other – birds head north in the spring and south in the fall, with each migration season taking about the same amount of time.  And while the “north in the spring and south in the fall” aspect of these seasonal migrations is true, they are more like images in a distorted mirror. Many species take different routes in the spring than they do in the fall and in some cases involve a strong east-west component. 

Also, spring migration is a more compressed affair beginning in earnest in late February and ending by early June, a period of about 3 ½ months. In contrast, fall migration can last as much as 5 to 6 months. In the spring male birds have an imperative — to gain high quality territories from which to advertise their availability to prospective females. In the fall this mating urge has dissipated and it’s the increasing scarcity of food that propels the birds south. 

 It is hard to overstate the physiological demands that migration places on birds, particularly those species that traverse great distances without stopping to feed.  Many songbirds familiar to us like warblers, vireos, grosbeaks, and thrushes head north through Central America and then, instead of continuing through Mexico, diverge east to the Yucatan peninsula.

The Yucatan is the launching point for the birds that populate eastern North America and they face the daunting task of flying across the 550 or so miles of the Gulf of Mexico as “trans-Gulf” migrants.  If they benefit from good weather containing a tail wind, these birds may make it to the coast of Texas or Louisiana in 16 to 20 hours. During this trip their heart will have beat more than half a million times and the bird will have flapped its wings nearly 200,000 times. For birds that fly greater distances like Red Knots which launch from northeastern Brazil and make landfall on the beaches of Long Island’s south shore in one flight, the heart beats and wing flaps are counted in the millions.       

Physical stress is not the only hazard migrating birds face. Avian predators, like bird-eating hawks, are omnipresent and the lack of such predators at night is one reason why so many songbirds are nocturnal migrants. Another reason is the atmosphere is generally calmer allowing for efficient flight and birds can use the circumpolar star constellations to navigate.  

But birds now migrate in an increasingly human-dominated world and the lit glare of urban centers can disorient and/or attract them. They’re drawn to this glow and come morning they can face a hostile environment of countless buildings clad with glass exteriors, which reflect surrounding landscapes. 

Birds, of course, often cannot distinguish between a row of trees reflected in a large window from the real thing — with fatal consequences. Birds dying from flying into windows is the second leading cause of avian mortality, with as many as one billion birds dying annually in North America alone. Shutting off your outdoor lights and applying window stickers can help you become part of the bird conservation solution. 

Remarkably, for a few millennia scientists didn’t believe or understand that birds migrated at all. They were thought either to hibernate out of sight only to reemerge in warmer weather, transform from a migratory species into a resident species, or perhaps most astoundingly, a belief birds went to the moon, returning when the spring came around. 

This last concept, which seems so strange to us now, made sense hundreds of years ago — after all scientists at the time had no understanding of the vacuum in space that is fatal to life and they regularly noticed and documented birds flying in front of the  moon when full or near so. Many of these stories and more — such as the first efforts of banding birds and later the use of radio transmitters to track the migratory movements of birds — is documented un Rebecca Heisman’s wonderful new book, Flight Paths — How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration.

A relatively new and very useful Internet tool for gaining a sense of bird migration is Birdcast. The website provides remarkably specific information on real-time migration both on a continent wide and local scale.  For example, the data shows that on the morning of April 26, 2024 at 12:50 a.m. an estimated 336.2 million birds were winging it north through the United States on spring migration. And for the Setauket area on the night of Memorial Day an estimated 3,000-6,000 birds passed overhead. 

What Birdcast cannot do is tell you specifically where you’ll see Greater Yellowlegs, Baltimore Orioles, Parula Warblers, or Catbirds. For that you’ll have to head out and explore Long Island’s parks and preserves.  

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.

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Pixabay photo
A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

The collective impacts to the environment to grow the food that sustains us is astronomical. Using more of the food you purchase is a worthwhile way to reduce your impact on the planet.  

A recent article in Living Well (a Newsday supplement) points out that when it comes to produce it’s not just the typical vegetable target that you bought that’s edible, but often the entire plant. And the bonus is no food waste and your dollar is stretched a tiny bit further. 

For example, you can eat all of a beet plant, not just the delicious roots. The stems and leaves are delicious when sautéed and the same whole plant approach can be taken with carrots and leeks. If you like collard greens or kale don’t throw away the “ribs” but sauté or roast them.  

Another delicious use of the whole plant involves broccoli and cauliflower. The ribs and stems of both can be spiralized or disked and cooked. They taste as good as the heads themselves. No need to have any of these plant parts in your compost bin or worse yet in the garbage!

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.

 

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