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John Turner

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Photo by Rajesh Rajput/Unsplash

By John L. Turner

John Turner

Travis and I got our chairs positioned to be comfortable waiting for the show to begin. Facing west about a half hour after sunset on this July 4th evening, Venus dominated the sky shining brightly over a dark grey bank of clouds. 

And then the show began, first a bright flash above us and to our left and then to our right and a third in the middle, higher still. And then several scattered across the sky in a triangle shape. A fireworks display to celebrate the holiday at a public park? Nope, a firefly display in our backyard!  

Each night in early summer brings this show — free of charge — to a location near you, perhaps too in your backyard. It’s the annual mating flash of the firefly or as one prominent firefly expert calls it: “Silent love songs flashing their hearts out.” This yearly show is one of the joys of summer with so many childhoods having been enriched by children dashing to and fro temporarily capturing a few in a glass jar with some grass blades to watch the flashing fireflies up close. For us it’s fun to watch but for fireflies it involves the serious business of reproducing.  

Firefly. Pixabay photo

I remember a firefly display I witnessed about a decade ago at the NYSDEC’s Oak Brush Plains Preserve at Edgewood (located in Deer Park). I was there in the dark to listen for whip-poor-wills, the population of which might represent the westernmost breeding group remaining on Long Island. I headed into the property and broke north along a trail bordering an open meadow.  

In the meadow were many fireflies and I do want to stress many — what had to number in the hundreds winking and flashing in and along the edges of the meadows. Some flashed while perched on the top of tall grass. There were so many fireflies I was mesmerized and after a few minutes of watching thousands of flashes and blinks I found it almost disorienting.      

Fireflies are also known as lightning bugs but to be accurate they are neither flies nor bugs. Rather, they are beetles belonging to the family Lampyridae. (This is one of the few insect family names I’ve remembered by playing a little trick: these insects produce their own light just as lamps do.) Currently 173 species have been documented in North America with the majority occurring in the eastern half of the continent.  

Staff from the New York Natural Heritage Program (NYNHP) have been assessing the diversity and abundance of fireflies in New York. According to Katie Hietala-Henschell, a zoologist with the state program, “27 species occur in NY” but believes the number  will very likely increase, as she notes “there could potentially be 37 species.”  

She further states: “For Long Island in particular, there are at least 10 species (probably more!) that have been documented. However, this is a very conservative estimate and likely an underestimate of the number of Long Island species.” 

The most common species both in the eastern United States and here is Photinus pyralis commonly known as Common Eastern Firefly or the Big Dipper Firefly, probably due to its flash pattern appearing reminiscent of the well-known star pattern. 

As for rare firefly species that may occur on Long Island, Katie indicates “The only documented IUCN Red List species that has occurred on Long Island is Photuris pensylvanica (Dot-dash Firefly) ranked as Vulnerable. … I suspect at least two other IUCN species that may occur on Long Island. It could be a long shot, but there is potential for Pyractomena ecostata (Keel-necked Firefly) ranked as Endangered and possibly Photuris bethaniensis (Bethany Beach Firefly) ranked as Critically Endangered by IUCN and petitioned to be federally listed as Endangered.”  

As I soon learned the dot-dash firefly is aptly named as its flash pattern consists of a short greenish colored flash (the dot) followed by a longer flash that lasts several seconds (the dash).   

We have a pretty clear understanding of the underlying but complicated chemistry producing the magical flash in fireflies. Using organs in their abdomens, oxygen mixes with calcium, a chemical named luciferin, an enzyme — luciferase, and ATP (adenosine phosphate; remember this from the cellular biology you learned in high school?). Oxygen, the release of which fireflies can control, appears to be the “switch” that sets off the process. Nitric oxide gas also plays a role. This illumination is extremely efficient with the firefly giving off very little heat while emitting lots of bright light. 

Their flash is an excellent example of bioluminescence — light made by living things. Bioluminescence is known across the living world — besides fireflies, a number of jellyfish, worms, squid (to be precise it’s the luminescent ink they shoot out to avoid predation), many fish species including deep-sea fish, algae, and fungi produce and emit light.  There are approximately 1,500 species of fish alone that are bioluminescent!   

In the category “the world is always more complicated than we think,” most female fireflies can’t fly since they lack wings or possess only vestigial wings, rendering them earthbound from where they flash (we know them as glowworms); the males of a few firefly species also cannot fly; and not all fireflies use flashing light to attract, with some employing scent attractants known as pheromones — species-specific chemicals that attract the opposite sex. And not all flashing is designed to entice mating. In some cases female fireflies mimic the male flash of other species to entice them so the females can dine on their bodies and incorporate the poisons contained within.  A firefly femme fatale, if you will.   

Fireflies, like so many insect species, are declining. Habitat loss and pesticide use are culprits. But perhaps the number one problem facing this iconic group of insects is excessive night lighting.  As more homes are built and more of us leave front and back  porch lights on, more ambient light is created, creating confusion for and competition to the flashing fireflies.  This brightening glow of night lighting disorients migrating birds, dims the stars and the Milky Way, and, now, is having an adverse effect upon fireflies.  

If you want to know what you can do to protect fireflies: Turn off outdoor lights as the lighting competes with the flashes of fireflies. Additionally, avoid using pesticides or chemical fertilizers and leave the leaves for the benefit of female fireflies and some firefly larvae which are found on the ground. 

Here’s to hoping that fireflies make summertime memories for jar-carrying kids and their parents for countless summers to come. 

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.

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Several bird species use the shed skin of a snake during nest building to scare off predators, including the Carolina Wren as seen above. Photo by John Turner

By John L. Turner

John Turner

On one of many strolls to the compost bin this Spring, I walked past a tall Norway spruce and noticed the head of a Mourning Dove jutting above a few head-high horizontal branches. Suspecting it was an incubating bird on a nest, I didn’t disturb her, giving her and the long horizontal branch wide berth. Later in the day when the nest was temporarily unattended I moved in for a closer look.   

Two eggs sat together in a shallow bowl made of small branches, in a splayed out pattern reminding me a little of the pattern that happens during a game of pick-up sticks. This was not a tightly woven nest and even with the spruce branches supporting it I could see small holes through the nest and branches to the ground below.  I wondered if eggs or young ever fall through the doves’ nest although I suspect they don’t. 

Mourning Dove nests are known to be loosely constructed in which you typically see through the floor, a trait that makes them distinctive. Some other bird nests also are distinctive to species, the pendulous, highly interwoven nest of a Baltimore Oriole being an excellent example. Their nests, hanging from the end of maple branches, often become apparent after leaf fall in the autumn. Another distinctive nest is that of the American Robin, always containing mud in the outer shell that helps to keep the cup rigid and firm.     

Not surprisingly, many birds try to conceal their nests or make them less visible. The Ruby-throated Hummingbird, for example, embellishes the outer sides of its tiny nest with lichens, making it appear to be little more than a lichen-encrusted bump on a branch. Ground nesting birds like Eastern Meadowlarks have nests with an entrance hole on the side making the nest invisible from above. The same is true for the Ovenbird, a warbler species which is a common nester in woodlands throughout Long Island and especially the Pine Barrens. Its ground nest also has an entrance from the side and looks like an old fashion dutch oven, hence the bird’s name.  

Bird nests come in many shapes and sizes, constructed with many materials, in many different physical locations, and are a perfect blend of form and function. The purpose is, of course, to provide a place where the eggs, hatchlings, and nestlings can be more safely protected and for many species to successfully complete their development. (Precocious young such as piping plover chicks leave the nest at birth never to return). 

Remarkably, a few birds like the Fairy Tern of the South Pacific make no nest at all; this species lays its one egg in a dimple or depression on a thicker branch. Somehow through the rigors of incubation and hatching the egg and chick defy gravity and stay safe. Closer to home we have the “nests” of Whip-poor-wills and Chuck-will’s-widows which are nothing more than leaves on the ground upon which the adult lays her two lightly splotched eggs. 

Piping Plovers do a little more in nest construction by hollowing out a small depression with the male adorning the nest with white shell fragments. The nests of terns are similar, being nothing more than a shallow depression in the sand — simple but effective.    

The use of earthen burrows — horizontally oriented tunnels of varying lengths with an entrance hole excavated in a vertical surface — is another nesting strategy employed by some birds. On Long Island there are three burrow-nesting birds — the Belted Kingfisher and two swallow species — Bank and Northern Rough-winged. They excavate the tunnel (sloping it slightly upward to keep the rain out) which can be as long as five feet ending in a slightly enlarged chamber where the eggs are incubated. All are dug into a vertical face such as a steep slope, road or railroad cut,  bank of a sandpit or in a bluff face. The bluffs along Long Island’s north shore are often used, especially by Bank Swallows. If you walk along a north shore beach flanked by a bluff you might see many small nest holes in the bluff, with handsome brown and white birds with a distinct upper chest band zooming about — you’ve entered a Bank Swallow colony.    

Cavities comprise another important nesting strategy employed by birds. Usually the result of work by woodpeckers such as Red-bellied, Hairy, and Downy Woodpeckers, (but not always as I once watched a pair of Black-capped Chickadees excavate a nesting cavity in a rotted grey birch stump), these created cavities are vital to the many bird species that utilize or require cavities in which to nest. These species include the familiar aforementioned Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmice, White-breasted Nuthatch, Great-crested Flycatcher and Screech Owl, not to mention many woodpecker species and numerous insect and mammal species too.   

The overwhelming number of birds including most songbirds make nests having two to three distinct layers — coarser sticks in the outer frame, finer twigs and roots in the inner cup, which is lined with soft material such as moss, animal hair, and feathers. This provides necessary rigor while providing a softer surface for the eggs and young. 

Birds put some quirky stuff in their nests. Ospreys are notorious for placing all manner of junk in their large nests — pack rats with wings!  According to Alan Poole’s fine book “Ospreys: The Revival of a Global Raptor,” materials found in this species’ nests include pieces of fishing nets, plastic buoys, six-pack holders, party balloons and their dangerous ribbons; basically nest materials “can be a bizarre reflection of what is available in the local landscape.” Carolina Wrens and Great Crested Flycatchers are known to reliably include a strange material in their nests — pieces of or entire snakeskins. Speaking of Carolina Wrens, they’re known to nest in some pretty weird spots such as old shoes, flower pots, and pails. 

 As expected, larger birds make larger nests. The Bald Eagle has perhaps the most impressive nest of any North American bird species; some are large enough for a small child to nestle in the bowl of the stick-constructed nest. According to reports they can  weigh nearly a ton (I remember seeing one such massive nest in coastal Maryland several decades ago). Not surprisingly, their nests are typically constructed  in large trees with thick branches that can support the weight of the nest. Osprey nests are smaller but still can be impressive affairs, composed of interlocking sticks that stand up to the buffeting winds of the coast.    

A few birds, the Great Horned Owl being a classic example, rarely make their own nest, rather using the nest site of a previous occupant such as another bird of prey or crow. 

Almost as diverse as the birds themselves, the nests birds construct illustrate many different designs and a wide variety of forms — all variations to achieve the same purpose — a place where bird eggs and babies can be protected at a most vulnerable time in their lives.  There’s avian architecture on display all around us!

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.

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When you read the label look for words such as bird friendly, fair trade, certified organic, etc.
A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

If you watch birds you’ve undoubtedly enjoyed watching them in the early morning while having a cup of coffee. Want to enjoy the latter while better helping the species you enjoy viewing? Drink shade-grown coffee. 

As the name suggests, shade-grown coffee is composed of coffee shrubs and trees grown in the understory of a shady tropical rainforest in which the ecosystem remains largely intact. Unfortunately most coffee consumed by Americans are sun-grown varieties where the rainforest is destroyed and manicured rows of coffee plants grow. Sun grown coffee farms have many fewer wildlife species, such as the birds we love — Baltimore Orioles, Scarlet Tanagers, and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks to name but a few; in some cases sun-grown coffee farms have 5% of the species found in shade grown farms. 

Shade grown coffee brands are available in some stores and certainly on-line. They are a  bit more expensive but if more consumers buy coffee sustainably grown, prices should come down. And you will gain something more than you ever could by consuming a cheaper cup of sun-grown coffee — knowing you’re helping migratory birds that visit us during the Spring and Summer survive.

A resident of Setauket, 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.

 

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A Froglog can save countless animals from drowning.
A Column Promoting a More Earth-friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

Countless numbers of wild animals, from chipmunks and mice to raccoons and skunks drown in in-ground pools every year unable to climb out of the water along the pool edge. (Two chipmunks unfortunately drowned in my pool last year the first day I uncovered the pool and before I had placed several water exiting devices I had in the shed). Smaller reptiles and amphibians drown too.   

There are products you can buy to minimize the chance of wildlife drowning in your pool. They are installed or placed on the edge of the pool and serve as a ramp to allow for animals to climb out. Two products come to mind: 1) Skamper-ramp, for larger animals such as mammals (and your pets!) and 2) Froglogs, effective for smaller animals. Even knotted nylon rope hanging into the water can help smaller mammals escape. Four to six Froglogs or rope are recommended for the average size pool (I placed eight of these to be extra safe).

With these devices in place you can have greater piece of mind knowing your pool is only a place for fun and relaxation!

A resident of Setauket, 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.

 

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A male Buck Moth. Photo by John Turner

By John L. Turner

John Turner

On my way to redeem some bottles, involving some brands of craft beer that were thoroughly enjoyable, I did a double take passing by what I thought was a small bit of wind-blown garbage, moved by a gentle breeze, along the curb in a supermarket parking lot. Something about its movement caught my eye though and upon a closer look this was no multi-colored piece of trash but rather was something alive, fluttering weakly against the curb. Bending down to take a closer look I suddenly realized I was staring, improbably, at a  male Polyphemus Moth (I could tell it was a male by its quite feathery antennae). 

I picked the moth up and moved it out of harm’s way, placing it under a nearby row of shrubs, realizing all I did was buy it a little more time free from a certain death by a car tire or  pedestrian foot. Having no mouth with which it can feed (all of its energy is carried over from the caterpillar stage) a trait it shares with related species, its life as an adult is short-lived. 

The Polyphemus Moth is one of more than a dozen species of Giant Silk Moths found on Long Island. This family contains some of the largest moths in the world and they range from attractive to beautiful to spectacular. 

Take the Polyphemus Moth as an example. Tan colored with bands of peach on the forewings and black on the hind wings, the moth has four eye spots with the two on the hind wings being especially prominent. The center of the eyespots appears cellophane-like and is translucent. The central eyespot gives rise to the species name as it is reminiscent of the eye of the cyclops of Greek mythology with the same common name as the moth. 

A Polyphemus Moth. Photo by Carl Safina

The eye spots also play a role in the family name — Saturnidae, as some eye spots have concentric rings like those of the planet Saturn. And as moths go this creature has a huge wingspan, being as much as five inches from the tip of one forewing to the other. Its caterpillars feed on oak trees. 

The richly-colored brown, olive, and orange Cecropia moth, with its bright orange body, is slightly larger than the Polyphemus and its eyespots are more in the shape of a comma. They have a purple patch of the tip of each forewing that reminds me of the ghosts in Pac-Man, the popular video game. Cecropia prefer cherry trees as a food plant. 

The most tropical looking member of the family is undoubtedly the lime green-colored Luna Moth, a feeder of walnut leaves. The hindwings of the species, also possessing two eye spots, are longer than other Giant Silk Moth members and have a distinctive twist to the two “tails.” The spots on the fore or front wings are smaller, oval and are connected by a line to the purplish/maroon-colored line that runs along the front of the forewing. It is a showstopper!   

A non-native Giant Silk moth has been introduced to Long Island — the Ailanthus Silk Moth also known as the Cynthia Moth. It can be seen in areas of the island where Ailanthus trees commonly grow such as Brooklyn and Queens. 

Two beautiful, closely related silk moths are the Tulip-tree Silk Moth and the Promethea Moth. The latter species is sexually dimorphic, meaning the male and female look different as they are of “different morphs or forms.” The female is a rich blend of browns with an orange body while the male is a deep charcoal grey with olive to tan borders on both wings. As the name suggests, the former species as a caterpillar feeds on the leaves of the Tulip Tree, a spectacular columnar tree that grows in richer soils along Long  Island’s north shore. 

Related to these other Giant Silk Moths is a smaller inhabitant found in the Long Island Pine Barrens — the Eastern Buck Moth. And unlike other giant silk moths, and moths in general, the buck moth is strictly diurnal, flying from late morning through mid-afternoon on days in late September through mid-October. Why the radical difference in lifestyle compared to typical night flying moths?  It has to do with living in a fire-prone environment. Unlike other members of the family, buck moths don’t pupate by forming a cocoon that hangs from a branch because it would run the real risk of being destroyed by fire. Rather, the buck moth pupates in an earthen cell underground, out of harm’s way, waiting until the threat of the fire season lessens. This means a shift in emergence to the fall, and since it can get cold at night, buck moths have shifted their active period to the warmer daytime. 

In the same subfamily as the buck moth is the beautiful Io Moth. This species too is dimorphic with the female being darker than the male’s bright yellow coloration. Both sexes have large eyespots on their hindwings which are revealed when the forewings are thrown forward by a disturbed moth; suddenly the here-to-fore innocuous insect appears to be the face of a mammal which may deter predation or allow the momentarily confused predator to give enough time for the Io moth to escape. 

In yet another subfamily are the remarkable Pine Devil moth, Royal Walnut Moth (which  as a caterpillar is the famous hickory horned devil!), Imperial Moth, three species of oak webworms common in the Pine Barrens, and the Rosy Maple Moth, the color of raspberry and lemon sherbet.   

Unfortunately, all of these species have become less common on Long Island with some perhaps on the verge of extirpation (local extinction), done in by a loss of habitat and the widespread use of pesticides. Their rarity, paired with exceptional beauty, makes seeing a member of the Giant Silk moth family a special visual treat. Good luck!     

A resident of Setauket, 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.

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A view of Owl Pond in Flanders. Photo by John Turner
A Pine Barrens trail in Flanders. Photo by John Turner
A trail in the pine barrens. Photo by John Turner
A trail in the Pine Barrens. Photo by John Turner
A pink lady slipper orchid growing in the Pine Barrens. Photo by John Turner
A view of Sears Pond in the Pine Barrens. Photo by John Turner
A trail in the Pine Barrens. Photo by John Turner
A trail in the Pine Barrens. Photo by John Turner
Atlantic White Cedar in the Pine Barrens. Photo by John Turner

By John L. Turner

John Turner

It’s a warm Spring day and I’m relaxing on a bench on the edge of Swezey’s Pond within Cranberry Bog County Nature Preserve. Situated in western Southampton Town, about three quarters of a mile south of the Riverhead traffic circle, the preserve contains the remains of one of the larger commercial cranberry bogs that once prospered on Long Island.

The light is bright and the warmth most inviting, both for me and the eight painted turtles of various sizes that have scrambled up on two nearby logs. At first the water appears to be still but looking a little more closely I can see a current moving from right to left or from south to north. This water drains from Wildwood Lake about a mile to the south providing the base flow to the Little River, one of the four tributaries to the Peconic River. 

At the far end of the pond a ghost white American Egret stalks the shallows and to its right, much closer to me, I hear the “phoe-be” call of a spring migrant Eastern Phoebe flitting around the spindly-spiraled top of an Atlantic White Cedar.    

I am in the middle of the Pine Barrens, the largest intact forest remaining on Long Island, protected by state law after a long and intense legal battle that Newsday called the “War in the Woods.” It was a battle well worth fighting as the protection of the tens of thousands of contiguous pine-clad acres adds immeasurably to the quality of life of Long Islanders. 

From a pragmatic point of view the Pine Barrens sits over the largest and cleanest groundwater supplies on Long Island with an estimated five trillion gallons of water contained in the saturated sands beneath the barrens. Also, the Pine Barrens is ecologically significant as it provides habitat to many hundreds  of species of plants and animals, some with novel adaptations that enable them to survive wildfire and other harsh conditions of the ecosystem. 

And like Manhattan’s Central Park, a destination for  countless visitors and city dwellers, the Pine Barrens, Long Island’s Central Park, will, through time, become the same. Already used by many Long Islanders to hike, camp, bird, and canoe, the Pine Barrens will undoubtedly  be visited by many more as it becomes better known.   

Pitch Pine is the dominant plant of the Pine Barrens and provides half of the epithet — the Pine Barrens (the other half relates to the sandy, porous, and nutrient-poor soils that underlie the area). In many places, typically areas that have burned more frequently,  it is the only tree found; in other areas of the Pine Barrens it shares the canopy with various oak species such as scarlet, white, and black oak. 

Beneath the canopy, in the shrub layer, two dwarf oaks — bear oak and dwarf chestnut oak — form extensive thickets. These oaks are genetically dwarfed and even if their acorns are planted in soils rich in nutrients, the species will never obtain the height of our native tree oaks. Intermingled in these shrubby thickets are the heath species, such as black huckleberry, and early and late lowbush blueberries. On the forest floor where there’s ample sunlight you can find both common and striped wintergreen and the beautiful trailing arbutus. 

In the wetlands a host of other plant species abound — water lilies in the open water of ponds and lakes to a number of rare plants growing in the shallow water near shorelines and along the sandy shorelines themselves — including several carnivorous plant species as bladderworts and sundews. Highbush blueberry rings many wetlands and fills small bogs. These wetlands provide habitat to  turtles, frogs, toads, and salamanders while ovenbirds, scarlet tanagers, whip-poor-wills, pine warblers, and may other songbirds fill the forests and wetlands with song.  

Fire has long played a dominating role in shaping the character of these pine dominated forests, having swept through the barrens for thousands of years. Many of the plants and animals have adapted to fire with pitch pine having thick bark; in the unique and globally rare dwarf pine plains the dwarf pines depend upon fire to open their cones which remain resolutely closed in fire’s absence.   

It’s no accident that nearly one hundred square miles of the Pine Barrens has been permanently preserved. Were it not for the direct and intensive intervention of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, both in the courts and in the court of public opinion, the Pine Barrens would, no doubt, have succumbed to development. But in a classic David (the Society, other conservation organizations) vs. Goliath (municipalities and wealthy, well-heeled developers) contest, the environmental community won with the passage of the 1993 Pine Barrens Protection Act that established the 105,000 acre Central Pine Barrens including the 55,000 acre Core Preservation Area in which development is not allowed.  

All Long Islanders will long be the beneficiaries of the Pine Barrens being preserved and this preservation effort has a unique aspect to it: it ensures in a bi-county region, cheek-to-jowl with one housing subdivision after another, surrounding industrial parks, strip shopping centers and large malls, where 2.7 million Long Islanders work, live, and play, there will always be wildness available — a wild character where if you’re positioned in the hollow of the morainal hills in Manorville you will hear no human sounds, where at night the pin prick light of stars shine amidst the inky blackness and from which the rhythmic calls of the whip-poor-will or deep hoots of the great horned owl can still be heard. It is a landscape where, in so many places you can hike on meandering trails for many miles and see no one, or evidence of anyone save the footprints of fellow hikers seeking the same solitude. 

A resident of Setauket, 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.

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METRO photo
A Column Promoting a More Earth-friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

There’s an expression in lawn care “Cut it high and let it lie.” Leaving grass on the longer side is healthier for the grass as it dries out more slowly and there’s more grass blade to produce food as it photosynthesizes. And letting it lie is good for both your lawn and the planet. The clippings quickly break down, returning nutrients back to the grass and soil and the clippings do not, contrary to popular belief, add thatch to your lawn. 

The second best option is to compost grass clippings with other yard waste and to apply the compost to your lawn and flower beds once it’s ready. 

The worst option, which so many homeowners choose, is to bag the clippings and leave curbside for the town to pick up (or worse yet, dump it in a neighboring preserve or parkland). This waste is harder to recycle, inefficient to burn, and costs the town more to manage. So, for the sake of a healthier lawn and planet, let those grass clippings lie.      

A resident of Setauket, 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.

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Barn owls can catch their prey in complete darkness due to their acute sense of hearing. Pixabay photo

By John L. Turner

John Turner

As you begin to read this article please pause for a moment and take stock of your immediate surroundings. What do you feel? Your fingertips feel the largely smooth texture of the surface of the newspaper (perhaps using Meissner corpuscles as I have since learned) and your legs and back feel the chair you’re sitting in. What do you see? Obvious is the fine print of this article and other articles and different shades of color contained in this  edition. Lift your gaze to look around a palette of several dozen colors. As for smell? Maybe the aroma of your morning coffee or tea accompanying this reading experience. 

Maybe your dog is curled up nearby. While you’d have no reason at this moment to think about it, the worlds you and your dog are currently experiencing are very different. Our entire set of sensory skills — which allows us to perceive and react to the world, varies markedly from a dog’s.  We see color while dogs experience a more limited palette. We can detect many scents and odors but is far surpassed by the capability of dogs. 

Some research papers indicate their ability to detect smells — “their sense to detect scents” — is 100,000 times more sensitive than ours. And as far as hearing goes, your furry pet far surpasses your ability in what it can hear, especially noises at higher ranges (remember a dog whistle which, when blown, cannot be heard by the person blowing it but is definitely heard by the dog?)    

Now, let’s expand this idea outward to capture, say, some animal groups that might inhabit your backyard, such as birds, bats and insects. These groups perceive a very different world than we do. It is well known that some bird and insect species, for example, perceive ultraviolet or UV light, which humans, with rare exceptions, cannot (UV is the light spectrum below a wavelength of 380 nanometers). And a UV illuminated world for them is very different than the world illuminated for us. Certain floral patterns which we can’t see stand out as runways on flower petals for UV capable insects. Birds that have, to our eye, plumage that looks drab, actually have feather coats that radiate under UV light. 

As for bats, their famous ability to echolocate — emitting high pitch sounds (too high for us to hear) to locate prey with a high degree of accuracy — is a sense and capability so far outside the realm of human experience as to seem “other worldly.” Several bird species also are capable of echolocation. In the Western Hemisphere that includes the oilbirds of northern South America. 

Numerous marine mammal species also are known to echolocate — dolphins, as but one example. And unlike bats whose echolocation skills enable them to “only” detect the outer contours of their prey, dolphins can “see” inside their targets to perceive their organs and skeleton.    

Another hard to grasp sense of birds is their ability to detect and utilize the Earth’s magnetic fields which they use to migrate effectively. Researchers aren’t fully sure of the mechanism allowing them to achieve this, but it appears to involve proteins in a bird’s retina. 

‘An Immense World’

And I do mean hard to grasp — I’ve read, several times, the same explanatory article in Scientific American on the details of the current hypothesis regarding magnetic field perception in birds and how it aids their migration and I don’t fully understand what’s going on — involving stuff like cytochrome proteins in a bird’s retina, a blue photon hitting the cytochrome causing an electron to jump from an amino acid to a dinucleotide molecule which create a certain spinning of electrons that are, in turn, influenced by the Earth’s magnetic fields which the bird is able to utilize in determining direction. And I’ve left off the last most complicated steps…call me stupid but amazed!  

Many other species, such as sea turtles and spiny lobsters, but not us humans, also are known to navigate by using the planet’s magnetic fields but the mechanisms they employ are less well understood. These “other worldly” abilities, and so many more which are so different from ours, are richly revealed in a wonderful, recently published book, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong. As the subtitle suggests, Yong takes the reader through dozens of examples of how animals perceive the world in a very different way than we do, using senses we either don’t have or that are far more sensitive or acute. The book is 355 pages of profound discovery and a most worthwhile read. 

As an example of the first are animals that can hear or transmit infrasound (below 20Hz), like whales and elephants. Humans can hear sounds as low as about 20 Hz, sounds lower than that are imperceptible to us unless extremely loud, so infrasound is outside our normal perceptive world. Not so with elephants who regularly communicate with infrasound, often involving elephant herds separated by impressive distances such as several miles. 

Whales, using the medium of water, easily make sounds that easily exceed this distance, with the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet, generating sounds that can carry many hundreds, if not thousands of miles, in the ocean. When first suggested the idea was thought implausible even ridiculed; it is now widely accepted.  

Ed Yong, author of An Immense World
Photo by Urzula Soltys

Or how about being able to feel the warmth of another person’s body that is not close to you but rather is several feet away? 

Well, you’ve entered the realm of rattlesnakes which can detect the infrared radiation given off by a mouse from several feet away. And their ability to strike prey just by heat detection is so accurate that blindfolded rattlesnakes can successfully hunt.     

As for senses more acute than ours we turn to the hearing of a barn owl. In well-known (and well designed) experiments, barn owls were capable of routinely seizing prey in complete and utter darkness and they have a special feature we lack. Their ear openings are asymmetrically placed, positioned at slightly different heights on the side of the head. So not only can they accurately determine if a sound is coming from their left or right, in the vertical plane (something we do well), they can also tell where the maker of the sound is in the horizontal plane, since if the sound is coming from below, sound waves will reach the lower ear milliseconds before they reach the higher ear, the bird’s brain can process this information and pinpoint its prey.   

And then there’s electricity generation. Electricity runs through the human body and is vital to human life. Elements like sodium, magnesium, calcium, and potassium, which we ingest through food and supplements, have electrical charge and enable us to perform basic tasks like nerve generation and transmission and the creation of a heartbeat through muscular contraction. It is reported that the energy output of a resting human adult is equivalent to powering a 100 watt light bulb. 

Some animals take electricity, though, to a new level. The best example involves electric eels. By discharging ions within electrocytes, which are specialized cells in specialized organs, the world champion eel has the ability to generate 860 volts of electricity — that’s nearly eight times the strength of the electricity available from your home’s wall outlet and is enough to debilitate and perhaps kill you. While we have little to worry about, not so for the fish and other aquatic animals that share the eel’s domain.    

As Yong’s impressively detailed book repeatedly illustrates, the animals that share our planet display a mind-bogglingly rich suite of survival skills for which one article cannot begin to do justice. Let me prove it by one tiny slice of life — a single shorebird species — the Red Knot, a medium sized bird with a robin red colored breast and a spangled pattern of gold, buff, tan, and black on its back.  Overwintering in the southern part of South America, flocks of Red Knots move north on the continent in April, launching in mid-May from the beaches of northern Brazil, driven by invisible impulses which we cannot understand, flying unerringly north toward the East Coast of the United States. 

Shaming human triathletes by their efforts, they will fly nonstop for several days as they traverse the waters of the western Atlantic, using the Earth’s magnetic fields, perhaps also using the Sun’s polarized light, propelled by breathing in a way so much more efficient than the human respiratory system. Their heart will have beaten perhaps a million beats and their wings flapped several hundred thousand times during this leg. 

They land, perhaps along Long Island’s South Shore or southern New Jersey, and begin to feed voraciously, sustained by tiny packets of protein in the form of horseshoe crab eggs — the perfect snack food. They feed so effectively that in a week to ten days they can add 50% more weight onto the weight they had upon arrival; in some cases they may double their weight in the form of subcutaneous fat. 

Gaining enough stored energy they head further north for the last leg of their improbable flight, landing in the High Arctic, perhaps guided by those magnetic fields to the same hummock of dwarf tundra plants where, the year before, they established a breeding territory. They have finished their almost impossible to comprehend 9,000 mile long journey. Just one remarkable story illustrating the unique senses and abilities of species, in a global tapestry of species’ stories that collectively form the planet’s book of life. 

A resident of Setauket, 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.

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A Column Promoting a More Earth-friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

You’ve just boiled some potatoes, eggs, or maybe rice. Or perhaps it was pasta. If you are like most people the leftover water quickly finds its way down the kitchen sink drain. 

Want a better use for that water? After cooling it (a nice bonus in the winter to let the heat from the water move into the kitchen), use it for making soup, thinning sauces or watering indoor or outdoor plants. Regarding this last use, boiling these and other foods (couscous anyone?) results in water containing minerals and carbohydrates; this enhanced water thus has become a form of liquid fertilizer that can benefit your plants. 

There is one caveat to keep in mind when using the previously used water for your plants — if you salt the water while cooking pasta or other foods do not use it on your plants as it can either damage or kill them; it is fine, though, to use it for making other foods.  

Reusing your cooking water not only captures these minerals and nutrients for the benefit of your plants, it means water used in a more efficient manner — a key element of sustainability.   

A resident of Setauket, 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.

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North America has lost 3 billion birds or one-fourth of its continental population since 1970. Photo by Raina Angelier

By John L. Turner

John Turner

On Saturday, April 22nd, citizens of the world will have the opportunity to participate in the 54th celebration of Earth Day. An event beginning in 1970, Earth Day has helped to galvanize public awareness about environmental issues and the plight of our planetary home. 

So, in recognition of Earth Day 2023, here are 23 events, accomplishments, and issues to think about, reaching as far back as the first Earth Day more than five decades ago; some are good news, others bad. As these developments show, we’ve made great strides in living in greater harmony with the planet but at the same time, problems remain while new, highly significant ones have emerged. 

1. A green wave washes over the nation: Fueled by the same sentiment that led to the first Earth Day, Congress, in a flurry of activity, passes the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (1968), National Environmental Policy Act (1969), Clean Air Act (1970), Clean Water Act (1972), and Endangered Species Act (1973). Several other important environmental initiatives were adopted administratively including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (1970). Collectively, these actions form the foundation of the federal government’s framework to protecting the environment.

2. The Long Island Pine Barrens is protected: After a four year David vs. Goliath battle between the Long Island Pine Barrens Society and the Towns of Brookhaven, Riverhead, and Southampton, Governor Mario Cuomo, in 1993, signs the Pine Barrens Protection Act into law. The legislation preserves more than 55,000 acres of pine forest and tightly controls development in another 47,000 acres. 

3. Continental bird decline: Researchers publish a major paper in 2019 documenting that since the first Earth Day, North America has lost 3 billion birds or one-fourth of its continental population. Cat predation, window collisions, and habitat destruction are the leading causes. Loss of insects, affecting aerial insectivores like common nighthawks, swifts and swallows have led to additional declines. Many species have dropped by 50% or more in abundance during this time. 

4. Eagles and ospreys surge: With DDT  banned for use in 1972 in the United States birds that feed “higher on the food chain,” such as birds-of-prey and waterbirds, have rebounded. Hundreds of osprey nests dot Long Island’s coastal landscapes and bald eagles, which were extirpated as a breeding bird, have returned with the first nest found at The Nature Conservancy’s Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island more than a decade ago.    

5. The emergence of “forever” chemicals: Over the past several years “forever” chemicals such as PFAS and PFOS  have emerged on the scene. A group of more than 3,000 chemicals, they are ubiquitous, having been used in non-stick pans, stain resistant fabrics, even fire-fighting foam. They have contaminated water supplies throughout the country and have affected public water supply wells on Long Island. These chemicals increase the risk of cancer and can damage human organs, notably the kidneys. One study documented PFAS in 97% of  the participants, suggesting  the chemical is widespread in the environment. 

6. Cleaner water in Long Island Sound: Due to a significant commitment of public funds expended to upgrade sewage treatment plants, conditions in Long Island Sound are improving. Hypoxic or low dissolved oxygen levels, stressful to lethal for bottom-dwelling marine animals such as lobsters, crabs, and shellfish have declined, both in terms of extent and duration.  Stressful conditions still exist in the western portion of the Sound due to sewage discharge from New York City’s large sewage treatment plants.     

7. Plastics pollution is a problem!: In the past two decades plastic use has exploded, resulting in massive pollution of land and ocean. Scientists estimate that about eight million tons of plastic enter the oceans every year.  When plastics fragment, they become micro-plastics and many marine species ingest it, thinking its food items,  often with fatal consequences. In an often referred to but highly alarming statistic, it’s estimated that by 2050 there will more plastic debris, by weight, in the ocean than fish biomass. 

8. Bag the plastic bag!: First in Suffolk County, and then in New York State, the use of single use plastic bags is banned and a fee is placed on the use of paper bags.  Reusable, multi-use bags have become the norm for shoppers. Our roadsides are now cleaner and are largely devoid of  windblown bags.    

9. Waste reduction takes hold: Waste reduction is the most effective but least used waste management strategy, better than recycling, burning, or burying garbage.  One great example of a waste reduction strategy was approved by the NYS Legislature last year which phases out small, single use, shampoo and hair conditioner bottles provided in hotel bathrooms. Soon, your hair needs will only be supplied by refillable, pump receptacles located in shower stalls. This legislation will result in tens of millions less plastic containers being burned or buried in New York annually.   

10. Bats are suffering: Over the past several decades many bat species, especially those roosting colonially, have been afflicted by a contagious virus called white-nosed syndrome or WNS. Some species have declined by more than 90%, resulting in a few once common species facing extinction.  Non-colonial roosting bats are doing better. 

11. Coastal waters are alive with menhaden: Due to a ban on the commercial harvest of menhaden in New York waters, this species has staged a remarkable comeback. Its remarkable abundance, with schools containing millions of fish, has fueled a resurgence in species that feed upon it — humpback whales and other cetaceans, tuna, sharks, marine birds, and birds-of-prey like bald eagles and osprey.  

12. Suffolk County’s Drinking Water Protection Program: Funded by a 1/4 cent fraction of county sales tax, this program, first adopted in 1987 and approved several times by Suffolk County voters, has allowed the County to buy thousands of acres of environmentally important properties and to advance water quality protection projects.  The program has been especially critical for Pine Barrens purchases. 

13. Global climate disruption: Climate change or climate disruption, as it is more aptly described, is having enormous impacts to human society and the natural world. An all encompassing threat caused by the manufacture and use of fossil fuels, countries still are adding climate-changing gases to the atmosphere at an alarming rate. We’re tossing the planetary dice and still collectively suffer too much from denial by a critical mass of society whose intellectual and emotional support is badly needed. 

14. Otters have returned, coyotes have arrived: River otters are slowly reestablishing themselves in Long Island waterways with sightings in many places.  Coyotes have begun to colonize Long Island, probably reaching here via a bridge or tunnel connecting the island to the Bronx and perhaps by island hopping the eastern island archipelago of Plum Island, Little and Great Gull Islands, and Fisher’s Island. Being hit by vehicles remains a critical concern to their recovery/colonization.  

15. The hole in the ozone layer isn’t closed (yet)!: First detected in the late 1970s, a “hole” in the Earth’s stratosphere over the planet’s two polar regions slowly has been  getting smaller. Caused by certain man-made chemicals that destroy ozone, these chemicals were phased out by an international agreement in 1986. 

16. Water reuse becomes a reality: In 2016 the first Water Reuse project on Long Island comes on-line involving the Riverhead Sewage Treatment Plant and Indian Island County Golf Course. Instead of dumping wastewater into the Peconic River/Flanders Bay the water is used to irrigate the grass on the golf course next door and by so doing keeps an estimated 1.2 tons of nitrogen from entering the estuary and g 63 million gallons of water in the ground. 

Because of reuses’s water quality and quantify benefits, the Seatuck Environmental Association in 2023 prepares an islandwide water reuse road map. If the top 17 reuse projects are funded 15 less tons of nitrogen will enter LI’s coastal waters and nearly 600 million gallons of water will be kept in the ground helping to maintain wetlands and preventing salt water intrusion.  

17. Terrapin excluder devices (TEDS) are required: In 2017 New York State Department of Environmental Conservation enacts a regulation requiring all commercial crab pots located in Long Island’s bays, harbors, and steam/creek/river mouths to be equipped with TEDS. Putting TEDS on the vents of crab pots can reduce diamondback terrapin drownings by 75% while having no discernible effect on crab harvest.  

18. Keeping the deer in Deer Park: In three separate stages — in 1983, 1984, and 1998 — New York State creates the 850-acre Oak Brush Plains Preserve in Deer Park from properties once used by the Edgewood and Pilgrim State Psychiatric facilities. This  westernmost forest of the Pine Barrens is home to fox, many songbirds, birds of prey, and even whip-poor-wills, and living up to its name given the community in which it is located — deer. Efforts are currently underway to add another 115 acres to the Preserve. 

19. Reconnecting nature: All throughout the country efforts are underway to mitigate, and in many cases eliminate, obstacles to the movement of wildlife such as those posed by roads and dams. Dozens of small dams have been removed and some that haven’t have been equipped with fish ladders. In areas with high roadkill under- and overpasses are being installed to allow for the safe movement of animals. The recently passed federal Infrastructure Act provides $400 million for such projects. 

20. SEQRA is adopted: SEQRA, the New York State version of the National Environmental Policy Act, passed in 1975. This law establishes a legal requirement for agencies and legislative bodies to “look before they leap” when it comes to approving projects that might have an adverse impact on the environment and to mitigate those impacts. This Act has been responsible for ensuring that the quality of the environment is a factor in decision making. 

21. West Meadow Beach is restored: After years of unfortunate divisiveness, dozens of privately owned cottages at the Town of Brookhaven’s West Meadow Beach are removed, opening the property to broad public use and enjoyment, allowing for this ecologically significant habitat to begin recovery. The action constituted one of the few “de-development” actions ever undertaken on Long Island. 

22. The Pebble Mine dies the death it deserves: The proposed Pebble Mine, situated in southwestern Alaska, would have resulted in a 12-square copper-gold-molybdenum mine sandwiched between globally important salmon rivers upon which Native Alaskans depend. These rivers flow into Bristol Bay which supports a $1.5 billion fishing industry. The mine would have been the largest in North America and there was great fear that a mine collapse (this happened at a different mine by the  company that wanted to operate the Pebble Mine) would have sent acid tailings and enormous amounts of sediments into the rivers destroying the environment for miles around the mine and the critically important fish runs.   

23. Wetlands, both freshwater and tidal, are better protected: A few years after the first Earth Day, New York State passes important laws to protect fresh- and tidal wetlands preventing their wholesale destruction through draining and filling. The law to protect freshwater wetlands was significantly strengthened in the 2022 state legislative session.  

This list, of course, is just a very small sample of the environmental challenges and problems we collectively confront. If we are ever to get ahead of the curve in protecting our planetary home, we’re going to have to do more than adopt one or a few actions each year that protect some aspect of the global environment, as meaningful as they are, which we then celebrate each Earth Day. Our survival requires much more than an annual Earth Day celebration. Rather, we need to realize that we have to act like Earth Day is every day, which it is, since we still depend upon the sustenance of the planet on those  other 364 days.

A resident of Setauket, 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.

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