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John Turner

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A river otter caught on a trail camera in Bellport. Image courtesy of Luke Ormand

By John L. Turner

John Turner

I slung on the backpack, shut the car door and walked off quickly, fueled by excitement and expectation. After  a brisk walk on a shady forest path, bordered by a few small fields hinting at the property’s past farm use, I reached my destination — a wooden observation platform providing sweeping views of a freshwater pond situated within the North Fork’s Arshamomaque Preserve. I immediately began a binocular scan of the water and the far shore for any sign of movement revealing their presence. Nothing. Scanned for a few more minutes and nothing. I soon fall into a pattern of picking up the binoculars and looking first along the water surface and then the vegetated far shore. This goes on for an hour. Still no action. 

I learned a long time ago that nature is not a zoo and the comings and goings of animals are never done to please us humans, but always in response to their needs. So I will see them, if I see them at all, on their schedule. I continue to patiently sit, soaking in the beauty of the warm sunshine, bolstered by a large cup of strong coffee and a cinnamon-raisin bagel. 

 I was also enjoying the many marsh mallow shrubs blooming in profusion amidst the abundance of cattails ringing the pond. The flowers of this species border on the spectacular — three to five inches across, deep but bright pink petals with a red throat or base, and a prominent tower containing both the stamens and the stigmata. This species is related to the plant whose roots were once the source of that delicious confectioneries used to make s’mores — marshmallows.  

Suddenly, there was rippled movement along the far shore. It took me a moment to process what I was looking at but it was a family of  four river otters (Lontra canadensis) — two adults and two pups — weaving in and out of the wetland plants.  I enjoyed them for about 15 seconds until they all broke back into cover of the cattails at the eastern edge of the pond. A minute or two later they reappeared this time swimming along the wooded shoreline before doubling back to the cattails. 

What I was witnessing is a small part of a welcome recovery of the species taking place over several decades now, as an increasing number of otters are colonizing suitable wetland habitat on Long Island, after decades of their dearth. According to Paul Connor’s definitive Mammals of Long Island published by the New York State Museum in 1971, otters were thought to be extirpated from Long Island in the latter part of the 19th century. He states that Daniel Denton in his 1670 description of Long Island mammals noted the presence of otters, but goes on to mention that more than 170 years later J.E. DeKay declared the species extirpated from Long Island. 

Through the 20th century otters were occasionally seen or reported but there was no sense of a sustained recovery of the species on Long Island. Connor reports no sightings in all the field work (conducted over several field seasons in the late 1960’s) that formed the basis for his monograph. This began to change in the first few years of the 21st century when sightings of otters became more commonplace. One of the first sightings  was near the well-known Shu Swamp sanctuary in Mill Neck, Nassau County. 

Mike Bottini, a well-known Long Island naturalist and founder of the Long Island River Otter Project, has studied this recovery as well as other aspects of otter ecology and biology and published an informative published paper investigating the status of river otter in 2008. He states: “This survey estimates that there are at least eight river otters inhabiting Long Island: four on the north shore of Nassau County, one in the Nissequogue River watershed, one in the west end of the Peconic Estuary, one on the south shore, and one in the Southold-Shelter Island-East Hampton area.” Remarkably, a mere decade later otter signs were found in 26 watersheds; the recovery was well underway.

Three years later, in 2021, Mike noted: “otter home ranges included all the watersheds on the north shore from Oyster Bay east to Orient, the Peconic River watershed and a significant portion of the Peconic Estuary, and two watersheds on the south shore.”  Painting a rosy picture, Mike concludes: “Much excellent otter habitat on Long Island remains unoccupied, especially on the south shore. 

In addition to the obvious confirmation formed by actual sightings or finding their tracks in mud or snow, the use of latrines or “otter bathrooms” by this highly aquatic mammal is one of the ways researchers use to gain a better sense of their distribution on Long Island. For reasons that are not entirely clear, otters often defecate (known as scat) in upland areas adjacent to the waterways, these latrine sites thought to be used to communicate information. 

I have found their latrines in a few places, the closest being at Frank Melville Memorial Park in Setauket on both sides of the northern pond. Their scat often contains the remains of scales and bones of the fish they prey on, and such was the case by a recent inspection of the latrines at the park — scales and delicate fish bones were prevalent in the sushi meals the otter was consuming. While otters favor fish, they are opportunistic and will eat frogs, turtles, crayfish (yes, we do have crayfish species on Long Island), and freshwater clams and mussels. 

Otters are carnivores and are members of the weasel family whose other Long Island members include, according to Connor, Mink, Long-tailed weasel, and perhaps Short-tailed weasel. Further afield in the North American continent we have badgers, the federally endangered Black-footed ferret, and the famous and remarkable wolverine. Thirteen otter species occur around the globe. 

As evidenced by my North Fork experience and several other accounts, otters are reproducing on Long Island with their pups presumably helping to fuel the resurgence.  As their young (typically between 2-5 pups are born) are quite helpless at birth, being hairless and blind, they grow and develop in dens which provide some degree of protection from the elements. The dens are in close proximity to the water and may, in some cases, be connected to it. As of this writing I don’t know of anyone who has conclusively discovered an otter den here. 

The use of remote cameras installed in the field at sites likely to be utilized by otters have proven instrumental in learning some new streams and creeks otters are frequenting. Luke Ormand, a staff member in the Town of Brookhaven’s Division of Land Management, has placed several cameras in numerous locations in Brookhaven Town that have been successful in recording otters. With these cameras, otters have been confirmed in the Carmans River watershed and the Motts Creek drainage system in Bellport.

A significant damper on the continued recolonization and expansion of river otters on Long Island are motor vehicles, as otters are sometimes struck and killed. An otter was recently struck on Jericho Turnpike near the famous bull statue in Smithtown and the total number of road killed otters recorded for Long Island stands at 29 animals. 

Bottini notes that the peak time is between March and May both when males are searching for females in estrus (ready to mate) and yearling individuals are striking out on their own. The likelihood of being hit by a vehicle is especially high in places where otters are forced to cross a road that spans a stream containing too narrow a culvert or a dam where the dam is under the bridge; the dam face prevents downstream or upstream access, forcing the otter to climb up the banks and lope across the dangerous roadway.  Solutions involve  the placement of stacked cinder blocks to form a ramp or aluminum ramps which otters can negotiate.  

I had the pleasure of working with the aforementioned Mike and Luke one day a few years ago in constructing a cinder block ramp along a dam face on the Little Seatuck Creek in East Moriches. Camera footage soon showed otter use of the ramp although the two otters in the area illustrated different personalities; one otter immediately took to using it while the other was quite hesitant.  

Mike notes that otters are “ambassadors of wetlands” and given their broad appeal and popularity this is true. Who doesn’t remember wildlife films on Disney and other shows depicting otters tobogganing in the snow, frolicking about in what appears to be joyous play? Perhaps this iconic and charismatic species can help to generate public support on Long Island in better protecting our waterways — important habitats — which sustain so many species. 

 Let me end by stating the obvious: you “otter” take time out of your busy schedule to look for these furry, very attractive ambassadors. But please drive slowly to your intended destination, all the while keeping an eye out for a sleek, rich brown animal loping across the road.  

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

By John L. Turner

John Turner

Oh those lighter-than-air balloons! As the helium gas inside seeps away, causing them to lose their buoyancy, they come back to earth and their deflated outlines appear everywhere —  in natural places such as fields, forests, and the island’s wave-lapped shorelines — and human constructed landscapes like dangling from utility lines, even the support wires of traffic lights. Sometimes they’re single balloons tethered with nylon string, other times they’re in bunches — a half dozen or more tied together. Some find their way to the ground while more entangle themselves amidst tree branches.  

While most have generic messages, like the “Happy Birthday Princess” balloon I recently found in a hike in the Pine Barrens with 30 6th grade students, if they have a message at all, in a few cases I’ve been able to tell the original purpose of the balloon purchase: a Happy 40th Birthday to Beth! exclaimed one mylar balloon, dangling from a young understory oak tree while another mylar balloon announced “Todd’s 3rd Birthday” with a triangular cake wedge adorned with three candles. As these examples illustrate, buoyant balloons have become a common, unwelcome, and  unfortunate, presence in the environment.  

Photo by John Turner

The ubiquitous presence of balloons in the environment has real consequences beyond forming unsightly litter, and these effects are felt most acutely by marine animals — sea turtles, cetaceans (whales and dolphins), and a wide variety of seabirds. Websites, both governmental ones such as the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and conservation organizations like Ocean Conservancy, contain countless photos of dead sea turtles and stranded whales and dolphins, all having perished from ingesting  balloons, mistaking them for food. 

This deceit is especially telling for leatherback sea turtles for which jellyfish comprise a significant part of their diet. Compare photos of a deflated balloon floating on the ocean’s surface with a jellyfish and it’s easy to see why a sea turtle might easily mistake a balloon for an easy-to-capture meal. Well, mistake them they all too often do, with fatal results, when the balloon lodges in their digestive tract. The same results often occur with larger mammals. 

With marine birds entanglement, not ingestion, is the main cause of death. Tassels of long  string which ties balloons together are often made of nylon or other material which is  slow to degrade, easily wrapping around a seabird’s wings, neck, feet, or bill as it floats on the water.      

Photo by John Turner

There are two basic types of lighter-than-air balloons — latex and mylar. Both pose risks to wildlife: in the case of latex, a threat for many years, and for mylar many decades. Not surprisingly, balloon manufacturers have long claimed that balloon releases pose no risk to wildlife and the environment, and that latex balloons, especially, are biodegradable. This is a fact not borne out both by objective experiments and numerous observations. In fact, the biodegradable claims are largely an example of greenwashing (when a company presents a more environmentally favorable view of its activities than is warranted).  

A 1989 balloon industry study contended that most balloons pose no risk since they rise in the atmosphere to the point they burst due to low air pressure, creating “harmless” pieces of rubber, and those that don’t burst are so few as to be dispersed in a density of about one balloon per every 15 square miles (about a four mile square). From my anecdotal experience hiking and traveling around Long Island, the density of balloon landings is significantly greater than that, more like several balloons per square mile, an observational density borne out by coastal clean-ups.  

For example, according to a press account in a local paper, “the Eastern Long  Island Chapter of the Surfrider Organization collected 774 balloons on 38 beaches from June 2017 to December 2018.” Further, a New York Sea Grant newsletter indicated that in 2016 coastal clean-ups in the mid-Atlantic states produced 8,400 balloons and balloon fragments. 

Photo by John Turner

According to NOAA’s website: “In 2014, 236 volunteers found over 900 balloons in the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia in a three-hour period. Recent surveys of remote islands on Virginia’s Eastern Shore documented up to 40 balloons per mile of beach.” Closer to home, a 2018 clean-up involving 33 volunteers at Jones Beach alone picked up 308 balloons or pieces of balloons. 

A colleague, Pete Osswald, to whom I was recently chatting with about the problem balloons pose to wildlife, sent me a comment which is especially illustrative of the problem: “I have been navigating the waters around Long Island both inshore and offshore for over 50 years as a fisherman and Seatown boat captain. I have seen many things both wondrous and appalling. One of the intolerable sights that bothers me the most is the abundance of balloons I see floating in the water on a daily basis. I had hopes for the problem being remedied a few decades back when there was an apparent push for educating the public about the dangers to marine life from releasing balloons. Unfortunately the defiling has become worse There are slick calm days out on the ocean where I see scores of downed launched balloons floating like foreboding headstones of the unwitting turtles and marine mammals that consume them.” 

All these observations and findings suggest a density a bit greater than one balloon every four square miles, don’t you think?  

Lawmakers have responded to the issue. Many municipalities throughout the country have enacted bans on the intentional release of balloons as have several Long Island municipalities. To its credit, the Suffolk County Legislature in September 2019 passed a law sponsored by then Legislator Sarah Anker banning the release of lighter-than-air balloons and requiring businesses which sell these items to post a statement indicating that intentional release of balloons is prohibited in the County; the County Executive soon signed it into law and it became a revised Chapter 310 of the Suffolk County Code.   

Several states have enacted release bans with Florida poised to become the next. Legislation has been introduced in New York State over the past several sessions but, to date, there’s been no action on the bills. 

Another problem with lighter-than-air balloons, especially mylar balloons which have a metallic coating, is contact with high voltage power lines. Contact can cause an explosion often shorting out electrical power. If you type in “Balloons Exploding on Powerlines” in the search box of the YouTube website you can see videos of such events. 

Some organizations think “release bans” don’t go far enough as it is impossible to monitor such behavior; rather supporting a prohibition on the sale of lighter-than-air balloons, understandably believing a ban on purchase is a much more effective strategy than banning their release.  

Many environmentally benign alternatives exist to replace balloons during special events. The “Balloon Blows” website lists the following options: streamers, kites, pinwheels, garden spinners, flags, ribbon dancers, bubble blowers, and inflatable, weighed-down characters.  

There is an old Greek adage, paraphrased here: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” While there are no shortage of malevolent acts intended to kill wildlife — the sickening, still legal use of leghold traps for trapping foxes, muskrats, skunks, and weasels on Long Island, comes to mind — the “stupidity” involved, to soften it a bit, is more often the purview of ignorance or thoughtlessness. 

The logical inference of this is if people knew the consequence of their thoughtless acts would be to cause animal suffering and death, they would not have acted this way in the first place.  This perspective gives great credence to the phrase as it relates to lighter-than-air balloons —“Say no to letting it go.” Better yet, in recognition of the countless wildlife species that make up the living fabric of our oceans, let’s commit on this Earth Day, to not buying lighter-than-air balloons. 

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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Stock photo
A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

Buying in bulk can not only save you money but often generates less waste. For example, a 64-ounce container of detergent contains less plastic than two 32-ounce containers and much less than four 16-ounce containers. Plus, these smaller containers are sometimes bundled in plastic wrap while the largest container never is.

The same is true for dishwashing fluid and general house cleaners. Similarly, items that are wrapped like paper towels use much more wrapping for three individual rolls than one 3-pack; the same is true for toilet paper.

The same principle of “more is less” holds true with many food items too. If you start paying attention to bulk purchases you’ll quickly realize that such a strategy is good for both the planet and your wallet. Indeed, when it comes to bulk purchases “more is less.”

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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Pignut Hickory bark
Red Oak bark
Sassafras bark
White Oak bark
Chestnut Oak bark
Black Oak Bark

By John L. Turner

John Turner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Pixabay photo
A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

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

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

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

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

 

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

By John L. Turner

John Turner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

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

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

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

 

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

By John L. Turner

John Turner

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

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

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

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

 

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White-throated Sparrow. Photo courtesy of Unsplash
Dark-eyed Junco. Photo courtesy of Unsplash

By John L. Turner

John Turner

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

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

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

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

White-throated sparrow

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dark-eyed Junco

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

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

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

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

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

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Reviewed by John Turner 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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