Archive for category: Field Notes

With Twelve Days of Christmas nearing and “a partridge in a pear tree” somewhere…. 

I remind myself to help promote the 114th  Annual Christmas Bird Count supported here on Island by the Henry Ferguson Museum December 28th.

This Citizen Science Survey encourages the Naturalist in all of us as we can help volunteer to bridge Local Traditional Knowledge (LTK) with Science and collect data that will help document worldwide species habitat and migratory trends.

I feel it is being part of that “Neighborhood Wildlife Watch” idea that embraces Fishers Island, becomes familiar with its unique environment, shares pertinent information, and ultimately better protects and conserves for the future.

So, if you’re looking to gift a bit more than “5 golden rings” this year…

Lookouts at Hungry Point, Dock Beach, and The Peninsula all have diverse species in numbers AND quite a few flying solo:

Canada geese, Common Eider, Cormorant, Merganser, Bufflehead, Brant, Swan, Blue Heron, Kingfisher, Loon …

Don’t forget to be still and listen too. You’ll hear Pheasant, Jays, Cardinal, Crow, Catbird, Chickadee-dee-dee and who knows maybe even that partridge!

For the nature of Nature

An ever Presence

So simple

Light

Granting such Beauty

Giving Thanks on sight.

 

I counted 75 Harbor seals on a day filled with high winds and chop.

  I am standing on a hillside, “clicking” as fast as I can the clumps of seals, on clumps of rocks. Then a recount looking for bobbing heads.

With winter approaching, tidal zones are sometimes extremely low- giving me a grander view of the state of health of surrounding eel grass ecosystems.

The opportunity to observe smaller meadows surrounding Fishers Island has sparked a personal interest for me in the Seagrass Research & Restoration Initiative for Southern NY, and New England which today has lost 65% of area eelgrass meadows.

For decades, these thick carpets of swaying grass that once provided critical habitat for Flounder, Scallops, and Clam have degraded.

Research Science supported by NOAA and coordinating with organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, has conducted lab analysis of eel grass from 10 locations stretching between Long Island and Cape Cod.

While I am still learning about the specific findings of the study-the need to reduce nitrogen pollution was highlighted to protect the resilient eel grass.

Recently, I shared these photos with The Nature Conservancy in Long Island noting how diverse a feeding ground this is ….even greener pasture for a Sea Horse sighted last summer!

 

Asterias:

When I turn back the pages of my "rite in rain" notebook to early summer 2011 on Fishers Island, I was jotting observations that had me realize I had not seen so many starfish washed ashore-ever.

As I walked both Isabella & South Beaches, I would tally up to 20-40 of these delicate sea creatures.

Recently I read that researchers of invertebrate at Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. did indeed note a population explosion of starfish during the same 2011 time frame.

Last November on Chocomount I noted just one Asterias sea star in a shallow tidal pool

.

This past summer, University scientists in nearby Rhode Island observed so few starfish between New Jersey and Maine that they were asking local divers to “let them know if ANY starfish population existed that might help with area research.”

A massive die off is noticed on our East Coast.

This November, Race Point at twilight gifted me and my field notes with this lone star.

The Aleut tribes of the Pribilof Islands sing a song: Atukan Akun or “We are one”. From summer 2004 till winter 2009, I had the opportunity to live as an active community member in the village of Saint Paul, to be one of the one.

During this unique time of my life I was eager to learn every Unungan word and dance step to the drumbeat’s rhythm of Atukan Akun, but more importantly I recognized the privilege to embrace its message of unity in my daily life

In January 2013, still gleaning my naturalist skills, I walked and monitored the shores of another Island.

Counting Harbor seals out at Hungry Point, here on Fishers had become routine but with the same stillness and even remote sense as in The Pribilofs-I cherished many sacred moments of “oneness” with nature, with the universe, with myself.

Just like the moment I spied a tiny piece of white fabric in a sand drift and unearthed a sailor’s shirt from WW ll.

I was eager to ride home and warm my feet, but that stillness and oneness had nudged me and declared to back track and return to a small spit of beach  and scrub line before leaving.

Later in May, while gently hanging the shirt that had probably been buried for nearly 70 years, some encrusted sand fell away from its hemline and I discovered a last name: Kushigian.

Somehow in their own precise way, these “Atukan Akun” moments led me to find Julia Kushigian, daughter of First Class Officer Jack P. Kushigian all these years later.

The other week I invited Julia to Fishers Island, back to Hungry Point where even this time with a Connecticut newspaper jotting notes and a Long Island television film crew looking on, there was indeed a still sacred moment reminding me that we are indeed all One.

With a simple exchange of gifts I presented her with a long lost shirt and in return I received a stronger sense of family and a unique friendship.