Archive for month: June, 2019
These very still and hazy early mornings of summer are just the thing for deep diving double-crested cormorants. Waterlogged feathers actually help these birds dive deeper for fish, while low tide’s rock clumps assist with their “drip-dry”.
Southside, Fishers Island
From the Field, Field Note Justine Kibbe, June 29, 2019
For the first time ever, I saw 8-10 piping plovers (adult and growing chicks) scurrying around “together” on Sanctuary of Sands.
Fishers Island’s piping plover chicks were born in two separate hatchings on Sanctuary of Sands and near the Race Point Parking area in late May.
In 2014 and 2015, I spotted only a single piping plover at the Big Club Beach and had documented none on the West End. How exciting to see “our” piping plover community expanding!
The New York Times recently reported that Fire Island’s piping plover population has nearly doubled since Hurricane Sandy struck in 2012. Sand and seawater washed over the island during the storm, and the combination of new sand flats and coastal repair increased plover habitat by 50 percent. (Piping plovers like to nest on dry flat sand close to the shoreline.)
From the Field, Field Note Justine Kibbe June 26, 2019
An Indigo Bunting and a White Throated Sparrow pause in their preferred habitat: thickets and bushy wood edges.
Indigo Buntings, abundant songbirds, are sometimes nicknamed “blue canaries”, but are part of the cardinal family. This migratory bird ranges from southern Canada to northern Florida during the breeding season, and from southern Florida to northern South America during the winter.
The White Throated Sparrow is one of the continent’s best-studied and most familiar songbirds. It is found at some season throughout much of North America, south of the tree line and principally east of the Rocky Mountains.
From the Field, Field Note Justine Kibbe June 26, 2019
Working on the Harbor School’s Billion Oyster Project to restore oysters in New York Harbor. Harbor School Photo
Don’t miss, “Take Back the Harbor” at 5 p.m. July 14 at the Movie Theater. The 39-minute documentary follows students from the Harbor School in New York City as they work in the harbor and travel to Fishers Island to learn about growing oysters as part of the Billion Oyster Project, an unprecedented program to restore once-bountiful oysters to New York Harbor.
Murray Fisher, who grew up summering on Fishers Island, founded the Harbor School in 2002 to teach waterway stewardship, along with a full high school curriculum. He and Pete Malinowski, whose family owns and runs Fishers Island Oyster Farm, started the Billion Oyster Project with the hope of restoring oyster reefs to New York Harbor through public education initiatives.
“Oysters are good for New York Harbor, because they filter gallons and gallons of pollutants,” Fisher said. “Planting a billion oysters in the harbor by 2035 seems so big and so impossible, but we wanted to build a movement.”
Two award-winning filmmakers, Kristi Jacobson and Roger Ross Williams, captured the students, teachers and Billion Oyster team as they built reefs, monitored growth and performed marine bio research over the course of a year. Cameras were there to capture the dedication of these students as they marked victories and also faced setbacks in their journey to install the largest reef in New York City with 50,000 oysters in Jamaica Bay.
A Harbor School student, Nicholas, expressed thoughts that underline the goals and ultimate success of the Fisher/Malinowski program: “To me, the only way to have hope in restoring the harbor, and really the planet as a whole, is to make hope, Nothing is going to happen unless someone does it. And that someone might as well be me.”
Stay for reception and Q & A session following film.
The Fishers Island Conservancy’s 2019 Sunset on the Beach will be held Saturday July 20th, from 6-8 pm on the Big Club Beach. Join us for a celebration of Fishers Island’s natural resources!
Pictures do not do justice to the amazing transformation along South Beach Road approaching the Parcourse FitCircuit. Individual stops along the circuit are now visible, as is access to South Beach in the distance.
A band of crows that regularly patrols both ends of Elizabeth Airport runway have discovered “easy pickins”, while mother Killdeer sounds the alarm circling around her clutch of eggs hidden inside tiny potholes of broken pavement.
From the Field, Field Note Justine Kibbe June 12, 2019
