Season insulated
Time encapsulated
History refrigerated
Wonder invigorated
Even emancipated
*Fort Wright Parade Grounds
Local Traditional Knowledge (LTK) can come in all guises…
These colder months I have depended on a clan of six local American Crows to help me monitor the Fort Wright Parade Ground area.
I began noting this group three years ago- regularly at low tide sifting and pecking along kelp mounds on the western end of South beach.
Very crafty and clever, these “Sentinels” have aided my own astute observations in the field time and time again- so much so that I also rely on their Fish Crow cousins over in Hay Harbor.
With their alarming and “mobbing” raucous (or Caw-cous!) they alert me to nearby birds of prey, call my attention to incoming tidal marine debris,(especially silvery mylar)and hover like a black shroud over the stench of hidden seal and sea turtle carcasses. They stand their ground staunchly too in whatever remains of a Coyote kill -usually pheasant or rabbit.
The birds have even routinely noted over the years that the 4:15pm Ferry crowd conveniently leaves the most “dinner” refuse-watch the six of them hover over and land at 4:50pm scavenging the docks and parking lot.
These days Crows call me (collect!) with a sighting of Snowy Owl gliding over Parade Grounds and Common Eider and Merganser nibbling below the dock pilings in Silver Eel Cove.
While monitoring Sound side yesterday, I wrestled mostly with high winds and an ice-cream headache.
This morning it is warmer here-I “bask” in the morning rays looking towards South beach,where I caught a glimpse of Snowy owl evading crows in flight. It is 25 degrees-yet 18 degrees North across the way in New London. Water temperature is 37.
The Nature Conservancy (Long Island) proposed setting temperature loggers around Island late spring. A unique component that would allow Island Sentinels to help monitor and contribute data to area seagrass meadow research.
Meanwhile, I look forward to trading in ice cleats for my Vans…..
Snuggle up
Couple up
Puff up
Look up
Bundle up too.
The solitude is sheer-only permeated with the lull of bell buoy
rocking me and the Dumplings into the hush of The Sound.
As Brant with pale belly rested,
elusive Bufflehead caught my eye.
This, this is where we winter.
Darkness like lava flows in lowest viscosity.
Downward, downward, and draping heavily
Upon
Season’s shadow shortened and snuffed out.
Until
Creation, eruption without interruption
Flows light once again…..
“Where the lovelight gleams…..”
It’s in the winter months these past four years that I have routinely anticipated meeting Thelma Pheobe on the shores of Chocomount Beach.
Just right or west of the familiar clump of rocks, just a Frisbee throw seaward from Picnic Rock, I look for her reappearance-remains of her day.
Simply, out in the field, but in my thoughts I see the black and white photograph that hangs in our Henry Ferguson Museum. I stand aground where she did. Remembering her past lives and hearing Pierce Rafferty’s historic depictions of the fateful day in April 1923. When the once former World War I patrol yacht USS Onward, which was transferred to US Coast Guard as a Geodetic Survey vessel in 1919 and later renamed Thelma Pheobe, she became a rum runner during the early 1920’s and wrecked ashore here.
Smashed and shattered porthole glass and whiskey bottle cargo….salted and worn. Petrified deck lumber, crumbling iron…. residuum, remnants, artifacts, imaginings, call them what I will- skeletal remains of her day.
As I walk my path, staying my course it occurs to me that my compass or innate Naturalist tendencies resonate(sometimes loudly!) and nudge(very pushy!) me ever forward towards my true north-my thoughts and dreams of earth, wind and sky within our Natural World.
Ever simple ideas, moments, even imaginings of my own native peoples –somewhere, more often than not accompany me out in the field anywhere.
The original tribal Naturalists that once hunted and fished along the coastal sands on and around Fishers Island- there are moments when I feel passionate that my steps slip raw and well worn into theirs…each fleeting moment, shadow, breath of breeze fitting effortlessly into someone else’s ….somewhere in time.
Simply, I always look for proof of this feeling.
While walking the small shore of Mile Creek in Old Lyme, CT. I gazed across the Sound and through the sea smoke of a winter morn-squinting to see my “homeland”, an Island vacant now of hunters and gatherers…my eyes fall upon the immediate sand beneath me.
I see an arrowhead, Perhaps, from the long ago Nehantick (Niantic) tribe, east of the Connecticut River, blazing trails amidst “long necked waters”….naturally.
I don’t know for certain how much wood a Woodpecker pecks, but I am learning to differentiate the specific species.
I haven’t yet documented a Hairy Woodpecker on Fishers Island.
Assuming BOTH birds indeed have feathers … the Downy version of the bird is most familiar to me.
At first glance The Downy pecks with a tinier bill (in proportion to its head) than its Hairy relative.
Take binoculars and check out for black or gray spots on outer tail feathers-this is the Downy too.
Listen closely for a stronger, rattling voice from the Hairy Woodpecker-perhaps in the mature woods mid Island.