Nature Notes

LARRY PENNY

Well, here we go into September. It's been a wacky summer, after a strange spring. A couple of near-miss tropical storms and everything's back to normal - not.

We have some end-of-summer natural history statistics and oddities for you, after which we'll get on with fall. We'll start with the oddities:

- Black vulture, photographed by Clay Morey in the sky over East Hampton Village while en route east, shows up at Montauk Point. Vulture ends up sick in a box at the Lighthouse and is taken to the wildlife rehabilitator Ginny Frati to be nursed back to health.

- Brown boobies seen over Atlantic Ocean shore at Sagaponack by the inveterate booby-watcher Bob Caspar. Others seen later on off Shinnecock Inlet and Napeague by Scott Gaeckle.

Ouch! Jellyfish!

- Record number of moonsnail egg casts ("sand collars") appear on ocean beaches, coincidentally with lots of empty parasitized surf-clam shells, each pair of which exhibits the neatly drilled, telltale entry hole of the moon snail's radula.

- Hordes of very large lion's-mane jellyfishes show up in local waters to plague and sting swimmers and bathers. A few are two feet across. Ouch!

- Eastern spadefoot toads emerge from underground chambers, and turtles in record numbers after record mid-June rains, to croak, court, and lay eggs. It was the first such mass breeding emergence in nine years.

- Florida manatee is seen in ocean by diver in front of the Stone House south of Montauk. Ends up going around the Point and into Lake Montauk, where it delights manatee spotters in Coonsfoot Cove. Hangs around the lake for a few days, then slips out and heads for uncharted waters, never to be seen or heard from again.

Odd Summer Happenings

- Everything is early in spring, everything is late in summer. Tree crickets are two weeks late. They don't begin to sing until August, at which time they sing like crazy.

- Female green turtle weighing about 400 pounds and about four feet in length shows up on Amagansett ocean beach and proceeds to dig nest in sand. Is seen and photographed by the Frisbie family a few minutes before her departure. Nest is dug up by group of sea turtle biologists as Hurricane Bonnie approaches, and turns out to be barren (like Al Capone's safe).

- The marsh hibiscus blooms as it has never done before. Fort Pond edges and Napeague brackish meadows, where both the rose and white forms abound, have been fairly lit up by this species; they can be breathtaking.

- Broad-billed sandpiper shows up at Jamaica Bay and attracts birders from all over the United States. It's the first time this Eurasian species, resembling a squat snipe, has ever been seen in the Americas except for the Aleutian Islands.

Wins And Losses

Now for some statistics.

Perhaps because of the June rains, ospreys, which are on the state's list of threatened species, do terribly, the worst in more than 15 years. In East Hampton Town, not counting Gardiner's Island, 26 nests and nest platforms produce no more than eight fledglings. The ospreys in neighboring townships don't fare much better.

After a dismal year in 1997, the Federally threatened and state-endangered piping plovers do better here. Twenty-four pairs fledge 26 young for a productivity rate of slightly higher than one.

Last year, 29 pairs fledged only 20 young for the lowest town fledgling rate on record.

Endangered? No Wonder

Terns continue to do poorly, despite high numbers of the bait fish (silversides and sand eels) upon which they feed, and the absence of brown tide.

About 75 pairs of the state-endangered least tern try to nest on various East Hampton shores. They hatch fewer than five young. Not one hatchling lasts more than two weeks. None - nada - fledge.

This makes four straight years in which not a single least tern chick has made it to fledging in East Hampton Town. Something is going on. No wonder the state calls them endangered!

Highs And Lows

A record number of box turtles are seen and reported. The number of box turtle road kills is a near record low.

Traffic counts on the South Fork reach an all-time high! Yet road kills are a near record low (since 1980, when the writer began keeping daily road kill records).

Gypsy moths are at an all-time low.

As for mosquitoes, one of the highest years on record. They're hanging on to the bitter end, though fortunately, there is no eastern equine encephalitis to report.

Now it is fall. The goose-hunting season has begun. Exquisite cloudless sulphur butterflies are streaming up from the South.

The fall bird migration is well in progress. The hawk flight south along the shore is just beginning. Shorebirds continue to move. Warblers are catching up. There are reports of grosbeaks.

The goldenrods are well in bloom and the asters are just starting. The leaves of the horse chestnuts have drabbed off and begun to come down; horse chestnuts are beautiful bloomers, ugly leaf-droppers.

In the swamps, the tupelos are already reddening; they're the second local tree to lose their leaves.

It's hard to know what to make of the summer. The fall should be wonderful!