(07/15/2009) Only one robust chick remains in the osprey nest west of Otter Pond in Sag Harbor. Notwithstanding the father’s return after an absence of six days, the
 Durell Godfrey
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other two chicks were cannibalized, the last as much by Mrs. Osprey as by the other members of the family.
It’s been a crazy summer thus far. When the rains finally petered out, fireflies, or lightning bugs, put in an appearance, but in my neck of the woods there were only a few, and they stopped lighting up a few hours after they started. They must have been tired.
We’ve had reports of a few whippoorwills wailing around. Eric Schantz heard one in the wee morning hours over the weekend east of Lake Montauk. Billy Hajek, who lives on the west side of Crooked Pond south of Sag Harbor, heard one call and then flushed one up from a point three feet away along the old Bridgehampton to Sag Harbor railroad bed. Once there were hundreds, today, only a handful.
I have a lot of flowers growing in my yard, but the only bees I see gathering pollen from them are bumblebees and carpenter bees. The latter get their name from their unique augering abilities — they drill neat, perfectly round access holes three-eighths of an inch in diameter in the sides of houses so they can raise their families between a structure’s inner and outer walls. They never apply for building permits, they just do it.
Honeybees, on the other hand, one of the few invasive Eurasian species we would have a hard time doing without, are in short supply. You can see them around hives kept by the several beekeepers in town, but wild nests are scarce. Most of the honeybees we meet up with here are from the deep South; they’ve been sent through the mails or by UPS.
The paucity of bees leaves hummingbirds, sphinx moths, bee flies, and butterflies to do most of the pollinating. Thus far there have not been many of the latter to be seen. After a spring that issued very few mourning cloak butterflies, a few painted ladies, admirals, sulphurs, and wood satyrs are around, but all of them together don’t add up to the number of cabbage whites, another émigré from Eurasia.
Ed Michels, the East Hampton harbormaster, reports that dolphins have entered the Peconic Estuary after several weeks of plying Long Island Sound. But you are not likely to encounter any in Great South Bay, which by recent accounts is experiencing another bout of brown-tide plankton. (Let’s hope they stay away from the Peconics, that would really put a damper on an already very damp summer.)
None of those pesky little brown-tide buggers are around yet, but there are lots of lion’s-mane jellies, particularly, in Noyac Bay, which borders Long Beach, which in turn abuts North Haven on the west. They can give you a nasty sting, equivalent in potency to the stings of bees, and turn a nice day at the beach into a travesty. They are plankton eaters and while they can propel themselves slowly along in the water by pulsing their bells, they are mainly passive locomotors, coming and going with the tides and winds.
The tree crickets will begin to sound off here and there in the trees and bushes this week. It should be a good year for them, as the foliage is lush and there are lots of aphids, scales, and other sucking insects around for them to feed on. What with the scarcity of whippoorwills, there hasn’t been much of an evening’s chorus to enjoy, save for one night’s outpouring of croaking eastern spadefoot toads on June 18 after a heavy downpour.
What you might hear now and then out there in the dark is a click or two, not unlike the click made by those little toys we used to have with steel-spring clickers that we worked with our thumbs. The bigger the click beetle, the more powerful the click.
A week ago I was awakened by a series of clicks inside my room near my bed. I traced them to an empty yogurt cup I keep by my bed for the “embalmed” bodies of insects that daddy longlegs spiders drop from the ceiling when they’re done feeding. There was a three-quarter-inch click beetle in the yogurt cup and the cup was serving as a concert shell, amplifying the sound. He was right-angling his body, snapping his hard-shelled thorax against his hard-shelled abdomen, clicking away for help at a great rate. I released him and fell back to sleep.
Oh yes, another black widow showed up in Northwest on Saddle Lane. Be careful groping in damp, dark places. We have yet to hear of any brown recluse spider bites this spring and summer, but be on the lookout. Their bites may lose you and arm or leg if not properly attended to.
We have yet to hear of any West Nile cases from mosquito bites; preoccupation with them has been drowned out by the swine flu virus cases that have up to now accounted for five deaths on Long Island. There are plenty of new afflictions labeled Lyme disease, babesiosis, and ehrlichiosis. Always be circumspect, it’s a jungle out there.
This just in: Andy Sabin and crew just spotted two humpback whales southeast of Block Island. Let’s end on an up tick rather than a down one.