The two recent gang-rape incidents in India and the beheading of a Sri Lankan woman in Saudi Arabia, a so-called friendly nation, has caused me to wonder if we are making any progress at all. We are supposed to be culturally evolving and perhaps some of us are, but these atavistic acts by men makes me wonder.

    It reminds me of the retort supposedly attributable to Thomas Huxley on the presentation of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution: “We may have come from monkeys, but some of us haven’t come far enough.” Has the human species finished evolving in the physical and mental sense, and is now only advancing, or regressing, via cultural evolution?

    When we examine infrahuman cultures, say, those of primates, we do find some progressive cultures. For example, in the great Congo Basin in central Africa, the bonobo, a very close relative of the chimpanzee, has a society that is as matriarchal as it is patriarchal. There is an equality between female and male that has only rarely been obtained in the world’s various human cultures. On the other hand, in chimpanzee circles, the males are clearly dominant. However, even in those infrahuman animal societies where the males are dominant, and there are many, there is no such thing as “gang rape,” or even rape for that matter. There is a time and place for sex and it doesn’t take place without the female’s readiness and consent.

    Indeed, there is as much matriarchal rule in animal societies, such as in those of the white-tailed deer and African elephant. Ironically, it is men that are poaching and detusking elephants in many parts of Africa, including Kenya, at this very moment. It is men that are killing the rhinoceroses for their horns worth millions to other men. It is the male wildlife managers that have been championing the killing of does rather than bucks in order to reduce deer populations where deer are considered a “nuisance,” such as on eastern Long Island.

    While there are still human cultures where a man may have more than one wife, say as in some Islam-dominated countries or in South Africa, monogamy or serial monogamy, one-after-the-other abetted by divorce laws, is the majority rule across the globe. Many of us romantics and monogamists are pleased when we hear of infrahuman species that are monogamous, such as ospreys, mute swans, great horned owls, and a few others. Where monogamy is concerned, birds may be more highly evolved than mammals.

    We associate love with monogamy, but there is all kinds of love — maternal, paternal, fraternal, and so on. When one elephant in a matriarchy passes on, the others are said to grieve. Elephants are long livers and thus may be associated with each other for years and years in a herd, providing for long and continuous day-to-day relationships. We also have many examples of pets missing their masters, such as the recent case where a dog was found cold and shivering at a church where his owner’s funeral took place 10 miles from the man’s home. The dog had been missing for several days.

    Think of all the internecine struggles resulting in hundreds of daily human deaths throughout the world. The so-called infrahuman species very rarely have members that fight to the death of one or the other. If they had weapons of mass destruction would they use them? Probably not. Yes, lions, tigers, wolves, orcas, and other mammalian carnivores prey on animals of other species and sometimes on their own, but they kill to eat, not to leave their victims untouched lying on the arena floor.

    What species makes and distributes pornographic films and pictures? What species creates and markets video games that focus on mass killings in horrific ways with horrific weapons? What species sells and maintains young women as sex slaves? What species is famous for its indulgence in a worldwide network of pedophilia? Only one. You guessed it, Homo sapiens.

    Yes, there are cases where foxes in a hen house will slaughter many fowl in a short time and eat only a few, but this is unusual. American buffalo hunters would kill 100 in one day, not for the meat, mind you, but for the furry and leathery pelts. Raping and killing for sport are not that different in motivation.

    That biologist who said, “we haven’t come far enough” more than a century and a half ago was spot on. We do have a long way to go. We could learn a lot from the infrahumans, but will we choose to do so? That is the question.

   Calcium. An element that we and billions and billions of organisms cannot live without. All vertebrates, with their vertebral columns and many other bones and teeth need calcium. All shelled mollusks and barnacles require calcium. You don’t find many barnacles, if any, in freshwater environments. Calcium is found in a host of other animals where it serves a variety of vital functions. Plants don’t metabolize calcium per se, but the calcium in lime or limestone neutralizes acid soils, which inhibits the growth of many plant species, including grasses, forbs, shrubs, and trees.

    In the seas, calcium ions help keep marine waters basic with pHs above 7, the value that is neither alkaline nor acidic. Lately we are learning that the oceans are losing some of their alkalinity and even becoming somewhat acidic, especially in estuarine and coastal waters. We can’t survive without calcium, and neither can the oceans!

    Think about all those marine fishes that live in the ocean and are harvested daily for food, fishmeal or, even, fertilizer. Think of all of those shellfish — the clams, mussels, sea scallops, oysters — that are gleaned from seawater daily to satisfy our palates. We don’t eat the calcium portions. We throw them away in the trash and they end up in landfills or are buried with other municipal garbage. Native Americans caught and ate a lot of shellfish, as well as bony fish and other vertebrates. Where did the hard parts end up? In kitchen middens, deposited in upland sites generally quite a ways from the nearest seawater.

    We have two long-term trends running counter to each other. Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere, and thus more is dissolving each day in ocean waters than previously, so calcium is being removed from ocean waters on an ever-increasing basis. The waters are becoming alarmingly acidic. Calcium input from rivers and groundwater feeds is continuing, but diminishing, as many soils through which groundwater flows, such as those on much of Long Island, are already calcium-depleted. They don’t put crushed oyster shells on roads, trails, and marina parking lots the way the used to do. The only new source of calcium running into marine waters comes from salting roads with calcium salts mined from inland salt deposits, left over from a much earlier time when the seas covered much more of the land’s surface than they do today.

    Calcium combines with carbon dioxide to create calcium carbonate, the substance of marine shells. The late John Wood, who grew up in East Hampton and served as a town trustee for many years overseeing the many shellfish waters owned by the trustees, once told me that the shells of clams seemed to be getting softer. He observed in the same breath that we should be putting empty clamshells back in the water rather than throwing them away in upland sites. He was neither a scientist nor a chemist, nevertheless, he was very perceptive and was prophesizing a looming calcium deficiency.

    It is interesting that one of the four commissions appointed by Governor Cuomo to prepare for the next Superstorm Sandy suggested oyster beds as a kind of vertically growing natural dam on shoals and coastal flats. Such extensive oyster beds once thrived in the Chesapeake Bay and even in the Great South Bay when the bay was brackish and as salty as the adjacent seas. They were wide and high and the ambient water was rich in calcium gleaned from the older lifeless shells at the bottom of the heap. There is now a revived effort to rebuild those same Chesapeake oyster beds that were removed in the past by harvesting and dredging for navigation.

    Likewise, here on Long Island there is a group of shellfish enthusiasts trying to start up oyster beds in Port Jefferson and Stony Brook harbors. The Southampton Town Trustees are also well ahead of the rest of the field here on the South Fork. They’ve been building oyster beds in Shinnecock Bay and elsewhere with the help of the Southampton citizenry. The next time you dig (or buy) clams locally, think about returning the empty shells to the sea, rather than taking them to the nearest recycling dropoff, where they won’t be recycled but shipped off of Long Island with the other non-recyclable garbage.Calcium. An element that we and billions and billions of organisms cannot live without. All vertebrates, with their vertebral columns and many other bones and teeth need calcium. All shelled mollusks and barnacles require calcium. You don’t find many barnacles, if any, in freshwater environments. Calcium is found in a host of other animals where it serves a variety of vital functions. Plants don’t metabolize calcium per se, but the calcium in lime or limestone neutralizes acid soils, which inhibits the growth of many plant species, including grasses, forbs, shrubs, and trees.

    In the seas, calcium ions help keep marine waters basic with pHs above 7, the value that is neither alkaline nor acidic. Lately we are learning that the oceans are losing some of their alkalinity and even becoming somewhat acidic, especially in estuarine and coastal waters. We can’t survive without calcium, and neither can the oceans!

    Think about all those marine fishes that live in the ocean and are harvested daily for food, fishmeal or, even, fertilizer. Think of all of those shellfish — the clams, mussels, sea scallops, oysters — that are gleaned from seawater daily to satisfy our palates. We don’t eat the calcium portions. We throw them away in the trash and they end up in landfills or are buried with other municipal garbage. Native Americans caught and ate a lot of shellfish, as well as bony fish and other vertebrates. Where did the hard parts end up? In kitchen middens, deposited in upland sites generally quite a ways from the nearest seawater.

    We have two long-term trends running counter to each other. Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere, and thus more is dissolving each day in ocean waters than previously, so calcium is being removed from ocean waters on an ever-increasing basis. The waters are becoming alarmingly acidic. Calcium input from rivers and groundwater feeds is continuing, but diminishing, as many soils through which groundwater flows, such as those on much of Long Island, are already calcium-depleted. They don’t put crushed oyster shells on roads, trails, and marina parking lots the way the used to do. The only new source of calcium running into marine waters comes from salting roads with calcium salts mined from inland salt deposits, left over from a much earlier time when the seas covered much more of the land’s surface than they do today.

    Calcium combines with carbon dioxide to create calcium carbonate, the substance of marine shells. The late John Wood, who grew up in East Hampton and served as a town trustee for many years overseeing the many shellfish waters owned by the trustees, once told me that the shells of clams seemed to be getting softer. He observed in the same breath that we should be putting empty clamshells back in the water rather than throwing them away in upland sites. He was neither a scientist nor a chemist, nevertheless, he was very perceptive and was prophesizing a looming calcium deficiency.

    It is interesting that one of the four commissions appointed by Governor Cuomo to prepare for the next Superstorm Sandy suggested oyster beds as a kind of vertically growing natural dam on shoals and coastal flats. Such extensive oyster beds once thrived in the Chesapeake Bay and even in the Great South Bay when the bay was brackish and as salty as the adjacent seas. They were wide and high and the ambient water was rich in calcium gleaned from the older lifeless shells at the bottom of the heap. There is now a revived effort to rebuild those same Chesapeake oyster beds that were removed in the past by harvesting and dredging for navigation.

    Likewise, here on Long Island there is a group of shellfish enthusiasts trying to start up oyster beds in Port Jefferson and Stony Brook harbors. The Southampton Town Trustees are also well ahead of the rest of the field here on the South Fork. They’ve been building oyster beds in Shinnecock Bay and elsewhere with the help of the Southampton citizenry. The next time you dig (or buy) clams locally, think about returning the empty shells to the sea, rather than taking them to the nearest recycling dropoff, where they won’t be recycled but shipped off of Long Island with the other non-recyclable garbage.

   The last of the Long Island Christmas Bird Counts — the Orient Count — took place on Saturday. The count compiler over the last 20 years has been Mary Laura Lamont of Northville in Riverhead Town, and as of Sunday night all of the results had not been turned in to her. Nonetheless, after talking with Mary Laura, it is obvious that this was a very good count, especially for the North Fork territories and Shelter Island. Our part of the count was Cedar Point County Park on the east to Morton Wildlife Refuge on the west.

    As they do every year, Terry Sullivan and Al Daniels covered much of Sag Harbor and North Haven. Barbara and Karen Rubenstein, Angus Wilson, Vicki Bustamante, and I covered Cedar Point, the Grace Estate, and Barcelona (Russell’s) Neck.

    It was a quiet morning accompanied by calm waters followed by a rainy afternoon with building winds. The owlers were out early; at least six screech owls were heard calling on this side of the bay, in the Greenport part of the territory, there were 13 of them out trilling. One saw-whet owl, the tiniest of our lot here on the East Coast, was also heard, with its seemingly never-ending series of toot-toot-toot-toot-toot calls.

    In our territory we were almost raptorless, while Terry and Al had a merlin streak across their windshield in pursuit of small birds, as well as an immature bald eagle. The same eagle was seen over western Sag Harbor by the Morton Wildlife Refuge party and perhaps later over Shelter Island. Across the bay a kestrel (a rarity in these times) and peregrine falcon were observed.

    The rarest duck was the Barrow’s goldeneye observed in upper Sag Harbor Cove. Not a single canvasback on our side, but scaup, both the green-headed greater and purple-headed lesser, were seen in respectable numbers. Hooded mergansers were almost as common as red-breasted ones. The most common sea ducks east of Sag Harbor were common goldeneyes. With more than 400 counted, they outnumbered Canada geese, black ducks, long-tailed ducks, buffleheads, and the three species of scoters combined.

    There was an unusually large number of common loons, and Angus came up with two red-throated loons as well as two razorbills, one of the auk species in Gardiner’s Bay. Two northern gannets were also tallied over the bay off of Hedges Banks. There was a fair share of horned grebes diving along with the loons in Northwest Harbor and Sag Harbor and Noyac Bays. The loons, grebes, and gannets, as well as the mergansers, wouldn’t be here at this time if there weren’t a copious supply of small fish to get them through the winter.

    Sanderlings were common on the outer side of Cedar Point feeding on a Sandy-sculpted stony shore edge with herring and ring-billed gulls. Mike Scheibel covered Mashomack on Shelter Island, where he came up with a semipalmated plover. Purple sandpipers, winter visitors, and a killdeer that didn’t go south were observed on the North Fork. Vicki and I had a great blue heron fly over our heads more than once, apparently looking for open water. In the State Department of Environmental Conservation-owned marshes west of Mile Hill Road, Vicki played Virginia rail calls more than once from her smartphone and was answered back by two real Virginia rails. On the other hand, her smartphone calls to spook out marsh wrens went unanswered.

    The Barbara-Karen-Angus party came up with all the local woodpeckers, including nine red-bellied woodpeckers, two hairy woodpeckers, and a yellow-bellied sapsucker that apparently forgot to go south. They also observed 2 brown creepers, 8 eastern bluebirds (our state bird), and 24 robins. A third member of the thrush family, a rarity in the winter, a wood thrush, was picked up on the North Fork.

    Red-breasted nuthatches were almost as common as white-breasted ones. There were a fair number of chickadees and titmice, and almost all of the sparrows — tree, field, white-throated, song, fox, and, on the North Fork, two white-crowned sparrows. Mary Laura had three of the northern finches, which are apt to visit us every winter — redpolls, pine siskins, and purple finches. We didn’t see a single yellow-rumped warbler, which was a surprise, but two warblers, the palm warbler and common yellowthroat, were observed on the North Fork.

    No pheasants, not a single bobwhite, but Angus and crew did come up with six wild turkeys, the game bird on eastern Long Island that in this millennium has come to outnumber quail, pheasants, and ruffed grouse combined. It was unusually quiet as far as birdcalls go throughout the day. Yes, the blue jays and crows were typically vociferous, and the Carolina wrens rattled out their rat-a-tat songs throughout the day, but most of the others were mute. Were they anticipating the rain, freezing rain, and snow that would fall later in the day?

After achieving a historic low in the 1960s, owing to wide use of DDT and other pesticides, the Long Island osprey populations have bounced back and are still rising. But the increasing number of cormorants and seals in our waters since the 1990s is nettling their comeback, and now there is a third competitor on the scene to contend with — one most of us are happy for: our national bird.

Yes, the bald eagle is making a comeback, having disappeared as a breeder in the area in 1936. Seventy years later it looks like the species is back to stay. The past winter witnessed a record number of them, and the chicks in the three local nests have almost reached fledgling stage.

Just about every layperson I talk to has seen one of these magnificent birds fly over; a few have been able to photograph them. At last count toy dogs and house cats are still running rampant; apparently these eagles are pretty much confined to feeding their young fresh fish.

Mary Laura Lamont, one of the first to make note of eagles breeding locally, as far back as 2006, is a ranger at the Fire Island National Seashore. She has kept track of the nest on that preserve since it was first established three years ago. This year there are three chicks in the nest. They got started early and are almost big enough to go out on their own.

She has observed that their diet is almost entirely fish, and there is a fishing war of sorts in progress as a result. An osprey nest is located only a few hundred yards away and, as usual, the osprey chicks are also reared on fish, the Great South Bay being a little more than a stone’s throw away.

Ms. Lamont observed that the new bald eagle pair is up to its old tricks: It catches some of its food with its talons from just beneath the bay’s surface, but it harvests just as much from the osprey parents, as eagles are wont to do. This is not a recent phenomenon. Eagles have been snatching ospreys’ catches since before Ben Franklin. Just about everyone has heard the story of why that early American statesman argued against making the bald eagle our national bird — because it was cowardly and stole from ospreys and other fish-catching birds. He was for the wild turkey, as American a bird as ever there was.

At any rate, Fire Island ospreys have to work that much harder to provide for the eagles’ young and their own. Between catching fish and nourishing their young, ospreys have their own way of getting back at eagles. They fly over the eagle nest and harass the chicks in the same way the eagles harass them and their nestlings. Inasmuch as this kind of war has been going on forever, it appears that both species will continue to prosper locally.

Long Island bald eagles have another advantage when it comes to competing with ospreys. Breeding pairs don’t migrate. They stay throughout the winter. Thus while ospreys are returning to their habitual breeding grounds from the south, as much as a couple of thousand miles away, the eagle pair has already brought its nest up to speed and the female is already incubating eggs by the time the ospreys return.

Bald eagles will also take fish and other carrion when the opportunity presents itself. So, in a way, to refute Franklin’s more idealistic conception, the bald eagle is much more American in character than the turkey. It is as bad as it is good!

While the Fire Island eagles are about to finish their procreation duties for the year, the Shelter Island pair at the Nature Conservancy’s Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island is bringing up two chicks this year, one fewer than last year. Mike Scheibel has been watching over them like a mother hen. The chicks should be out of the nest and on their own by the end of May. (Osprey chicks don’t fledge until the end of June or beginning of July.)

There is also a new eagle family coming along at the United States Fish and Wildlife Wertheim Refuge only a few miles away from the Fire Island nest and another family on Gardiner’s Island. It is the latter nest that we know the least about, as Gardiner’s Island is run like an armed encampment, protected by video cameras and other modern means of detection. The Gardiner’s Island nest predates the others by several years. Ironically, Gardiner’s Island had the last known nest before the long nesting drought that began in 1936.

We hope that the eagles, like our Representative Lee Zeldin, along with a host of East End conservation organizations, have their eyes on Plum Island. It could become a protected stepping stone towards reestablishment of eagles on Fisher’s Island to the northeast and then Nantucket Island and so on and so on all the way up the coast.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

   Friday afternoon I was driving my pickup along Daniel’s Hole Road passing East Hampton Airport when three healthy looking female deer jumped the low fence on the edge of the airport side of the road and bounded across in front of me to the mowed field beyond. I saw them from a fairly long distance and slowed accordingly.

    I hit my first deer in 1961 on my way to Cornell, and in the 38 years since then that I have been driving Long Island roads, I have hit two other deer, one on Cedar Street in East Hampton and the other on Ferry Road on North Haven. The one in 1961 caused serious damage; the other two, no noticeable damage. The North Haven deer was the last and left barely a scratch. It shouldn’t have taken me that long to adjust to deer, but these days I drive very differently and much more cautiously, giving the deer the benefit of the doubt.

    From September through December is the crazy season for deer, and that is when drivers should be the most cautious. When deer are preoccupied with breeding, they cast some of their customary cautions to the wind. While rutting, their movements are very unpredictable. Females with fawns along roads in the other months act responsibly, often waiting by the side of the road until approaching vehicles have passed, then crossing with their little ones in tow. In the human species, the funny season often lasts 365 days, so one always has to be on one’s guard. I think I trust deer far more than I trust humans in that respect.

    I’ve been tallying roadkills on Long Island roads since 1980, in which time I have clocked about 300,000 miles, everything from major arteries like the Long Island Expressway to the most minor ones, only a few hundred feet long, ending in a blind cul-de-sac. The species on the top of the road-kill list varies from year to year and depends a lot on the size of the population during a given year, the amount of available food for a given species during the year, and the season.

    Adding up the 32 years of roadkills, which I have yet to do in a scientific way, I can state authoritatively that gray squirrels are the species most frequently run over. Their killing season is maximal in September and October, mirroring the deer road-kill frequency, but for different reasons. The deer are looking for mates; the squirrels are looking for food. In the summer, as many fawns are killed on the roads as adult deer; not so for the gray squirrel. I have never encountered a baby gray squirrel roadkill. They tend to stay in trees, where they are safest, and away from roads.

    After squirrels come opossums and raccoons, including some young-of-the-year individuals. Squirrels, opossums, and raccoons are not fast runners, and take longer to cross highways and streets. Thus, the probability of one being clipped is much greater than for, say, a fox, which can run at speeds approaching 30 miles an hour. Opossums and raccoons are also very often active at night when they are less likely to be seen by motorists, especially on roads that are not street lighted.

   Then, too, and unlike deer and squirrels, there are years when raccoons, opossums, and foxes are few in number. Statistically, they are less likely to be run over at that point. One gets a rough idea of the population size of a given road-kill species in any one year by counting them and comparing the numbers to other years. In the early 1990s, for example, raccoon numbers fell dramatically. As the local population was beaten down by distemper, the raccoon road-kill counts throughout the South Fork in those years were very low.

    On the other hand, the red fox population, which hit a high in the middle to late-1990s, but then because of the mange, stayed low until 2010, when it started to build again. As of yet, it has not attained nearly the high numbers witnessed during those previous years. In fact, for the years 2000 through 2008, there were very few fox roadkills. The gray fox, although native to Long Island, has always been outnumbered by the red fox, and in 32 years I have recorded only one gray fox roadkill.

    In upstate New York skunks are among the most common of road-kill mammals, but not on Long Island, where for the past 60 years or so, skunks have been quite rare. It’s hard to miss a skunk roadkill, if you don’t see it, you almost certainly will smell it. Muskrat roadkills show up when fresh water ponds begin to dry up, at which time the muskrats look for more aqueous habitats. I count five or six every year. Long-tailed weasels are either very rare or very wary. I seldom record more than one dead on the road in a given year. In the last five years I have come across none.

    When I was a boy in Mattituck, in vegetable crop country, cottontail rabbits were the most commonly encountered roadkills by far. When you drove along a country road at night you would likely see four or five feeding along the shoulders in every mile. Not so on the South Fork. In the last five or six years, dead cottontails on the road have become quite frequent, almost as frequent as squirrels, apparently having to do with the scarcity of red foxes. But there are quite a few red-tailed hawks flying around out there, and more than a handful of great-horned owls, both of which are very fond of rabbits. Rabbits can be active throughout most of the 24-hour day. If the red-tails and foxes don’t get them during daylight hours, the great-horned owls are likely to get them at night.

    Songbirds that feed on the edges of roads, at times picking up insects and worms off the road surface, are the most common avian roadkills encountered. Catbirds and robins are the most common birds on my road-kill lists. Grackles, particularly just fledged grackles, are next. Then come herring gulls, a scavenger species that finds its goodies along the roads, but also one that drops crabs, clams, and other shellfish on hard surfaces, i.e., any paved road close to marine waters.

    Turkeys have become quite common, but in the 20 years since they were first reintroduced here in Montauk, I have tallied an average of less than one turkey roadkill per year. They walk around like they own the roads, more than any other mammal or bird, and are quite watchful of passing cars. It’s hard to miss a turkey on the highway; they are among the biggest of American birds and seldom travel alone. I have never come across a roadkill Canada goose, nor a black duck, but count several mallards, almost all males, among the recorded kills each year. They are the tamest and most trusting of the local waterfowl and, perhaps, it is their unwary nature that gets them into trouble.

    Among amphibians, bullfrogs are not uncommon as roadkills. Like muskrats, when their ponds dry up, they seek other waters and have been known to travel a mile or more over land for such purpose. As for reptiles, snakes are very scarce roadkills, while in some years turtles are as common as raccoons and opossums. They are very slow, yet determined. Big as or bigger than a brick or largish rock, and only afoot during daylight hours, one would think that they would be easily observed and watched out for. It is even possible that there are some motorists out there who make it a point to hit one once seen. I will say this, however, box turtle roadkills are becoming less and less common each year. Either their population is dwindling or drivers are more watchful and respectful of their presence. I hope it’s the latter.

    As animals have “cultures” just as we have them, let’s hope their cultures are progressing accordingly with each generation and that fewer and fewer of them will be crushed by radial tires than in years past. Let’s also hope that the human culture progresses as well. To some observers it seems to have come to a standstill.

   We just learned something Monday as reported in both Newsday and The New York Times. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to rise; it’s up 3 percent over last year. Every time we inhale, we 7 billion humans breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. If that isn’t enough, all of the other billions and billions of organisms including both plants and animals with the exception of a very few, also respire, i.e., consume oxygen and discharge carbon dioxide.

    Plants, however, produce way more oxygen than they use up, they are oxygen contributors, while taking in carbon dioxide to make carbon based products — fructose, glucose, cellulose, and a bunch more — both for short-term use, annual storage, and long-term use. A 2,000-year-old California redwood is chock full of stored carbon molecules that came from carbon dioxide.

    Forest fires, which have been on the rise in this millennium, account for the release of much carbon dioxide, all that carbon stored up in the trees now reduced to ashes. But we humans collectively around the world produce more carbon dioxide via burning carbon fuels (natural gas, oil, gasoline, wood, coal, peat, etc.) than sporadic forest fires, which don’t happen day in and day out in the same predictable fashion.

    Jimmy Carter as president was far ahead of his time when he proposed keeping heating thermostats down to 65 degrees rather than the oft-recommended 72 degrees, even at the White House during his four-year tenure. Too few of our leaders and industrialists took him seriously. Economic bubbles came along, yes, they put people to work, but they also produced bigger houses to heat, bigger motor vehicles to drive around in, more airplane passenger trips, etc., etc., etc. No wonder CO2 continues to increase in the atmosphere.

    What does it do up there? It dramatically increases the greenhouse effect. It traps heat reradiated from the earth’s surface and air temperatures increase. When air temperatures increase, glaciers melt faster and shed their melt waters to the ocean, and sea level responds by rising concomitantly. The seas also get warmer, and thus expand in volume adding to sea-level rise. They also become more acidic as more carbon dioxide is dissolved in seawater, which, in turn, increases the amount of carbon-based acids available to lower the pH from its normal, and healthy, alkalinity levels. Marine organisms of all kinds suffer. The ocean’s biomass and biota both fall.

    Locally, shellfish shells become thinner, making them more susceptible to predation. The Peconic and Great South Bay estuaries become fresher and fresher. It becomes a lose-lose situation throughout.

    Yes, global warming will lower heating fuel consumption to a small degree, but more people driving more vehicles, flying here and there, and cruising the oceans while commensurately using cellphones and iPads will offset any savings realized by lowering the thermostats. Then too, it takes a lot of carbon-based energy to drill and pump the oil, drill and decant the natural gas from shales, mine coal, and even cut firewood. When we purposely burn firewood (or peat, as in some countries) we are further releasing the stores of carbon.

    Hydroelectric power doesn’t produce any carbon dioxide to speak of, but most of the prime spots for producing it have already been exploited. Dams also interfere with the ecology of rivers, especially those used by diadromous fishes such as salmon and steelhead trout. Nuclear power is carbon-free, but it has long-lasting detrimental side effects and the capacity to produce disastrous acute affects, as recently demonstrated in Japan. Electric cars don’t emit carbon or any other injurious gases, except, perhaps, for ozone, but if they aren’t charged with hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, or solar power, they are, in fact, producing a lot of second-hand carbon dioxide by way of the carbon fuels that are burned to charge their batteries.

    Wind, geothermal, and solar energies release very little, if any, carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Of these, drilling into the deep “hot rocks” zone promises an almost unlimited amount of thermal energy, but worries about drilling-induced earthquakes have put the development of such a cheap, non-polluting energy source on hold. Wind turbines, whether land-based or offshore, are very clean and relatively efficient, but their effects on wildlife, especially migrating birds and fish, can be devastating, as accumulating empirical evidence is revealing.

    Solar seems to be trouble-free, at least, at the moment. It also lends itself well to local residential, industrial, and institutional use. A solar roof on every home hardly impacts the visual quality of the landscape, but can you imagine a wind turbine at every home site? Not pretty! Big box stores were never intended to be pretty; putting solar panels on top hardly diminishes their aesthetic qualities. Large parking lots are ideal spots for solar panel arrays, too. And when it rains, your car doesn’t get wet. Ironically, the same oil-rich parts of the world controlled by OPEC also get a disproportionate amount of sunlight and therein may lie part of the solution.

    There is a law in physics that no transformation from one form of energy to another is 100 percent efficient. Otherwise, it would be possible to construct perpetual motion machines. Idealistic efficiencies for such transfers stop at around 50 percent. When sunrays impinge on solar panels they produce electricity at a fairly high rate of exchange. The waste energy that results from the transformation is heat for the most part, so on a cold day, the solar-powered residence gets a little bit of extra warming. Not bad.

    Before we fill the seas with wind turbines or build any more dams, we should push on with the development of solar power to the maximum extent. Astronomers and astrophysicists tell us that the sun isn’t going anywhere for at least several billion years. My bet is on solar. What’s more, on Long Island it could even help pay off the troubled Long Island Power Authority’s $3 billion debt.

   On Sunday at noon while sitting in the living room counting cars going by on Noyac Road, there was a sudden spate of bird activity swirling around the front yard. There were purple finches, red-breasted nuthatches, white-breasted nuthatches, chickadees, titmice, a downy woodpecker, and a Carolina wren. They hung around for about 10 minutes before picking up and heading west — all except the Carolina wren, which was not part of the group.

    This was a typical winter, mixed traveling flock, going from feeder to feeder, wood to wood, yard to yard. There was no feeder to be found on my premises and so they stayed for only a short time picking at things here and there. Apparently they came by from next door, where Ellen Stahl has been generously feeding birds year after year. We stopped feeding three or four years ago after the rats began to outnumber the birds.

    The species of birds making up these roving winter flocks are all territorial come the spring and breeding activity. Robins and bluebirds are extremely territorial in the spring and summer. By fall they also flock up, but not with other species. They keep to themselves.

    Flocking, whether in mixed-species groups or within one species, has a lot to offer. There is strength in numbers, and members of a flock look out for each other in various ways. If one sees a predator, say, a hawk or cat, it immediately informs the others by uttering sharp warning notes. Soon all of the birds are taking cover in dense vegetation and some of them begin scolding, especially if the predator continues lurking about. Blue jays are usually part of these bands and they have the loudest, most aggressive calls, encouraging the others — notably the chickadees, nuthatches, and titmice — to join the chorus.

    The calls both confuse the would-be predator and tell all the smaller birds in hearing distance to be on their guard.

    If one of the flock finds a food source on its own, it shares it with the others, even though it may selfishly cache the seeds it doesn’t have room for in its crop in a secret place, like behind a piece of tree bark or in a tiny hole in a tree trunk. On the West Coast, the California woodpecker stores its acorns in special acorn-sized niches drilled into the trunk of a tree. It is not unusual when out hiking to come upon a tree trunk stuffed with acorns up and down and around, enough to get a woodpecker through an entire winter.

    Of course, other birds in the flock or outside of it are always looking for the food niches of the hiders and, undoubtedly, the hider loses a part of its stash throughout the long winter.

    Blue jays tend to store the acorns on the ground, under leaves or buried in shallow holes. Squirrels do the same. Like the blue jays, they remember where they put them here and there, but unlike the jays, which depend on their memories and eyesight, squirrels can sniff the acorns out. Sometimes the jays even watch where the squirrels hide their nuts, and vice versa.

    Feeders make everything easy, and one wonders if the birds don’t become lazy and assume an air of entitlement. I know of some yards with feeders where the feeder gets scolded by the jays and other freeloaders if the food is not forthcoming according to schedule.

    This fall has started out as few others in this millennium, as there are numerous northern birds among the feeding flocks. If you stock your feeder amply you are liable to not only get the common feeder birds — the house finches, house sparrows, song sparrows, gold finches, chickadees, et al. — but also the rarer ones like the crossbills, the grosbeaks, the redpolls, the purple finches, pine siskins, and maybe a sapsucker or two. Many of these are in town as this is being written.

    No doubt there will be squirrels, wild turkeys, and, eventually, Norway rats, but that is part of feeding. All things in nature big and small have to eat. All life also needs water. For bluebirds and robins, which like to glean their winter food from trees, bushes, and vines, water is more important than birdseed. Having just read what I wrote, I think it is time that I get over my rat phobia, promptly put up my feeders, and also get the watering holes going again. One cannot always depend on the rain to fill them. Next time, perhaps, the wandering flock will stop at my house for vittles first before going over to Ellen’s.

   Two big storms in a row; will God try for three? As Bob Dylan recited so eloquently, “Something is happening, and you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?” It’s like that now in the world of geoclimatology and geopolitics. The two are meshing in a most confusing way, and while wasteful wars besmirch the earth, people by the thousands are dying for no good reason and sea level rises with no sign of abatement.

    Who said “Think globally and act locally?” He was spot on. If he were to have a second coming, Plato would be wisely advising us to take care of our family first, our house and property second, our community third. But current day run-of-the-mill politicos mostly haven’t read Plato and are as scientifically astute as some of our past ones were. And frankly, Scarlet, they don’t seem to give a damn.

    Yes, there is a “fiscal cliff” to worry about, but there is also a physical cliff, and that is the higher-than-sea-level land at the edge of the sea. Nature doesn’t care about you and me and the politicos who “strut and fret their way across the stage and then are heard no more.” Nature has its own long-term plan under foot, one that was written out 13 billion years ago and has been unfolding ever since. It’s time that we start paying serious attention to nature’s way of doing things and stop messing up the earth with our strutting and fretting.

    It wasn’t more than 50 or 60 million years ago when the seas reached all the way inland in America to the Appalachians. The expanse between our present Atlantic coastline and those mountains is chock full of marine fossils. The land rises and falls, the seas follow suit. It’s been going on forever and ever. During those eons millions of species, including a few hominoid ones, have been created and 90 percent of them have bit the dust.

    Long Island is not so different than thousands of islands throughout the world that are in peril, many in immediate peril. In fact, although it is many times bigger than a good many of the islands, it is vulnerable in ways many of those islands are not. The islands in the tropical seas are large and surrounded by coral reefs that serve as a kind of a first response barrier to storm-pushed waters. Yes, many of these coral reefs are in trouble for lots of reasons, most of them anthropogenic, but they exist and efforts are being made to conserve them. Islands along our West Coast are surrounded by kelp beds that are rooted at the bottom to rocks and other hard surfaces. They can create a forest hundreds of yards wide that reaches more than 100 feet in height, that is to the top of the water column. They are strong and sway back and forth with the waves and currents, damping their energies before they hit the shore.

    Long Island does have a kind of barrier, surrounding parts of it, especially along the ocean. We call this barrier the “barrier beach.” It runs in a near continuous strip from the Rockaways on the west all the way to Shinnecock Bay. From Shinnecock Bay east it pops up here and there as at Mecox Bay in Bridgehampton and Georgica Pond in East Hampton. In a way, the Napeague isthmus is a barrier beach; it’s the only one on Long Island that separates the ocean from the sound.

    Unlike, perhaps, the coral reefs and kelp forests, the barrier beaches move toward the mainland away from the sea. That’s what happened to most of those between Montauk Point and Shinnecock Bay. They moved progressively to the north until they fused solid with the mainland.

    But locally, the land at the edge of the Peconic Estuary is protected by many smaller barrier beaches. In East Hampton Town these include the spit between Northwest Harbor and Northwest Creek, Cedar Point (which has been growing westerly, nourished by sediments washed off of Hedges Banks to the east), Sammy’s Beach at the north end of Three Mile Harbor, Cape Gerard and Louse Point fronting Accabonac Harbor, and Hicks Island between Napeague Bay and Napeague Harbor. Lately, just like Cedar Point, the Hicks Island barrier beach has been growing as the channel between Goff Point and the island has filled in and it is possible to drive a four-wheel vehicle from the point to the west end of Hicks Island.

    In Montauk, the land bounding Fort Pond on the north where the Long Island Rail Road and Navy Road run is a kind of barrier beach, while the spit bordering Oyster Pond is also one, or should I say, was one, as it has almost been entirely removed by the ravages of Sandy. Lake Montauk used to have a barrier beach fronting it, but it was removed to build a permanent inlet in the mid-1920s.

    These Peconic side barriers play a very important role. They protect the salt marshes in back of them. Remove Cape Gerard, and there goes the Accabonac Harbor salt marsh. Take away Sammy’s Beach, there goes the expansive salt marsh to its south. In North Sea in Southampton Town, the barrier beaches protect the largest and perhaps healthiest salt marsh on the South Fork, the one on the south side of Scallop Pond and Sebonac Creek.

    The latter two salt marshes are largely intact and have very little in the way of phragmites intrusion. But with rising sea level they are threatened in a different way. They need the deposition of fine silts from overwashes, mainly during storms, to keep up with the rising sea level, otherwise they will drown. Salt marsh islands in Jamaica Bay and the Great South Bay are already becoming inundated and efforts are underway to bolster them with sediments deposited, not by the action of waves and tides, but artificially by man.

    Secondarily, these very salt marshes that face prospects of permanent submergence protect the uplands they front, especially in the case of Accabonac Harbor. One can easily visualize the harbor’s waters routinely reaching to Springs-Fireplace Road on the west, Old Stone Highway on the south and Louse Point Road on the east. This last road will be the first to go underwater.

    So the hordes of politicos and the army of bureaucrats have to get together and do some strenuous planning and mitigation. Can we count on the feds and the Army Corps of Engineers to solve the problem? Probably not, after all, in the 40 years it has been going on, they have let the Fire Island to Montauk Point barrier beach study sink into a deep black hole. At this point it may not be possible to retrieve and finish it in time to save what’s left of that barrier. Will we submerge as the sea level rises indifferently, or will we rise above it? That is the question.

   The Montauk SurfMasters fall tournament will come to an end at noon on Sunday. What promised to be an exciting finale, with plenty of big striped bass for the final weeks of the hard-fought contest, was curtailed by Hurricane Sandy. The big storm with her fierce easterly winds looks to have speeded migrating bass in the direction of their winter haunts and away form Montauk’s casters.

    There are still striped bass around. Gary Aprea reportedly took an 11-pounder over the weekend, which may win him $100 for being November’s biggest bass, but otherwise only small “rat” bass are said to be in the wash.

    So, as of Monday the final standings are as follows: Gary Krist has the first-place fish in the tournament’s wader division, a 29.15-pounder caught on Oct. 3. Klever Oleas and Aprea stand in second and third places with a 26-pound and 22.7-pound bass respectively.

    John Bruno is alone in the wetsuit division with the 40.3-pound striper he caught on Sept. 29. Christine Schnell’s 18.8-pound striped bass caught on Oct. 2 puts her in the lead of the women’s divison. Mary Ellen Kane and Cheryl Lackner hold second and third places with 14 and 11.8-pound fish.

    Dylan Lackner and James Kim Jr. caught twin 13.5-pound bass to tie in the youth division with Phillip Schnell’s 13-pounder putting him in third. Brian Damm caught a 14.6-pound striper on Oct. 8 to put him in first place in the 7 to 11-year old Kids division, and Witt Holmes stands in second place with a 13.8 pounder caught on Sept. 26.

    These will be the winners if no larger fish are caught by Sunday at noon.

    Goose and puddle duck hunting seasons will open tomorrow.

    Oh, and to add insult to injury, Atilla Ozturk, master surfcaster, hungry for fish, took to a boat on Sunday with his trusty rod. What happened next was blamed on a “rogue wave,” but Fred Kalkstein suggested it was googinism pure and simple responsible for Ozturk’s departure from Gary Stephens’s boat. Soaked and freezing after being helped back on board, Ozturk was forced to disrobe and return home in his underwear — without a fish.

   Live and learn, no matter how old. Reading Angus Wilson’s latest local bird-sighting blog, I just learned that there is a new species of Canada goose in town and it’s actually been here for a pretty long time, but it’s new to the East End in a couple of ways. Firstly, it was separated from Branta canadensis in 2004 by the American Ornithological Union and given its own scientific name, Branta hutchinsii, or Richardson’s cackling goose. The new one, which apparently has been around for millennia, but not here, is smaller, has a shorter bill and is divided into several subspecies based on size, color, and where it breeds. According to Angus, the one seen on Sunday among typical Canada geese in a Montauk field was one of the subspecies, hutchinsii.

    Another thing I learned was that the typical Canada geese, which we have so many of during the winter and quite a few during the breeding season, as well, isn’t native as a breeder on Long Island, nor in the rest of the state. It was introduced to breed during the Great Depression years in a few Long Island spots. Canada geese can mate for life and so it stands to reason that once a pair bred here successfully, the original mom and pop would come back again and again. Don’t blame what some perceive as a Long Island goose problem on Mother Nature, but on the old Conservation Department and some other abetting entities.

    There are a couple of specimens of Richardson’s cackling goose housed in the American Museum of Natural History, taken in Montauk and elsewhere on Long Island, one from Sayre’s Pond in Southampton on Nov. 20, 1968, as reported in the late John Bull’s “Birds of New York State.”

    But the cackling goose sighting was topped by a bird more rare, one not from the Americas but from Eurasia — the northern lapwing. A pair was spotted in the Deep Hollow Ranch field in Montauk on Saturday morning by Jorn Ake and immediately reported to Angus Wilson, who got the word out immediately. Birders from points far and wide flocked to the scene, but by the time most got there, the pair had flown the coop. Not to give up so easily, searchers spread out. One of them, Peter Polshek, checked the Montauk Airport field and there they were. The next day they were back at Deep Hollow Ranch and beheld by a slew of enthusiasts who had missed out on the first go around.

    The lapwing that showed up in a Bridgehampton field north of Mecox Bay in 1995, hung around for weeks and weeks. A friend of mine who went several times to see it, not only observed it but recorded mentally several of the license plates of the many witnesses. There were some from California and other points more than 1,000 miles away. That lapwing generated a great amount of interest, as these two have already.

    Marge Winski, the Lighthouse keeper who survived the Big One in the lighthouse as it shook and rumbled, went outside once or twice to see how high the water was. On one such foray, a brown pelican flew by. A week later a live brown pelican was found tangled in a fishing net off Dune Road in Westhampton and taken to the Wildlife Refuge Center of the Hamptons. It is apparently recovering and its leg band is being checked to find out its origin.

    I was awoken on Sunday morning by some splashing outside my bedroom window where I keep my mosquitofish during the summer. The drops of water spattering on the windowpane were coming from a yellow-breasted chat, the largest of the wood warblers and an unusual bird to be seen at this time of year. It was vigorously washing itself.

    Another rare bird reported over the weekend in the Angus blog was the Brewer’s blackbird, found by Michael McBrien at Rita’s horse farm in Montauk. This is a western species with a pugnacious nature during the breeding season that I am all too familiar with. Several used to dive at me from perches in sidewalk trees as I made my way back and forth to the San Francisco State University campus on 19th Avenue in the early 1960s.

    These are just a few of Mr. Wilson’s reportings. Vicki Bustamante and her son Chris keep coming across ribbon snakes doing this and that in Montauk, notwithstanding the severity of the storm and the afterstorm. It’s awfully late for snakes to be about, but, then, isn’t the earth’s temperature rising? Barbara, who works at Pat Bistrian Jr.’s place on Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton and lives not to far away from the office, has been keeping track of chipmunks in her yard for several years and knows each one, even though to the average eye all chipmunks look the same. She reported that her chipmunks had disappeared before the storm, but as of last week at least one was up and active.

    It emerged from hibernation earlier than usual, on Feb. 11, the day that Whitney Houston died, and it is apparently going to hibernate later than usual, I guess. It appears as if the local chipmunks’ hibernations, which used to be long siestas, are becoming short naps. Could it be global warming? It’s very possible.