Nature

In a new column about birds, The Star's Christopher Gangemi discusses the "spark bird," that bird that first makes you notice birds in general, sparking a deeper curiosity about the many birds around you. His, in December of 2001, was the tufted titmouse.

When things greened up early this spring thanks to warmer-than-usual temperatures around here, humans weren't the only ones who noticed. Honeybees are thriving on the East End.

A musical project that came to life last summer will make its broadcast debut this morning, days after coming to the attention of the song’s composer, who happens to have been in the Beatles.

Halfway through March, chipmunks are up for good, it would seem. I see ours almost every morning running about, looking hale and sassy.

Monday was the warmest day since November. It reached 60 degrees in Noyac and thoughts of winter evaporated into thoughts of spring and the turning of the earth from dull gray to bright green.

The eastern bluebird, the New York State bird, is the only North American thrush that doesn’t build a typical nest in a tree or bush during breeding season. It lays its eggs in a hole in a tree or a nonliving substitute, a bird box.

For the last 81 and 67 years, annual end-of-the-year, or Christmas, bird counts have taken place without fail in two nearby areas, Quogue to Water Mill, and Central Suffolk. The tradition lives on and is increasingly revealing.

If there were no sun there would be stars, but no East Hampton Star. The latest calculations by astronomers, astrophysicists, and mathematicians is that the sun is 4.61 billion years old and has another five billion years to go before all of the hydrogen gas capacity is used up.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is allowing for a deer hunt on the Fire Island National Seashore. They say too many deer, too many problems.

There is another Long Island bird count that follows on the heels of the annual longstanding Christmas count. It’s the winter waterfowl count that happens at about this time every year.

The theory of evolution is still intriguing. It is “survival of the fittest” in one sense, but not totally so. And it’s going on all around us today.

Finally, world governments began to give a damn! Vanishing species had a friend. In the United States, the Fish and Wildlife Service led the way. You could no longer shoot hawks, eagles, and other birds that were not game species. Big fines became the rule of the day.