Nature Notes

Nature Notes: Ospreys and Eagles by Rob Bierregaard Benjamin Franklin once famously wrote that the Turkey would be a more respectable choice “as the representative of our country” than the Bald Eagle, a bird he described as being “of bad moral character.” Without digressing into the details of the quote’s origins, it makes

Nature Notes: Diamonds in the Pond by Terry McNamara The diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) that calls Fishers Island home is a rarely seen turtle treasured for its role in maintaining the health of its surrounding ecosystem. In the wild, terrapins are quick to flee and difficult to observe. Since 2018,

Nature Notes Atlantic Mole Crab by Terry McNamara Perhaps Fishers Island’s most violent, turbulent environment is on our southern beaches, where the waves of Block Island Sound continuously break on shore. Although the coastline is generally rock and pebbles, there are several beaches where the substrate is mostly sand. It is in these areas,

Nature Notes: Beech Leaf Disease on Fishers Island by Jack Schneider Beech tree groves are mystical places, the source of legend, poetry, and metaphor.1 The green canopy creates a deep shade, the open understory interrupted by the sturdy, gray elephantine trunks, the forgiving fallen leaves laced by serpentine roots. These groves are evocative and

by Steve Young, Chief Botanist, New York Natural Heritage Program If you happen to be in New London, Connecticut and look to the south, you will see Fishers Island, a mysterious and unknown place to many people and before last summer that included me. It is an extension of the Harbor Hill glacial moraine

by Terry McNamara Dock Beach. It is July and the sky is a bright baby blue. You are wading out toward the swimming rafts, chatting with a friend. Suddenly, you feel the touch of something on the topside of your foot, breaking your idyll. Some underwater menace with several pointy legs scurries across your foot. After a good shriek,

Nature Notes: House-hunting Ospreys by Rob Bierregaard The decade of the 1980s was a buyers’ market for househunting Ospreys. Two decades before, our widespread application of DDT on coastal marshes caused Osprey population numbers to plummet. New England Ospreys were decimated (literally) to about 10% of their pre-DDT levels because breeding Ospreys couldn’t raise

The term ‘predator’ may bring to mind images of a muscled mountain lion ready to pounce in an isolated gully or a muddied crocodile lying in wait at a quiet Saharan watering hole. Fishers Island hosts its own murderer’s row of predators, no less fascinating though decidedly less threatening (to humans, at least), and they each have a vital role in keeping the island’s ecosystem healthy, diverse and robust.