Island History: The Morning After—Letter describing 1938 Hurricane on Fishers Island by Letitia Rogers Revett Editor’s note: In April 2022, the Museum received a generous and thoughtful gift of Fishers Island-related documents and ephemera from Janice Revett Lloyd, whose parents, Letitia and Harley Revett, were teachers at the Fishers Island School from the
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,
by Bob Miller The section of Middle Farms that is just south of the road was burned on March 22nd by the Fishers Island Fire Department, led by Chief Jeff Edwards, as part of HLFM’s rotational burning program to maintain the maritime grassland. Prescribed burn of Land Trust grassland at Middle Farms
Elizabeth McCance From the President I’m not the only one preparing for an exciting summer at Fishers – so are the ospreys! Watching an osprey lay an egg at night courtesy of an Osprey Cam recording is a treat to behold, and one that was unimaginable a few decades ago. Technology aside, this year promises to
Island History: Moose on Fishers Island by Pierce Rafferty Colonial records indicate that in the early 1700s, just over three hundred years ago, moose could be found on Fishers Island. Then, as now, inhabitants of our region would have been shocked to bump into a live “moose-deere,” for Fishers Island was well south of
Geology of Fishers Island Excerpted from “Rocks, Plants, Birds, and People of Fishers Island” [1999] by the late Edwin Horning. One of the expressions I sometimes heard during my early years on the island was “getting off the rock.” This was said by people as they took the ferry to the mainland. These few
An Update on the Osprey Population on Fishers Island by Pierce Rafferty Fishers Island was one of many eastern seaboard sites that contributed to Osprey research when ornithologists were first grappling with the causes and restoration of the declining Osprey population in the late 1960s and 1970s. Two young graduate students, Paul Spitzer and
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.
