Happy World Penguin Day, UESiders!!

And yesterday was National Guide Dog Day…  (Labradors being the #1 most trainable/adaptable for that invaluable, wonderful work!!)

Alrighty, then… 

How ’bout we’s begin this week on a note usually further down the newsletter track…

As in a really, meaningfully green, local, easy-to-attend/remote happening: 

Monday, April 29th, 6:30pm:  Community Board 8 Sanitation & Environment Committee Meeting via Zoom

Item #1 on the agenda??  The importance of composting on the environment and sanitation!!  And in a world where issue headcount so impacts how our electeds do or don’t act…  Be really great for a big number of virtual attendees (even for a couple of minutes) to demonstrate UESide interest/support for full-refunding the program in CB8 and citywide!!  Really…  Do be there!!

Deep breath…  Let’s talk Farmstand and /Greenmarket:

Every Friday:  The Lenox Hill Farmstand
70th Street & First Avenue, 11:30am-5:30pm

So great our UES now has two sources of best …  Our great Greenmarket north-ish…   And the newly minted Farmstand with its two tables of equally primo produce, bread, eggs and more to the south!!  (For more…)  

Every Saturday:  82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket
_{82 Street between First & York Avenues, 9am-2pm}

Expecting our friends at American Pride Seafood, Bread Alone, Ballard’s Honey, Sikking Flowers, Hudson Valley Duck and Haywood’s Fresh, Samascott,  Valley Shepherd,  Hawthorne Valley and Gajeski Farms!!

Maestra Manager Margaret’s adds her weekly update:

“Dear Greenmarketeers:

There have been a few asparagus sightings at markets this week!!

Not many yet so come out early if you want to be one of the lucky few to be taking some home!!

For the rest of us…  Patience is a virtue which will be rewarded with lots of asparagus and other spring veggies very soon!!

In the meantime. there are lots of greens, lilacs, apples and, of course, all the those proteins:  Duck..  Beef…  Fish…  Cheese..  Eggs…  And more!!

Enjoy your shopping, 

Margaret“

On to our Friday/Sunday/Any Day compost collection:

Every Friday:  East 96th Scrap Drop-Off
_{96th Street & Lexington, 7:30-11:30am}

Farewell to the aged guacamole hiding out at the back of the bottom shelf!!

2022 Total:   66,962 lbs.
2023 Total:  42,888 lbs.

Every Sunday:  Asphalt Green Food Scrap Drop-Off
_{91st Street & York, 7:30am-12:30pm}

2022 Total (from 3/22):  46,675 lbs.
2023 Total:  65,699 lbs.

Every Day, Any Time:  GPG Compost Drop-Off at 65th Street
East River Esplanade (under the pedestrian overpass from York Avenue), round the clock

Available 24/7 with bins open and waiting…

2023 Total:  2,275 lbs.

2023 Grand Total:  110,854 lbs.

Keeping on in the ultra green lane:

Tuesday, May 7th:  No Cost Community Shredding!!
York & 79th Street, 9am-12pm

You’ve been waiting…  And soon a Shredding Day will be here:

As ever, there’s so much more great stuff happening round about the UES: 

Saturday, April 27th: Esplanade Friends First Spring Concert!!
Aycock Pavilion, East River Esplanade at 60th Street, 1-4pm

Friday, May 3rd to Sunday, May 5th:  Jane’s Walks
All Around NYC, All Day Long All 3 Days, Free

The great, in-person, guided group tours (plus virtual and self-guided offerings) return with over 200 walks across all five boroughs!!  Free!!  To check out the many wonderful possibilities…

Saturday & Sunday, May 4th & May 5th:   Lunaapeew/Lenape Celebration Weekend
Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, 11am-4pm 

The Museum’s 2-year celebration honoring of NYC first residents!!  Think storytelling, traditional crafts and games, drum and dance performances and disuccsion with Lenape Chiefs and Knowledge Keepers!!  Can’t be anything but great!!  Adults, $20, Seniors & Students $14, Children free!!  For more and tickets…

Tuesday, May 7th:  Yorkville 81 Block Association Volunteer Event 
Meet in front of 422 East 81st Street, 6pm

Block association board members Barbara, Justin and Kristen invite its great volunteers to cut back spent flowers and remove leaves in the block’s tree beds!!  Young, old and inbetween…  Should be a done job in about an hour!!  Just show up with your scissors or garden clippers!!  (They’ll supply gloves and trash bags!!)

Wednesday, May 9th:  19th Precinct Crime Prevention Seminar
19th Precinct, 153 East 67th Street, 7pm

Join !9th Precinct officers as they address our UESide concerns. ..

And just over the horizon:

Thursday, May 30th:  2024 Women of Distinction Awards Ceremony
Zuckerman Auditorium, MSK Cancer Center, 417 East 68th Street, 6:30pm

AM Seawright’s great annual celebration of our women providing outstanding community  service and, of course, improving quality of our UESide life!!  And you’re invited!!  
How ’bout some more activism:

Should you oppose expansion of gas pipelines in NYState…

And/or if you believe the threatened greater sage grouse is deserving of protection…

Moving on to the realm of diverting diversions: 

NYC spring recreation tips and more from NYS DEC…  GrowNYC’s great Beginning Farmer Program…  Cost-wise home energy upgrades from Consumer Reports…   A dentist discovers a dinosaur jawbone in his  parent’s home floor...  Another year, another coyote in Central Park…  Big new business of battery recycling…   NYC’s best high schools…   The Queensbridge compost rally (nope, we don’t ever let up)…  NYS’s new fossil fuel power plant regs…  

Moving on to the Hudson River Almanac:

4/16 – Ulster County, HRM 78: While hiking in the Mohonk Foothills in mid-morning, I checked a couple of vernal pools for amphibian eggs. One very small pool had five clusters of spotted salamander eggs. I eventually made my way to the Kleine Kill Pool where I was greeted by a nesting pair of mallards sharing a partially submerged tree trunk with ten eastern (Chrysemys picta picta), and midland (C. p. marginata) painted turtles, the most widespread native turtle in North America. As is often the case, an ill-timed human disturbance caused all the animals to vacate the log leaving this idyllic interspecies moment as just a memory. – Bob Ottens

         A Mallard With Painted Turtles!!

4/13 – Bronx, New York City: A Virginia rail, hidden in the Phragmites, was recently heard clattering (“kiddik, kiddik”) in the marsh at Van Cortlandt Park. – Debbi Dolan
                                                                                     A Vrigina Rail!!

[The Virginia rail (Rallus limicola) is a medium-sized marsh bird (Rallidae), overall orange with red bill and legs, gray cheek, and black stripes on the back. They are mostly found in freshwater marshes but also occur in brackish and saltwater where they prefer extensive cattails or stands of Phragmites. –  eBird]

4/14 – Hudson River Watershed: It is the season when all sorts of wildlife are crossing the road to get to the other side. In recent days it was amphibians. Now we have ducks, most often hen mallards and their brood (ducklings). They will trustingly cross in front of your vehicle, usually in a very precise formation. Twice in the last few days I’ve encountered such a procession on back roads. (Wild turkeys will also make crossings later in the season, albeit with assigned hen turkey “traffic guards.”) It is always advisable to drive carefully and anticipate such crossings. – Tom Lake

                                  Some of Those Trusting Mallards!!

4/15 – Town of New Paltz, HRM 78: We were walking along the Swartekill on Black Creek Road recently on a drizzling morning when we found a newly emerged hatchling painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) in the middle of the road. We could tell it was fresh from the nest because it was slightly covered with soil and the carapace still resembled the shape of the egg from which it had hatched last summer.

      That Painted Turtle!!

These were hatchlings, about the size of a quarter and had just emerged from their natal nest. They were technically seven months old but had been waiting for spring to emerge. Up until now, they had lived off energy reserves converted from their yolk.

A quick survey of the area revealed three more live hatchlings and another that had very recently been hit by a vehicle. All five were within a few feet of one another which made it possible to find the nickel-sized opening to the nest cavity a few feet from the roadside. The nest was empty and gentle probing revealed it was only a few inches down to the deteriorating eggshells packed into the floor of the nest chamber. – – Patrick Baker, Tracy Baker

4/15 – Westchester County, HRM 43: As far as I can tell, there is at least one, and I think probably just the one, nestling, moving around through holes in branches in bald eagle nest NY430 in Yorktown Heights. One of the adults carried what appeared to be a Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus) in its beak today on the rim of the nest. It was not clear, however, if the rat was on its way in, or out. – Roger Pare

Those Eagles and Rat!!

Hello, Fish of the Week:

4/16 – Hudson River Watershed: Fish-of-the-Week for Week 265 is the pollock (Pollachius virens), fish number 107 (of 237), on our Hudson River Watershed List of Fishes.

                                                                             A pollock!!

Pollock is one of three cods (Gadidae, Cods and Haddocks) documented for our watershed. The others are the Atlantic cod and the Atlantic tomcod. Atlantic cod and pollock are strictly marine species; Atlantic tomcod is anadromous, migrating in from the sea to inland tidewaters to spawn.

Maintaining our Hudson River Watershed Fish List can be a serendipitous proposition. Pollock has been on our list by virtue of a single occurrence in April 1980, a 53-millimeter young-of-year from Indian Point (river mile 42). Pollock is presently designated as a temperate marine stray, essentially a cold-water fish favoring seawater temperatures of 52 degrees Fahrenheit or less. Pollock feed on small fish and larger crustaceans along coastal slopes that favor a hard bottom. They spawn in late autumn and early winter, making our single record from 1980 likely to be a young-of-winter fish.

Pollock, known colloquially as “Boston blue,” as well as coalfish, green cod, and saithe (Norwegian spelling in the UK) are found in the western Atlantic from Nova Scotia to the New York Bight, although they are reported to Cape Lookout NC. While juveniles are common in the New York Bight (Waldman & Briggs 2002), wintering inshore south to Virginia, adults are rare south of Cape Cod. Adults can reach 42-inches and weigh 35-pounds.

Pollock come in several shades and colors including brownish-green, grayish, smoke gray, but always with an underlying greenish hue. Bigelow and Schroeder in their Fishes of the Gulf of Maine (1953) cite its beautiful olive green color as a differentiating field mark when caught in the company of Atlantic cod and haddock. Another easy field mark is the lateral line: In pollock it is nearly straight; in cod the lateral line arches noticeably forward.

Bigelow & Schroder also report of schools of young pollock running up New England estuaries in autumn in pursuit of rainbow smelt. There was a time when the Hudson River had a significant late winter-early sprig population of anadromous rainbow smelt. Before annotated, detailed records were compiled for Hudson River fish, did pollock chase smelt up our estuary in late winter-early spring? Today, both smelt and pollock do not find the warm temperate waters of the estuary and New York Bight comfortable. The pollock may never have been here, and the smelt are all but gone. – Tom Lake

4/17 – Rockland County, HRM 32: An eastern black snake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis), estimated to be no less than five-feet-long, was first spotted by Congers Lake groundskeeper Donato Parisi. DEC Region 3 was contacted to confirm the identification and suggested, after viewing photos, that the extremely well-fed black snake had likely just come out of hibernation. DEC biologists reiterated that eastern black snakes, despite their size, are not dangerous to people. – Nick Caloway, Jen Zunino-Smith

                                   An Eastern Black Snake!!

[Pantherophis alleghaniensis, the eastern black snake is endemic to North America. It is a species of non-venomous snake in the family Columbidae (constrictors). They are excellent swimmers and climbers and use these skills to catch a variety of food such as rodents, frog, and bird’s eggs. They can grow to eight-feet-long and, as constrictors, they use their body to suffocate their prey. Tom Lake]

4/18 – Hudson River Watershed: Round-lobed (Hepatica americana) and sharp-lobed hepatica (Hepatica acutiloba) are two of our earliest plants to flower, blossoming in early to mid-April, before tree leaves have unfurled, allowing the sun’s rays to reach the forest floor.

                        A Round-Lobed Helvetica!!

The leaves of these plants are evergreen; new ones are produced in May. They remain on the plant for a full year, through the next spring’s flowering period (many spring wildflowers, or ephemerals, produce leaves, flowers, and fruits in a short amount of time and then disappear). Not only do hepatica leaves photosynthesize on warm winter days (if snow hasn’t buried them), but even worn and tattered they go into high gear in the spring, photosynthesizing before the leaves of other plants have even appeared. Thus, hepatica can produce its flowers earlier than most other spring wildflowers. – Mary Holland

As for the Bird of the Week:

The Collared Forrest Falcon!!

Don’t miss that CB8 Compost meeting,

UGS

Eco Fact of the Week:  “The largest salmon [Atlantic] ever known to have been caught in the Hudson River since Seth Green stocked it with spawn nine years ago [1884] was taken in a shad net off Verplanck’s Point, on Saturday. Its weight was 17½ lb., and being a male fish, its weight was the more remarkable. It tore the net of Joseph Conklin, the lucky fisherman, badly before he succeeded in getting it into his boat” (Highland Democrat, May 13, 1893).

Eco Tip of the Week: Printed receipts contain bisphenols such as bisphenol-A (BPA) or bisphenol-S (BPS) which are harmful to both human health and wildlife!!  Shred and toss into ordinary trash!!

4/5 – Hudson River Watershed: Fish-of-the-Week for Weeks 263-264 is the goldfish (Carassius auratus), number 35 (of 237) on our watershed list of fishes.

A Most Happy Earth Day, UESiders!!

And lucky we are to have great celebratory events in our very own hood and beyond:

Saturday, April 20th:  Earth Day on Roosevelt Island
Meditation Lawn, 10am-2pm

Saturday, April 20th:  Earth Day at Carl Schurz Park
Commencing at 1pm, throughout the park 

Saturday, April 20th:  Sutton Place Parks Conservancy Earth Day!!
Sutton Place Park, Sutton Place & 57th Street, 1-3pm

Add events up, down and across town:

Saturday, April 20th:  Hell’s Kitchen Farm Opening Day
Metro Baptist Church Rooftop, 410 West 40th Street, 12-2:30pm

Celebrate the arrival of SPRING at the amazing Hell’s Kitchen Farm Project’s rooftop garden for the kick-off of its 14th growing season with music, food, drinks, and activities!!  Everyone welcome at this true NYC wonder that feeds hundreds every year!! 

Sunday, April 21st:: We Are Limiting Plastic Earth Day Celebration
116th Street at Morningside Park, 1-3pm

Free and with Artists: 
Trashion – Children Workshop make clothes from recycled materials
Jessica Reisch – Meet Mycelium exhibit project for Children.
Dominique de Cock – How to Reduce Personal Plastic.
Capucine Bourcart – Knitting Forever Fashion.
Nancy Lemberger – Compost Kids Game.
Elizabeth McAlpin – Play Chess.

Then and in just one week…

Saturday, April 27th:  Esplanade Friends First Spring Concert
Aycock Pavilion, East River Esplanade at 60th Street, 1-4pm

Then:

Friday, May 3rd to Sunday May 5th: Jane’s Walks
All Around NYC, All Day Long All 3 Days, Free

The great, in-person, guided group tours (plus virtual and self-guided offerings) return with over 200 walks across all five boroughs!!  To check out the many wonderful possibilities…

Moving on to our great, ultra Earth-centric Farmstand/Greenmarkets…

Every Friday:  The Lenox Hill Farmstand
70th Street & First Avenue, 11:30am-5:30pm

The UES’s alternate source of delicious, largely organic produce, bread, eggs and more!!  Totally convenient for UESiders south of 79th…  And so easy to hit on the way home!!  (For more…)  

Every Saturday:  82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket
_{82 Street between First & York Avenues, 9am-2pm}

So what if there’s early day rain…  With us will be American Pride Seafood, Bread Alone, Ballard’s Honey, Sikking Flowers, Hudson Valley Duck and Haywood’s Fresh, Samascott,  Valley Shepherd,  Hawthorne Valley and Gajeski Farms!!As we wait for first spring produce to appear on those tables, we’re diving deep on Gajeski’s salad greens (as Ubera Manageria Margaret advised), American Pride’s clams and Walnut Ridge’s chicken pot pies!!

Moving on to our deeply prized UES compost collection:

Every Friday:  East 96th Scrap Drop-Off
_{96th Street & Lexington, 7:30-11:30am}

Bring on that stale shredded wheat!!

2022 Total:  66,962 lbs.
2023 Total:  42,888 lbs.

Every Sunday: Asphalt Green Food Scrap Drop-Off
_{1st Street & York, 7:30am-12:30pm}

And those powdery Cherrios!!

2022 Total (from 3/22):  46,675 lbs.
2023 Total:  65,699 lbs.

Every Day, Any Time: GPG Compost Drop-Off at 64th Street
East River Esplanade (under the pedestrian overpass from York Avenue), round the clock

Open 24/7 and with bins awaiting…

2023 Total:  2,275 lbs.

And the Grand 2023 UESide Total:  110,854 lbs.

Can’t wait for May and ye olde paper shredding…

Tuesday, May 7th:  No-Cost Community Shredding
York & 79th Street, 9am-12pm

Great there’re are still virtual gatherings like…

Thursday, April 25th, 2pm:  The Amazing World of Bats presented by Bat Conservation International via webinar
Dr. Kristen Lear shares bat basics and sorts through true and false common bat myths!!  If you’ve been looking for an introductory, crash course to all things chiropteran, then this is the Bat Chat for you.  Free!!  To sign up…

Never a week without some activism:

If you believe the under-threat Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf should be protected…

Haven’t signed GrowNYC’s and Big Reuse’s return of compost collection petitions yet…?  Please do!!

Moving on to the realm of diverting diversions: 

Internship opportunities at AM Seawright’s office…  And GrowNYC’s looking for volunteers (scroll down)…    Have vulnerable species data??  NYState wants it…  The Times weighs in on NYC trash… The Bronx’s First Scenic Landmark…  The threat to Big Reuse’s under-the-59th Street Bridge compost site goes national…  NYC/Queens guy conquers England’s premier quiz show…  Green architecture’s growth spurt…  The whale that went AWOL..  A reason to like wasps…  As St. Catherine’s Park seems to be headed for another renovation… What our NYS Conservation Police have been up to of late…  And our Forest Rangers…

Moving on to the Hudson River Almanac:

3/30 – Bronx, New York City: I spotted a lone double-crested cormorant swimming in the Bronx River today where it flows through the Bronx Zoo. Given its smattering of white feathers, the bird appeared to be semi-leucistic. It was my first sighting of any cormorant at the Bronx River Bronx Zoo location. – Vivian Young

4/3 – Dutchess County, HRM 98.5: Lea Stickle collected two specimens today of the bloody-red shrimp (Hemimysis anomala) with our glass eel fyke net in the Saw Kill (Annandale-on-Hudson). This species has been known from the tidal Hudson but seems to have become more noticeable recently (a Hemimysis anomala was caught in a trawl collections by Normandeau Associates last August near river mile 76).

                                        A Bloody-Red Shrimp!!

We have a native mysid shrimp in the Hudson River (Neomysis americana), that prefers salt water. The bloody-red shrimp does well in freshwater and brackish water to 18 parts-per-thousand. – Bob Schmidt

[The bloody-red mysid (Mysida) is a shrimp-like crustacean native to the freshwater margins of the Black Sea, the Azov Sea, and the eastern Caspian Sea. It has been spreading across Europe since the 1950s. In 2006, the species invaded the North American Great Lakes via ballast water exchange of commercial vessels (Kipp 2007).]

4/4 – Town of Poughkeepsie: The evidence continues to accumulate that there is a nestling in bald eagle nest NY62. Today I watched as one of the adults carried a foot-long goldfish to the nest. Why are goldfish such a common catch by eagles? – Bob Rightmyer
                                                           That NY62 Bald Eagle With Goldfish

[Eagles are renowned for their excellent eyesight, and the bald eagle is no exception. They have two foveae, or centers of focus, that allow the birds to see both forward and to the side at the same time. Bald eagles can see fish in the water from several hundred feet above, while soaring, gliding, or in flapping flight. This is quite an extraordinary feat, since most fish are counter-shaded, meaning they are darker on top and thus harder to see from above.

Eagles have eyelids that close during sleep. For blinking, they also have an inner eyelid called a nictitating membrane. Every three or four seconds, the nictitating membrane slides across the eye from front to back, wiping dirt and dust from the cornea. Because the membrane is translucent, the eagle can see even while it is over the eye.

Eagles, like all birds, have color vision (see goldfish). An eagle’s eye is almost as large as a human’s, but its sharpness is at least four times that of a person with perfect vision. The eagle can probably identify a rabbit moving almost a mile away. That means that an eagle flying at an altitude of 1,000 feet over open country could spot prey over an area of almost three square miles from a fixed position. – Pete Nye]

4/6 – Town of Poughkeepsie: A strong and sustained north wind made it an excellent kite-flying day. One of the adults in bald eagle nest NY62 brought a hefty channel catfish to the nest. Afterwards, they were both perched on the rim of the nest, a good indication there was a third bird down inside. Adult eagles seem to be ever cognizant of how fragile new hatchling can be and give them plenty of space. – Tom Lake

NY62 Bald Eagle with Channel Catfish 4/6 – Hook Mountain, HRM 31: We counted 48 northward bound raptors today at the Hook Mountain Hawkwatch. Osprey was high count with eleven. Among non-raptor migrants, Turkey vulture (825) and black vulture (9) were the combined high count. Great numbers of turkey vultures were very purposeful in going directly north or north-by-northeast with none of them hesitating or lingering long. From noon to 2:00 p.m., the turkey vulture parade was impressive with one group totaling more than 100 birds.- Tom Fiore 4/7 – Essex county, HRM 257: I heard two new spring sounds to add to the few that I’ve been able to nail down thus far. This morning around Johnsburg, near North Creek, I heard the unmistakable sound of a male ruffed grouse drumming in the woods. Back home in Minerva, I heard an eastern phoebe singing in a tree off route 28N. While we still had half-a-foot of snow in the woods, it will be gone soon.  – Mike Corey 4/8 – Hudson River Watershed: Among notable moments connected to a solar eclipse:One of the earliest recorded solar eclipses took place during the reign of the Assyrian king Ashur-dan III on June 15, 763 BCE (before the Common Era, 2,763 years ago). This event is documented in the Assyrian Eponym Canon, a series of cuneiform tablets.William Shakespeare used a solar eclipse in his play “King Lear” to foretell tumult and madness.While the ancients viewed a solar eclipse as a sign of great acts of God, physicists viewed the May 29, 1919, solar eclipse as a triumph of science. During the 1919 solar eclipse, in which the sun vanished for six minutes and 51 seconds, scientists measured the bending of light from the stars as they passed near the sun providing the first observational evidence of Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity that describes gravity as a warping of space-time (NASA).Arguably the greatest thoroughbred racehorse of all time was foaled (born) during a solar eclipse on September 25, 1764. The owner named the colt Eclipse (Clee 2012).  The Solar Eclipse Sequence!!4/9 – Hook Mountain, HRM 31: We counted 102 northward-bound raptors today at the Hook Mountain Hawkwatch. American kestrel was high count with 49. Among non-raptor migrants, turkey vulture was high count with 44.It was a great spring day for American kestrel movement with nearly 50 passing the summit of Hook Mountain. Almost all were males, with no more than two females definitively noted all day. Almost all of them came close by the summit. Many chose a track that took them past, or just slightly below, the southeast face of the mountaintop just above the cliff face that is a part of the Palisades formation rocks that we have along the western side of the Hudson Valley. – Tom Fiore, Kristine Wallstrom, Steve Sachs 4/10 – Beacon, HRM 61: During a five-hour fishing session on Long Dock today, I caught, measured, and released a channel catfish (18-inches) and a male common carp (20.5-inches). The fish were caught on the last of the flood tide that peaked in early afternoon. Some bait-stealing was also going on that ordinarily indicates the presence of golden shiners. – Bill Greene4/10 – Yonkers, HRM 18: Our research and education team at the Sarah Lawrence Center for the Urban River at Beczak returned to our tidemarsh at high tide today to check our fyke net. Our glass eel numbers continued to rise (305), showing no signs of slowing. The highlight of our catch, however, was seven summer flounder (Paralichthys dentatus). The water temperature was 48 degrees, the salinity had fallen to 2.8 ppt, and the dissolved oxygen (DO) was 10.5 ppm. – Jason Muller, Ronan Selbi, Rachel Lynch, Fiona Goodman 4/11 – Yonkers, HRM 11: Our research and education team at the Sarah Lawrence Center for the Urban River at Beczak returned to our tidemarsh at mid-tide this morning to check our fyke net. Our glass eel numbers continued to rise (322) and we are now approaching 5,300 glass eels for the season. This is a remarkable number for us, and the season still shows no signs of slowing down.Our bycatch was spectacular, as it was yesterday, and included two Atlantic croakers (Micropogonias undulatus), 17 summer flounder, and one grass shrimp (Palaemon sp.). The water temperature was 47 degrees, the salinity was 3.5 ppt, and the dissolved oxygen (DO) was 10.3 ppm. – Jason Muller                                                      That Atlantic Croaker!!

As for the bonfide Fish of the Week:

                                                                    A Goldfish!!             
Goldfish, a nonnative introduced species, is one of three carps (Cyprinidae) documented    for the watershed. The other two are common carp (Cyprinus carpio) and Amur carp (C. rubrofuscus). The common carp also has a variety called mirror carp.

Their Type Site, where it was first described to science, is China, after which it was introduced to Japan and then to the rest of the world. They arrived in North America from eastern Asia in the late 17^th century. Their species name Carassius auratus, comes from Latin: Carassius = carp, auratus = aurantium = orange (New Latin). It is not unusual to spot a bald eagle flyover any day of the year carrying a bright orange goldfish in its talons

We are used to thinking of goldfish as an aquarium pet; considering them as having a life in the wild requires a conceptual adjustment. Goldfish favor shallow, muddy, warm vegetated backwaters where they tolerate diminished water quality. In the wild, goldfish can survive in brackish environments with a salinity of up to 15 parts-per-thousand and can reach 19-inches. They have a varied diet that consists of algae, detritus, small crustaceans, aquatic insects and their larvae, snails, zooplankton, amphibian larvae, and fish eggs.

In the wild, goldfish readily hybridize with carp (Cyprinus sp.). To tell goldfish vs. carp juveniles apart in the field, goldfish have no barbels on their upper jaw, carp have four barbels, and goldfish-carp hybrids have 1-3 barbels. Currently, there are about 200 targeted breeds of goldfish recognized in China. They span a range of eight colors but tend to be primarily red or red-orange. Other colors can be olive or bronze-toned burnished gold and yellow. From a distance, in the wild, orange goldfish can be confused with koi (Sanke var.). The latter (Amur carp) are bred orange, with white and black patches. In field identification, the carp-goldfish barbel counts apply.

In J.R. Greeley’s A Biological Survey of the Lower Hudson Watershed (1937), the author describes his true feelings regarding goldfish: “This species, in the wild state, constitutes a worthless, although apparently not seriously destructive addition to the fish population.” That seems like a stern and rather narrow definition of the worth of goldfish.

Foot-long goldfish in the Hudson River are not rare. Entrepreneurs with a gillnet or seine capture goldfish for sale to wholesale aquarium fish dealers or owners of backyard pools and ponds. Small goldfish are also used as live bait by anglers, who then release their leftovers at the end of the day.

An urban legend suggests that many 5 &10-cent store-bought goldfish made their way into the river via flushed toilets. There was a time when a flushed toilet had a nearly uninhibited path to the river. The backstory to the flush theory would have parents warning their children to “Clean your goldfish bowl, or else.” Eventually the or else became a journey to the river via the toilet, or a visit to the river where Mom and Dad clandestinely emptied the goldfish bowl. – Tom Lake

And the Week’s Wonderful Bird is:

                                                                     The Brown Thrasher!!

So great the EPA’s designated PFOS & PFOA to be hazardous substances,

UGS

Eco Fact of the Week: Global clean energy spending surges to $1.8 trillion!!  (But that’s hardly enough!!)

Eco Tip of the Week:  Donate your out-of-date/unneeded eyeglasses at AM Seawright’s office, 1485 York Avwne, between 78th and 79th!!  

 

Happy  Participatory Budget Voting TIme, UESiders!!

Yes, pretty heavily weighted towards pressing area school needs and it’d beeen great to see some street tree planting included  – even last year’s pretty paltry number – but absolutely DO VOTE!!

Alrighty, let’s talk Farmstand/Greenmarket:

Every Friday:  The Lenox Hill Farmstand
70th Street & First Avenue, 11:30am-5:30pm

The lower Upper Green Side’s primo produce/bread/egg and more source!!  And so convenient for UESiders south of 79th…  And so easy to hit on the way home!!  (For more…)

Every Saturday:  82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket
_{82 Street between First & York Avenues, 9am-2pm}

At their tables will be American Pride Seafood, Bread Alone, Ballard’s Honey, Sikking Flowers, Hudson Valley Duck, Haywood’s Fresh,  Valley Shepherd,  Samascott Orchard/Nine Pin Ciderworks, Hawthorne Valley. Nolasco, Walnut Ridge and Gajeski Farms

(How delicious were those American Pride scallops we devoured last week!!)

Then there’s Marketta Manageria Manager Margaret’s weekly wisdom:

“Dear Greenmarketeers,

As you’ve likely observed, it’s a pretty tough time of year for our great market farmers…

Early April means they’re super-busy on their farms planting and preparing for the upcoming growing season, but meantime there’s just not the usual bounty to be laying out on market tables…

That said, what there is is not only nutritious but delicious!!

Prime example:  Our green-of-the-week…  Spinach!!   Great in salads, smoothies or cooked!!  With both over-wintered and baby varieties on offer at 82nd!!

Oh, and don’t forget to add a bouquet of beautiful Sikking Flowers to that shopping list and take spring beauty home!! 

See you at the market, 

Margaret“

Moving on UES compost collection and – finally – the 2023 totals: 

Every Friday:  East 96th Scrap Drop-Off
_{96th Street & Lexington, 7:30-11:30am}

Bring on those lemon rinds!!

2022 Total:  66,962 lbs.
2023 Total:  42,888 lbs.

Every Sunday:  Asphalt Green Food Scrap Drop-Off
_{1st Street & York, 7:30am-12:30pm}

Don’t forget that freezer-burned bread pizza crust!!

2022 Total (from 3/22):  46,675 lbs.
2023 Total:  65,699 lbs.

Every Day, Any Time:  GPG Compost Drop-Off at 64th Street
East River Esplanade (under the pedestrian overpass from York Avenue), round the clock

Open 24/7 and with bins awaiting…

2023 Total:  2,275 lbs.

And the Grand 2023 UESide Total:  110,854 lbs.

Get ready for some really great NYC/UES events coming up:

Saturday, April 20th:  Hell’s Kitchen Farm Opening Day
_{Metro Baptist Church Rooftop, 410 West 40th Street, 12-2:30pm}

Celebrate the arrival of SPRING at the amazing Hell’s Kitchen Farm Project’s rooftop garden for the kick-off of its 14th growing season with music, food, drinks, and activities!!  Everyone welcome at this true NYC wonder that feeds hundreds every year!!    

Saturday, April 20th:  Earth Day at Carl Schurz Park
_{Commencing at 1pm, throughout the park} 

Saturday, April 20th:  Sutton Place Parks Conservancy Earth Day!!
_{Sutton Place Park, Sutton Place & 57th Street, 1-3pm}

Sunday, April 21st::  We Are Limiting Plastic Earth Day Celebration
_{116th Street at Morningside Park, 1-3pm}

FREE & WITH ARTISTS:

Elizabeth McAlpin – Play Chess.
Nancy Lemberger – Compost Kids Game.
Capucine Bourcart – Knitting Forever Fashion.
Dominique de Cock – How to Reduce Personal Plastic.
Jessica Reisch – Meet Mycelium exhibit project for Children.
Trashion – Children Workshop make clothes from recycled materials
to wear at the upcoming Morningside Park Show May 2024.

Saturday, April 27th:  Esplanade Friends First Spring Concert
_{Aycock Pavilion, East River Esplanade at 60th Street, 1-4pm}

Friday, May 3rd to Sunday May 5th:  Jane’s Walks
_{All Around NYC, All Day Long All 3 Days, Free}

The great, in-person, guided group tours (plus virtual and self-guided offerings) return with over 200 walks across all five boroughs!!  To check out the many wonderful possibilities:

And add:

Sunday, April 28th:  9/11 Memorial & Museum 5K RunWalk
_{Brookfield Place to the Museum on Greenwich Street, 8am}

Run/Walk and raise dollars to sustain the museum!! 

Prepare yourself for lots and lots of upcoming shredding:

 And add another conveniently local visit by the Mammogram Bus: 

How about  this so NYC-centric virtual event:

Tuesday, April 30th, 6pm via Zoom:  The Freaks Came Out – The Definitive History of The Village Voice

Organized by the Greenwich Villiage Historical Society…  To sign up…

International activism this time around:

If you believe Mexico’s within its rights to ban import of genetically engineered corn from the U.S… 

Followed by a few diverting diversions: 

How to watch the upcoming Lyrid meteor shower…  U.S. grid update need…  Why spring smells so good…  The MSK demolition…  NYC H2O spring walking tours…  Carbon storage mapping…  The world’s first self-sufficient, zero-emission sailing laboratory makes a NYC stop…  How come there’re so many beetles…  Separate pedestrian and bike paths coming to the 59th Street Bridge…  Central Park’s threatened elm trees… 

And the Hudson River Almanac:

3/20 – Manhattan, HRM 1-2: While the normal retinue of invertebrates was present (mud crabs, mud dog whelks, grass shrimp), a less common organism for our traps was encountered: a sea gooseberry
(Pleurobrachia pileus), a species of comb jelly (Ctenophora). – Avalon Daly, Zoe Kim, Renee Mariner, Brandon Campos

A Sea Gooseberry!!The sea gooseberry (25 mm) is found in open water in the northern Atlantic Ocean from Maine to North Carolina. As a predator, they feed on active swimming prey such as Gammarus sp. Largely a marine species, they are seldom found in estuaries. Tom Lake]

3/23 – Town of Poughkeepsie: The new, for 2024, bald eagle nest NY62 is high in a white pine 100-feet off the ground. In recent years, the NY62 nest was in a deciduous tulip tree. When the leaves came out in spring, our observation view became compromised. With a conifer this season, that will not be an issue.

For the first half-hour of today’s visit, well within spotting scope range but far enough away to provide a privacy buffer, there was no sighting of an adult, no activity whatsoever. The nest looked empty, and I was beginning to wonder if the nest had failed.

Then, a huge tell-tale shadow moved past me along the road. It was an adult heading to the nest where it landed. Up popped another white head inside the nest. The two adults poked around for 30 seconds before the second adult took off and flew up the road directly close over my head. It was an 11:00 a.m. changeover of their shared nest duty. – Tom Lake

3/23 – Croton Point, HRM 35: It has been a few years but once again, red-headed woodpeckers are wintering here. At least two, both males, were easily spotted in an oak grove on the north side of the point. In a true sign of spring, Dutchman’s Breeches was blooming along the road to the oak grove. – Christopher Letts

                                            A Red-Headed Woodpecker!!

3/23 – Hudson River Watershed: Spring comes very slowly to our watershed. The ancestral Algonkian peoples of the Hudson River watershed used bio-indicators in spring to alert them that it was time to ready the soil, sow their fields, and set their fish weirs. In historic times, up [to] 2010 when commercial shad fishing was halted, fishermen still relied more on the uplands than technology to let them know when the river was ready.

When most of the trees in the forest are yet to leaf out, the soft, hazy white glow of our native shadbush (Amelanchier sp.) blooms. There is an ecological timing between these events: Shadbush blooms when the soil warms in early April at the same time the river reaches a temperature that triggers the beginning of fish migration in from the sea to spawn. This procession proceeds from south to north in an orderly manner from magnolia to forsythia to shadbush to flowering dogwood, with lilac being the final signal that spring is ready for summer. This process is called phenology, the study of nature through the appearance of seasonal phenomena. The word comes from the Greek word phaino, meaning “to appear,” or the Latin phenomenon meaning “appearance, happening, or display.” – Tom Lake

                                            That Native Shadbush!!

3/24 – Hudson River Watershed: If you look up this time of the spring season, you will see trees such as poplar, willow, and some maples) that have opened their flower buds and are in the process of being pollinated. However, if you look down, the reproduction of forest floor plants has yet to begin, except for the early-blossoming skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus).
                                            
                                                              A Skunk Cabbage!!

Their flowers appear before the leaves and this early maturation benefits pollinators such as flies, springtails and beetles that are active, providing them with both food (pollen) as well as a mini-warming hut for temperatures that can be below freezing at times. Fueled by energy stored in the plant’s modified underground stem (rhizome), skunk cabbage can maintain temperatures of up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (F) within their spathe (mottled maroon hood-like leaf) even as external air temperatures drop below freezing. Skunk cabbage, as noted in its common name, is best known for its strong skunk-like floral odor.  – Mary Holland

[One April, a decade ago, we had to traverse an acre of marshy skunk-cabbage woodlands to reach Moodna Creek (river mile 58) to net river herring for our ongoing research. As our boots crushed the leaves, the pungent fragrance was overwhelming and not to be confused with the field of poppies in The Wizard of Oz. (The trivial name foetidus comes from the same Latin word meaning “foul, as in “foul smelling.” – Tom Lake, T.R. Jackson

]3/24 – Furnace Woods, HRM 38.5: A tiny movement in the leaves at the base of an old stone wall revealed the presence of a winter wren (Troglodytes hiemalis). Roger Tory Peterson offered “mouse-like” as a very apt description. It seemed that the bird was just passing through. I see them briefly in both spring and fall migration. – Christopher Letts

  A Winter Wren!! 

3/27 – Yonkers, HRM 18: Our research and education team at the Sarah Lawrence Center for the Urban River at Beczak returned to our tidemarsh at high tide today to check our fyke net. Our glass eel numbers maintained their recent high bar with 250.

The surprise in the fyke’s bag was a single larval (Leptocephalus) speckled worm-eel (Myrophis punctatus). This was our third this season, Two previous speckled worm-eels were caught, one each, on February 9 and 12 (all were 80 mm). This week’s speckled worm-eel brings our total number of this rare fish encountered in the estuary to five.
                                 
                                                          That Worm Eel!!

The water temperature was 46 degrees, salinity was 5.0 ppt, and the dissolved oxygen (DO) was 9.9 ppm. – Jason Muller, Rachel Lynch, Ronan Selbi

[For more information on the speckled worm-eel, see Schmidt and Wright (2018): Documentation of Myrophis punctatus (Speckled Worm-Eel) from Marine Water of New York) Northeastern Naturalist, Issue 25-1. Bob Schmidt]

With the actual Fish of the Week being:

3/26 – Hudson River Watershed: Fish-of-the-Week for Week 262 is the bluespotted cornetfish (Fistularia tabacaria), number 131 (of 237) on our watershed list of fishes.

                                                               A Bluespotted Cornetfish!!

The bluespotted cornetfish, a marine-brackish water species, is from the same taxonomic order as the pipefishes and seahorses (Syngnathiformes) and quite closely resembles them in body type. Their genus name Fistularia comes from Latin fistulaae, as pipe or flute. They can also be mistaken for needlefish (Belonidae). Bluespotted cornetfish can reach four-feet in length and feed on small fishes, crustaceans, and squid.The bluespotted cornetfish occurs over grass flats, reefs, and on hard and rocky bottoms. They are widespread in the Western Atlantic from the Georges Bank to Nova Scotia, to Bermuda, the Gulf of Mexico, to Brazil.

They are an extremely rare visitor to our watershed. The most recent record (432 mm) was caught in 2015 in the East River under the Manhattan Bridge by Cynthia Fowx – Tom Lake

Never forgetting The Week’s Actual Wonderful Bird:

                                                               The Field Sparrow!!  

If you haven’t yet signed Big Reuse’s petition to save its compost collection site…

Yours with the greenest of greenness,
 
UGS

Eco Fact of the Week:  New Yorkers discard more than 742 million single-use plastic bottles annually–nearly 21 million pounds. It takes 450 to 1,000 years for a single plastic water bottle to decompose!!.

Eco Tip of the Week:  Recycle unwanted thermometers – carefully packed in bubble wrap  – by mailing them to  to Coastal Plumbing Supply, 38-16 Stillman Avenue, Long Island City, New York 11101.

 

Happy Nature-Makes-Its-Presence-Felt-&-Seen Friday & Monday, UESiders!!

Okay, so an eclipse…  But, really, an earthquake, too??!!

Great there seems minimal damage from this morning’s shaking and, yup, it occurs so rarely we –  as in we of UGS at least – tend to forget it ever happens …

BUT…

How ’bout some unalloyed good news:

As in those peitions signed. letters written and calls made seem to have gotten NYC compost collection moving in the right direction with CMs now calling for full FY2025 budget restoration of the program!!    

So, let’s keep the ball briskly moving by making/writing both thank-you calls and emails to our own, green CMs: 

                  Julie Menin – 212-860-1950, District5@council.nyc.gov
             Keith Powers –  212-818-0580, powers@council.nyc.gov

Then scroll down and sign Big Reuse’s letter in support of saving their (essential compost site!!

WAY TO GO, YOU UESIDE GREENIES!!

Deep breath…  Let’s think market/farmstand:

Every Friday:  The Lenox Hill Farmstand

70th Street & First Avenue, 11:30am-5:30pm

An amazing array of  delicious, largely organic produce, bread, eggs and more on those four tables!!  And so convenient for UESiders south of 79th…  And so easy to hit on the way home!!  (For more…)  Every Saturday:  82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket
_{82 Street between First & York Avenues, 9am-2pm}

At their tables will be our friends American Pride Seafood, Bread Alone, Ballard’s Honey, Sikking Flowers, Hudson Valley Duck and Haywood’s Fresh, Samascott,  Cherry Lane, Valley Shepherd,  Hawthorne Valley and Gajeski Farms!!

And Her Uberness Market Manager Margaret shares the latest:

“Dear Greenmarketeers,

Greenmarket Alert:  This is the very last week for you great Winter Warriors to get those cards punched and claim your prize!!  So head directly for Manager Arlene’s table!! 

As of now we are expecting all of our farmers…  With one exception…
That being Ole Mother Hubbard which I’m so sorry to say is no longer in business.

Not to fear though.   Haywood’s Fresh, 82nd’s meat producer, will now be bringing some Ronnybrook milk to the market.

On totally bright side, it’s now that time of year when our farmers are preparing their fields and planting them with seeds and seedlings of the crops we’ll be enjoying this coming summer season!!
 
In the meantime, there’re greenhouse greens, some over-wintered, hardy greens, storage crops and, of course, apples to enjoy!! 

So great having Sikking Flowers back with us!!

Very happy shopping,

Margaret” 

Returning to compost collection (with 2023 totals next week):

Every Friday:  East 96th Scrap Drop-Off
_{96th Street & Lexington, 7:30-11:30am}

Bring on those pomegranite peels!!

2022 Total:  66,962 lbs.

Every Sunday:  Asphalt Green Food Scrap Drop-Off
_{1st Street & York, 7:30am-12:30pm}

Same for kiwi peels!!

2022 Total (from 3/22):  46,675 lbs.

Every Day, Any Time:  GPG Compost Drop-Off at 64th Street
East River Esplanade (under the pedestrian overpass from York Avenue), round the clock

Open 24/7 and with bins awaiting…

Next up, a great women’s health event:
Then and on the pure pleasure score:

     
Good prep for some activism:

If you support moving NYState heating and cooking from gas to electric…

And should you think Congress should help speed green energy being added to America’s power grid…

How ’bout  these diverting diversions: 

The moon gets its own time zone…  Our NYS DEC now has a podcast… NYC pension funds go greener…  A UES 14 year-old and his very good work…  AI aiding the waste industry…  What our NYS Forest Rangers have been up to of late…  NYS high school archery champs…  How to keep bird feeders disease free…

                          From Rock Center’s “Lambscape” (Thanks to Jack Donaghy)

Hello, Hudson River Almanac:

3/14 – Little Stony Point, HRM 55: With virtually no expectations of catching fish, we still took advantage of an uncommonly warm late winter day (73 degrees Fahrenheit) to stretch out our net. On every haul, the seine came in empty. But on a couple of them, we saw tiny, thin, almost transparent wiggles escaping through our tight (3/16-inch) meshes and dissolving into the sand at the waterline. These were two-inch-long “glass eels,” otherwise known as juvenile (yearling) American eels (Anguilla rostrata), fresh in from the sea where they hatched six months ago or more.
                                           
Those Baby  Eels!!
Onlookers all agreed we had gotten into a “school” of baby eels. However, as we evaluate their annual migration, it is much more like a series of “pulses,” not schools, heading upriver, heading upstream. – Tom Lake, Charlotte Dinitz, Seth Dinitz

3/7 – Hudson River Watershed: One of the earliest signs of spring are willow flowers (Salix sp.) peeking their silver heads out of the bud scales that have surrounded and protected them all winter. These soft silver tufts—as well as the plant itself—are named for their resemblance to tiny cats’ paws. The soft, silvery hairs insulate the emerging spike of flowers, or catkin, within a willow flower bud.
                                                                 
                                                  A Pussy WIllow Sprig!

Pussy willows are delicious, meaning there are both male plants and female plants. A male willow has only male catkins; female willows have only female catkins. The first catkins to emerge in the spring are usually males. The hairs, or “pussies,” that emerge when male willow buds first open trap the heat from the sun and help warm the center of the catkins, where the flowers’ reproductive parts are located. This trapped heat promotes the development of the pollen deep within the hairs. Eventually the reproductive parts of the male willow flowers (stamens) emerge, but until they do, we get to enjoy their silvery fur coats. (Female catkins tend to develop and open a little later than the males, and their silver tufts are more diminutive.) – Mary Holland

3/12 – Dutchess County: My first spring ephemeral, coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), was blooming today. This is a plant in the tribe Senecioneae in the family Asteraceae, native to Europe and parts of western and central Asia. Coltsfoot was probably introduced from its native range to the United States by early European settlers for its medicinal properties.- Deb Tracy-Kral

  That Coltsfoot!

With the Fish of the Week being:

3/13 – Hudson River Watershed: Fish-of-the-Week for Week 260 is the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), number 98 (of 237), on our Hudson River Watershed List of Fishes. 
                                                                                  An Atlantic Salmon!!
Atlantic salmon is one of ten members of the trout family (Salmonidae) in our watershed. Among the ten species, Atlantic salmon, brook trout, and lake trout are native species. In the watershed, Atlantic salmon is designated as diadromous (generally lives in the sea, reproduces in freshwater). Salmo salar also has a freshwater form called the landlocked salmon. They are a legendary gamefish; the New York State angling record for Atlantic salmon (1997) is 24 lb.15 oz.

Atlantic salmon are one of the most fascinating, mysterious, even mythical members of our Hudson River Watershed list of fishes. Their story has its origin with Henry Hudson’s voyage up the river in September 1609. Hudson’s account of encountering salmon was examined by A. Nelson Cheney, New York Fisheries, Game and Forest Commission, in his The Hudson River as a Salmon Stream presented before the National Fisheries Congress in January 1898.

Cheney’s comments begin with Robert Juet, Master’s Mate of the Halfmoon, who wrote in the ship’s log for September 3, 1609 “So wee weighed and went in and rode in five fathoms [30 feet], oze ground, and saw many Salmons, and Mullets and Rays very great.” For September 15, Juet noted “Wee ran up into the river, twentie leagues, passing by high mountains [Hudson Highlands?]. Wee had a very good depth at thirteene fathoms [78 feet], and great stores of Salmon in the river.” Yet, despite these and other mentions of salmon during the voyage, there is no record of any salmon being taken by the Dutch while the Halfmoon was in the river. Is that a compelling reason to disbelieve Juet saw them?

As a result of what some consider thin evidence of salmon, Juet’s contention has, ever since, ranged from skepticism to total disbelief. In analyzing Juet’s observations, you must wonder if he may have seen other fish, salmon look-a-likes, that were unfamiliar to him, such as striped bass or weakfish (Cynoscion regalis), often referred to as sea trout.

However, there is also some reason to consider that he may have seen Atlantic salmon. Salmo salar is a fall spawner and therefore Hudson and his crew could have seen adult salmon in the river in September. Juet knew Atlantic salmon from his European home waters, yet his assertion has been commonly discounted.

While Cheney contends that the Atlantic salmon never established a native spawning stock in the Hudson River watershed, he does allow for them to show up on occasion as strays, wanderers into the estuary from New England rivers such as the Connecticut. In his Biological Survey of the Lower Hudson Watershed (1937), J.R. Greeley found a 1931 record of a 15 lb. Atlantic salmon caught by a Port Ewen shad fisherman. But were they ever native? Does “native” necessarily require a spawning population.

Words. How do we define native? For most wildlife, we ask a question “Was it here when Europeans arrived in the 16^th century. If so, it was native. We must also consider that our knowledge of the relationship between fishes and the river does not extend much further back than the arrival of Europeans. The Hudson River has been open to the sea in various formats since the end of the Ice Age. Across those millennia, dynamic changes in Hudson River geology ecology, and hydrology affecting freshwater flow, saltwater intrusion, salinity, water temperature, overall water chemistry, gradient, and other tidewater vagaries have likely affected choices made by fishes, from long term to short stay. Are those that regularly “wander” in, perhaps only seasonally, get discounted? Like human hunters and gatherers, many fish use the Hudson River as a stopover during their seasonal travels.

Recent appearances include April 2004, when an angler caught an Atlantic Salmon in the tidewater of Rondout Creek, Ulster County. The fish was a female, 27¾” long and weighed 7 lb. Another occurred on May 16, 2020. Chris Palmer and David Fenner were striped bass fishing in the Hudson River just below Newburgh-Beacon Bridge when they netted a fish swimming alongside their boat. They thought it was a brown trout — it measured 21.5-inches-long — so they released it. Chris Palmer sent a photo to Tim Wildman (Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection) who immediately recognized the fish as a male Atlantic salmon, hatchery-reared, that passed downstream in the Naugatuck River past Kinneytown Dam, into Long Island Sound, and then made the rather short journey to the Hudson River. The Hudson River has been open to the sea for no less than 10,000 years. And that can make improbables, possible. – Tom Lake

Last but hardly least:  This Week’s Wonderful Bird:

The Fox Sparrow!!

Intent on setting a Shred-A-Thon date,

UGS

Eco Fact of the Week:  Takes 450 years for a plastic bottle to decompose!!

Eco Tip of the Week:  It’s International Dark Sky Week!!  Time to (1) turn of those lights and let birds migrate safely across our city and (2) get our legislators onboard!!

Happy No Rain Holiday Weekend, UESiders!!

And, yup, we’re back…  Albeit with just a couple of tidbits this time out…

(Blame the long lapse on downstream effects of the WGA strike and early 2024 torpor!!) 

And so:

Every Saturday:  82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket
82nd Street between First & York Avenues, 9am-2:30pm

At their tables will be our ever wonderful friends at American Pride Seafood, Bread Alone, Ballard’s Honey, Breezy Hill Orchards/Knoll Krest Farms, and Haywood’s Fresh, Samascott Orchards & Nine Pin Ciderworks, Valley Shepherd, Hudson Valley Duck, Nolasco, Hawthorne Valley and Gajeski Farms…  AND…  Returning this Saturday, March 29th, just in time for Easter…  SIKKING FLOWERS!!

No question, folks, spring’s arrived!!

Still on the UES primo edibles path:

Every Friday:  The Lenox Hill Farmstand
First Avenue & 70th Street, 11:30am-5:30pm

Our new, great UES mini-market is thriving, folks!!  So great we UESiders now have another year ’round source for delicious, largely organic vegs and fruit, bread, eggs and more!!  (For more Farmstand info…)

Next up…  Area compost collection:

For anyone craving instant nausea, check out GrowNYC ‘s Compost page with its list of collection sites 100% of which will be closed down from mid-May to the end of June…  That is unless the mayor or/and CMs act to restore program funding in the new FY2025 budget.  

Thus…

Time to both call and write our two UES area CMs to do just that, i.e. restore compost collection funding for the 82nd Street Greenmarket (year round), the 92nd Street Greenmarket (seasonal) and the Lenox Hill Farmstand (year round): 

                  Julie Menin – 212-860-1950, District5@council.nyc.gov
                  Keith Powers –  212-818-0580, powers@council.nyc.gov

Meanwhile:

Every Friday:  East 96th Scrap Drop-Off¹
_{96th Street & Lexington, 7:30-11:30am}

Bring those potato peels on!!

2022 Total:  66,962 lbs.

Every Sunday:  Asphalt Green Food Scrap Drop-Off 
_{91st Street & York, 7:30am-12:30pm}

NO COLLECTION on Easter Sunday, March 31st!!

2022 Total (from 3/1/22):  46,675 lbs.

Every Day, Any Time:  GPG Compost Drop-Off at 64rd Street
East River Esplanade (under the pedestrian overpass from York Avenue), round the clock

Open 24/7 and with bins awaiting…
 
We’ll (belatedly) have 2023 poundage totals next week!!

In the meantime, there’s…

Monday & Tuesday, April 1st & 2nd, Wednesday & Thursday, April 10th & 11th:  Yorkville 81 Block Association Volunteer Birdhouse Prep & Hanging Event
81st Street between First & York, 6pm

And here’s Executive Committee Member Barbara Knispel’s email re this great annual event:

“Hello,
 
We are getting ready to hang the birdhouses.  And, as ever, we need volunteers to help!!

So..  On Monday and Tuesday of next week, April 1st and 2nd, we’ll be varnishing all the birdhouses, starting at 6pm in front of 422 East 81st Street.  
 
On Wednesday, April 10th and Thursday, April 11th, we’ll hang the birdhouses.  For this step, we need you to bring a Phillips screwdriver so we can attached the felt needed to hang the houses.  We’ll be starting again at 6pm in front of 422 East 81st. 

Please respond to this email with your name and phone number and which project you’ll be volunteering for.

We really need extra hands to get all this done and we’ll so appreciate your support!!

Thanks so much,
Barbara
Executive Committe Member 
917-710-1683/bknispel@mindspring.com“
 
Mondays thru Thursdays till Monday, May 9th:  Infinite Universes – Czech Games and Their Global Success Exhibition
Czech Center Gallery, Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street, Monday to Thursday, 10am-5pm

And we quote, “Czech developers are recognized worldwide for their hard work and creativity. They have brought new ideas and defined some of the genres. The exhibition showcases successful projects as well as smaller, promising games that are artistically valuable for their drawings, animation, and music.  Free.  For more…

Friday, April 5th:  Randall’s Island Volunteer Tree Planting
Meet at Main Roadway/Ichan Stadium Bus Stop, Randall’s Island, 9am-12pm

And again we quote, “Join Trees New York and our friends at the Randall’s Island Park Alliance for a spring tree planting on Randall’s Island as they replace a paved area with new trees and plantings!!”  For more and to sign on…

Then there’s this primo virtual community gathering:

Thursday, April 4th, 6:30pm:  East Harlem Waterfront Reconstruction Meeting via Video Conference

The proposed preliminary design for the East Harlem Waterfront will be presented to Community Board 11’s Environment, Parks and Open Space Committee and interested citizenry.  To register…

Oh, what would a week be without a bit more activism:

Should you oppose approval of constructing supersized buildings (think Blood Center) in NYC residential areas…

And if you think folks down wind from 50s-60s U.S. nuclear tests deserve some compensation…

How ’bout a few diverting diversions (leaning heavy on the NYTimes):

The recent saga of a NYC dog-friendly cafe…  Literal seeds of hope in Ukraine…  Virtual bat (winged bats) experiences…  How to eat less plastic…  When critters fly – by plane – in and out of NYC…  Yup, NYC’s now got folks living in near swamps…  The project that so far’s identified more than 700 languages spoken in NYC...  Measuring fossil-fueled forest fires (scroll to page 8)…  Nature, NYers and our tree beds…  Lots of NYC H2O volunteer events…  Have a great Jane’s Walk to propose??… Latest invasive species news from the NYS DEC…   The state of current National Parks’ funding…

Moving on to the Hudson River Almanac:

3/16 – Hudson River Mile (HRM): A common thread for Hudson River Almanac entries is a reference to Hudson River miles. These give context to each entry, i.e., where in the watershed, relative to the main stem of the Hudson River, did the entry occur? For research, navigation, and other purposes, the Hudson River Estuary is generally measured north from the Battery (HRM 0) at the tip of Manhattan in New York City (there is an additional seven miles of estuary from the Battery seaward to the Narrows).
                                                                             Federal Dam at Troy

Moving upriver, the George Washington Bridge is at river mile 12, the Tappan Zee Bridge is 28, West Point 53, Kingston 92, Albany 145, and the Federal Dam at Troy, at the head of tidewater, is river mile 153.7. Then we move on to more than half of the Hudson River (167 miles) above tidewater.

From its source in the High Peaks of the Adirondack Mountains, the Hudson flows approximately 315 miles to the Battery. While cities and bridges make convenient points of reference, river phenomena do not always occur at such neat and tidy intervals. – Tom Lake

3/16 – Greene County, HRM 110: Tomas Kay and Keith Cronin came upon a Townsend’s solitaire, foraging on holly berries (Ilex sp.) at North-South Lake Campground today. This is the first record of this Western North American species for Greene County, and only the fourth for Region 8 (a regional designation recognized by the New York State Ornithological Association).  – Adrian Burke, Hudson-Mohawk Bird Club

                                              That Townsend’s Solitaire!!
[Townsend’s solitaire is a relative of bluebirds and other thrushes. It is a    sleek songbird, a bit smaller than a robin and much slimmer. They are overall plain medium-gray with a short bill, a rather long tail, a noticeable white eye-ring, and buff patches in their wings (eBird). Roger Tory Peterson describes their range as Alaska (breeds in montane coniferous forests; they love juniper berries), northwest Canada, to California, south into Mexico. They are a very rare visitor eastward through the Great Lakes to New England. Their name is in honor of ornithologist John Kirk Townsend (1809-1851). – Tom Lake]

3/16 – Greene County: An essential rite of spring for me is observing an American woodcock male (Scolopax minor) doing its mating dance. Over the years, this has been a spring ritual with my four grown kids and now with my grandchildren. As soon as the snow melts, we listen at dusk for the buzzing nasal “peent” call of the male woodcock that can be heard at a long distance.   

On a recent evening, camera in hand, we went to an open field and hunkered down in the gathering dusk blending with a large rock and a small tree in the middle of a half-acre field. Soon, out of the swampland, fluttered a squat but agile bird landing not fifty feet from us. The bird looks so goofy with its super long beak emerging from its head, which is a no-neck bulge extension of its body.                                    
                                           
  That Woodcock!!

During the male’s dance, choreographed to attract females, its head and bill stays stationary as the plump body moves forward and back to rocking dance steps. This bird immediately began its waggle dance punctuated by a periodic loud buzzzz. At about three-minute intervals, it fluttered up in spiraling circles, often 200 feet in the air, making a twittering sound generated by notches in its wings. The bird then silently glided down near its original location. The male repeated the dance moves until it was completely dark (we hoped that we had not scared away any female suitors).

Night photography is notoriously difficult, but I managed several photos that captured this bold fellow who completely ignored my camera flash. My best photo showed its bill opening in an outward curve as the buzzing call was generated. I really enjoyed this year’s woodcock encounter, perhaps another kind of March madness.  – Mario Meier

3/16 – Esopus Meadows, HRM 87: I visited the Esopus Meadows Preserve this afternoon. There were no birds in sight or sound and only a few early signs of spring. The willows were budding. The wash line from last week’s flooding event was evident well up above the gravel walkway. Scattered along the greening grass, I spotted the cornflower blue of bird’s-eye speedwell (Veronica persica), native to Eurasia, so small and delicate among the grasses and scattered leaves. All welcome signs that spring was on its way! – Nancy Beard  

That Bird’s Eye Speedwell

3/19 – Yonkers, HRM 18: Our research and education team at the Sarah Lawrence Center for the Urban River at Beczak returned to our tidemarsh this morning at low tide to check our fyke net. The number of glass eels (39) had fallen since yesterday (it seems we were between pulses of glass eels). Again, today, we had two mummichogs

The water temperature was 47 degrees F, salinity was slightly elevated to 1.5 ppt, and the dissolved oxygen (DO) was 11.0 ppm. – Jason Muller, Jordyn Medina, Maria Cecconello, Fran Kenney

3/22 – Town of Wawayanda, HRM 47: At first light, the air was 22 degrees F—a penetrating, chilling cold. Several hardwoods, buffered by the edge of dense woodland, had served as night roosts for more than a dozen black vultures.

            Four of Those 12 Black Vultures!!

Rather than keep watch on them—they looked like frozen, unmoving duck decoys—I spent a couple of hours perusing the Black Dirt looking for notable wildlife. When I returned, not a single vulture had left, nor had any showed any evidence of even minor movement.

New World vultures (Cathartidae), turkey vultures and black vultures for us, are poor fliers. Once aloft, they soar as well as any raptor, teetering on wide-spread wings. But to escape their night roost, gracefully, they need post-dawn thermals, relatively warm air rising to give them much needed lift.

It was nearly 10:00 a.m. before they began to test the air and, one-by-one, lift off. They are a joy to watch: their ungainly ascent, wings that seem too long, short tails, legs hanging out the back, coal black feathers, and whitish underwing patches that reflect silver in even light. They are an altogether exquisite bird. – Tom Lake

With the Fish of the Week being:

3/21 – Hudson River Watershed: Fish-of-the-Week for Week 261 is the gray triggerfish (Balistes capriscus), number 231 (of 237) on our watershed list of fishes.

A Gray Triggerfish!!                                                                   

The gray triggerfish is our sole representative of Balistidae (triggerfishes) in the Hudson River. While they range from Nova Scotia to Argentina, their center of abundance is coastal Maryland south to Florida and east to Bermuda. Gray triggerfish is considered a temperate marine stray for the estuary, but most other triggerfishes are commonly found in the tropical waters of the southeast and Caribbean.  

Gray triggerfish is a benthic (bottom) species; their body is primarily gray, laterally compressed (thin), and deep-bodied, not unlike a large diner plate standing on its edge. Their trivial name, capriscus is from the Latin caprinus, meaning “of goats,” possibly a small goat. The translation refers to the gray triggerfish’s inscrutable face that, to some, looks like a goat.

They primarily feed on invertebrates, mollusks, and crustaceans, and can reach 25-inches and weigh 14 lb. They get their common name from their spiny dorsal fin that can be used as predator-defense from being swallowed. They have a small mouth with a strong jaw and specialized teeth used to crush and chisel holes in their hard-shelled prey. Fresh or smoked, gray triggerfish, where advisable, are of excellent culinary quality. – Tom Lake                                                         

 And now, the actual Bird of the Week:

      The Green Kingfisher!!

Not a very brief newsletter, huh?  Oh, well…

Bring on that congestion pricing…

And be voting Tuesday if you haven’t already, 

UGS

It’s 2024, UESiders!! And NYC’s actually experiencing a cold snap!! Not that a bit of weather in the thirties fazes folks such as we…  Folks looking to do right by their holiday trees: Saturday & Sunday, January 6th & 7th:  Mulchfest 2024!! Carl Schurz Park, 8 6th Street & East End Avenue, 10am-2pm Just remember to remove all lights, ornaments, wire and netting before dropping that tree/wreath off!!  Mulchfesters’ll also be rewarded with their very own bag of mulch to nourish, say, a deserving tree on their block!!                                                     The Friday Lenox Hill Farmstand and 96th Street Food Scrap Drop-Off, Saturday St. Stephen/82nd Street Farmers Market and Sunday Asphalt Green Food Scrap Drop-Off are all happening at their appointed locations and usual days!! Meanwhile… 2023 compost poundage totals coming soon!! Same for the eyeglass recycling count!! Meanwhile… Here’re latest recycling tips from NYState… Likely another mini-edition next week and then a return to newsletter normal!! In the meantime… We NYers are born to be green, UGS

Happy Soon-To-Be 2024, UESiders!! Just a couple of items so they don’t fall through the cracks!! The first being… As the public review process of the NYC Central District Tolling Program (AKA Congestion Pricing) commences, should you like to weigh in with a comment you can do so on the MTA’s site at https://contact.mta.info/s/forms/CBDTP…  Then there’s… CM Powers’ most recent statement on that ruptured steam line at 53rd and Second…   News that folks in the Village have beaten back efforts to install 5G towers (May the UESide effort enjoy equal success!!)…   And should there be a a living UES human who’s not signed the Save Community Composting petition…  You can do so right here!!  Approaching New Year’s Eve or no, happy to say our Farmstand and Greenmarket will be happening: Every Friday:  The Lenox Hill Farmstand First Avenue & 70th Street, 11:30am-5:30pm Great as they were, no more big bags of delicious vegs, fruit, vegs, bread and more…  Now a multi-table, mini Greenmarket with premier and varied local and largely organic produce, along with honey, eggs, bread and more to chose from!! All under the management of great GrowNYCers!!  Only problem this Friday… NO FARMSTAND on Friday, December 29th!! Every Saturday:  82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket 82 Street between First & York Avenues, 9am-2:30pm At their tables will be our friends American Pride Seafood, Bread Alone, Ballard’s Honey, Hudson Valley Duck and Haywood’s Fresh, Samascott Orchards & Nine Pin Ciderworks,  Ole Mother Hubbert, Valley Shepherd,  Nolasco Hawthorne Valley and Gajeski Farms!! And on next weekend’s green dance card: Saturday & Sunday, January 6th & 7th:  Mulchfest 2024 Carl Schurz Park, 86th Street & East End Avenue, 10am-2pm Just remember to remove all lights, ornaments, wire and netting before dropping that tree/wreath off!!  Mulchfesters’ll also be rewarded with their very own bag of mulch to nourish, say, a deserving street tree on their block!!Not forgetting compost collection: Every Friday:  East 96th Scrap Drop-Off 96th Street & Lexington, 7:30-11:30am NO COLLECTION on Friday, December 29th!! 2022 Total:  66,962 lbs. July-September 2023:   1,851 drop-offs; 43 bins filled, 4,667 lbs. 2023 Total to Date (9/27):  22,386 lbs.  Every Sunday:  Asphalt Green Food Scrap Drop-Off    91st Street & York, 7:30am-12:30pm NO COLLECTION on Sunday, December 31st!! 2022 Total (from 3/1/22):  46,675 lbs. July-September 2023:  2,276 drop-offs; 59 bins filled; 12,345 lbs 2023 Total to date (9/29):  35,046 lbs. Every Day, Any Time:  GPG Compost Drop-Off at 64rd Street East River Esplanade (under the pedestrian overpass from York Avenue), round the clock Open and with bins waiting… 2023 Total  (from 5/2/2023):   Has to be moving toward 3,500 lbs.!! Just a couple of diverting diversions:  Sierra Club’s most important articles of 2023…  Bit after the fact, but a brief history of Christmas markets… May 2024 bring much green happiness, UGS Eco Fact of the Week:  It’s now estimated that we humans are each ingesting a credit card’s wroth of plastic per week!! Eco Tip of the Week:  Your hair salong/barbershop can recycle hair they’ve cut in the NYC dtreetside orange bins!!

Merry Christmas and Happy Soon-To-Be 2024, UESiders!!

And for once, we might actually achieve the brievity we promise from time to time!!

But for sure, the emphasis as we close out ’23 will be on good news!!

As in…  

The East Midtown Greenway actually opened this past Tuesday!!

(Even better:  Turns out it was more than worth waiting for!!)

Then and a day later this from Lower East Side Ecology Center hit ye olde email inbox…

“Today, we are thrilled to announce that @mill and others have donated $350,000 in emergency ‘stop-gap’ funding to help main community composting at Lower East SIde Ecology Center, Big Reuse and Earth Matters!!”   (If you’re  not familiar with these great orgs and all the green they do, check them out!!)

So…

Let us now hope that others and/or entities of means and green belief will step forward to financially support collection at our Botanical Gardens and all other presently unfunded NYC compost collection sites!!

And…

In the unlikely event you’re not be one of the 47,000-plus folks who’ve already signed the “Save Community Compost” petition, time to join the righteous pile-on and just click here!! 

With that…

And wishing one and all best holidays and great 2024, we’ll be giving ourselves some vacay time the next couple of weeks!!

Here’s to the greenest ever New Year,

UGS

Eco Fact of the Week:  More than 58,300 NYC Christmas trees were chipped and turned into mulch for our trees and gardens last year!!  Let’s top that number this time ’round!!

Eco Tip of the Week:   Turn that fading Christmas tree and/or withered  wreath compost on…

Saturday & Sunday, January 6th & 7th:  Mulchfest 2024
Carl Schurz Park, 86th Street & East End Avenue, 10am-2pm

Just  remember to remove all lights, ornaments, wire and netting before dropping that tree/wreath off!!  Mulchfesters’ll also be rewarded with their very own bag of mulch for use around, say, a deserving street tree on their block!!

Happy Hanukkah, UESiders!!

And so the 2023 holiday season begins!!

Lucky us that we have our great UES Greenmarket/Farmstand with such great edibles to add to celebration:  

Every Friday:  The Lenox Hill Farmstand
First Avenue & 70th Street, 11:30am-5:30pm

An amazing upgrade from bags of delicious vegs, fruit and to a multi-table mini Greenmarket, each table one piled with premier and varied local and largely organic vegs and fruit, along with honey, eggs, bread and more…  All under the management of great GrowNYCers!!  Spread the word!, folks!  For more Farmstand info…

Every Saturday:  82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket
_{82 Street between First & York Avenues, 9am-2:30pm}

At their tables will be our friends American Pride Seafood, Bread Alone, Ballard’s Honey, Hudson Valley Duck and Haywood’s Fresh, Samascott,  Nolasco, Ole Mother Hubbert, Valley Shepherd,  Hawthorne Valley and Gajeski Farms!!

Of course, Maestra Marketa Manageria Margaret has wisdom to share:

“Dear Greenmarketeers:

Happy Hanukkah!!

Time to make some apple sauce or buy it already made from Samascott orchard!! (Either way, Samascott’s is your go-to place for all things apple!!
 
Then there’s Hawthorne Valley’s delicious concoction they call “quark” – sort of a cross between crème fraiche and sour cream!!  Great on those latka!! 

And, of course, Valley Shepherd’s actual crème fraiche is delicious!!
 
So, question:  What else is great on a latka? 

Answer:  Smoked duck and/or duck rilllets courtesy of Hudson Valley Duck!!

Not forgetting the potatoes and other veggies at both Nolasco and Gajeski tables!!
 
Should be a nice weather day, so enjoy your shopping, 

Margaret“

Then there’s the just plain fun department:

Thursday, December 21st:  CM Seawright’s Holiday Open House
1485 York Avenue between 78th & 79th, 4-5pm

And an opportunity to do holiday good:

Until Thursday, December 21at:  AM Seawright’s 2023 Christmas Toy Drive
Drop-Off Brand-New and Unwrapped at the AM’s office, 1485 York Avenue between 78th & 79th, 9-5pm

 
Then there’s our gravely threatened UES compost collection:

Every Friday:  East 96th Scrap Drop-Off 
_{96th Street & Lexington, 7:30-11:30am}

2022 Total: 66,962 lbs.
July-September 2023:  1,851 drop-offs; 43 bins filled, 4,667 lbs.
2023 Total to Date (9/27):  22,396 lbs.

Every Sunday:  Asphalt Green Food Scrap Drop-Off
_{91st Street & York, 7:30am-12:30pm}

2022 Total (from 3/1/22):  46,675 lbs.
July-September 2023:  2,276 drop-offs; 59 bins filled; 12,345 lbs
2023 Total to date (9/29):  35,046 lbs. 

Every Day, Any Time:  GPG Compost Drop-Off at 63rd Street
East River Esplanade (under the pedestrian overpass from York Avenue), round the clock

2023 Total (from 5/2/2023):   Has to be moving toward 3,000 lbs!!  (Soon to acquire a scale!!)

And there’s other meaningful activism (before, again, heading down the Save Compost Trail):

As in, should you think construction threatening the Merchant’s House should be reconsidered…

And/or believe – as with compost – proposed budget cuts to NYC Parks (already least funded of public parks in all other major American cities) should be reversed…

And/or think Governor Hochul should sign S.7538/A.7754 and S.7537/A.7761 modernizing NYS’s fracking law…

Okay…  Compost Action Time:

1.  For those who’ve yet to sign the GrowNYC online petition, please-please hit the QR tile below…

2.  Tuesday, December 11th, 10am:  The NYC Council Meeting on Finance via online 

Register for live or remote attendence and/or to submit live or written testimony to the Finance Committee meeting at which the mayor’s November budget proposals – which include both compost and Parks’ funding – will be discussed… 

3.  At Your  Convenience:  “I Compost Because” Sign and Tag

While you’re at our 82nd Street Market or Lenox Hill Farmstand, take a photo with a “I compost because” sign and tag GrowNYC on social media @grownyc!!  (A perfect kid action, too!!) 

4.  At Your Convenience:   WNYC’s Morning Edition hosts Justin Green of Big Reuse and CM Sandy Nurse at 93.9FM

The subject under discussion?  You guessed it!!  Compost!!  (Good info and good, brief listening!!)

5.  Also 100% Pressing:  3 Ways to Defend Parks’ Funding

Just head to the City Parks Foundation’s site!! 

Moving on to the realm of diverting diversions: 

How oysters will save NYC…   Reading Tree Leaves and their squiggles…  How an Abu Dhabi suburb stays cooler…  What our NYS Forest Rangers have been up to…  Same for our NYS Environmental Conservation Police…  “Party” plans floated by the Frick…   More UES demolition…  Unconventional NYC Christmas trees…  How to clean winter bird feeders…  A great green gift?? NYS Conservationist Magazine…

Moving on to the Hudson River Almanac:

11/18 – Greene County: Heading out of the house early one recent morning I was met by a cacophony of sound. A blanket of blackbirds had settled in a row of large old maples. They turned out to be mostly common grackles (Quiscalus quiscula). I estimated their numbers to be in the 8,000 to 10,000 range. Diving from the trees in unified flight onto the lawn below, the flock rolled and twisted in waves, wildly pecking the grass presumably for bugs.
                                                                         
                                                                                 Those Blackbirds!!

Their numbers also included European starlings, brown-headed cowbirds, and red-winged blackbirds in a mass-flocking, an aerial display called a murmuration. These are a common occurrence for blackbirds during spring and fall migration, an adaptation rooted in the concept of “safety in sheer numbers” to confuse predatory Accipiters (bird hawks).

With the surround sound of their raucous cackling calls, they made a mesmerizing spectacle. Lifting, as if by command, they took to the sky in a swirling shape-shifting cloud. – Mario Meier

11/21 – Beacon, HRM 61: If studying river life is the goal, tides will often dictate when to be on the beach. Tides are not negotiable. We were on the beach in Long Dock Park at dawn, one that came in breezy and very cold at 25 degrees Fahrenheit (F) without a smidgeon of warmth. At 49 degrees F, the river felt marginally better. Salinity was 2.0 parts-per-thousand (ppt).

An Atlantic Menhaden!!

We agreed to make three hauls and if nothing showed the gear would be stowed and we’d leave. As the last haul was slid up on the sand it looked empty — no movement. However, in the sand under net’s bag we saw a dozen sluggish, translucent wiggles in the cold air, barely discernable. These were larval fish that had slipped through our quarter-inch mesh. They looked very much like those we had caught five miles and four days earlier downriver at Little Stony Point. These were larval Atlantic menhaden (29-31 mm), seemingly out-of-place. – Tom Lake, Bailey Lake

11/22 – Hudson River Watershed: Although striped skunks haven’t entered dens yet, it won’t be long before many of them will. Most females den communally, with up to eleven skunks gathering in an abandoned burrow or similar sheltered spot. Older males often join a group of females; young males tend to den on their own.

That Striped Skunk!!

Research has shown that survival techniques for single skunks include frequently entering a state of torpor, during which time their body temperature drops for several hours. In the spring, these solitary skunks emerged with only 9.3 percent body fat. Skunks that huddle together in groups entered torpor far fewer times for shorter periods of time than skunks that den alone. They also had more (25.5 percent) body fat in the spring. Although communal denning has its advantages, it does promote disease transmission. – Mary Holland11/22 – Minerva, HRM 284: Recently, Freya and I were out tramping in the woods and heard a familiar “May” spring sound, the drumming display of a male ruffed grouse. This out-of-season occurrence may have been a case of a photo-period response mimicking springtime. We still had a couple of crusty inches of snow in the woods following a full six inches a few days ago. – Mike Corey

A Ruffled Grouse!!

Hello, Fish of the Week:

11/24 – Hudson River Watershed: Fish-of-the-Week for Week 244 is the butterfish (Peprilus triacanthus), number 219 (of 237) on our watershed list of fishes.

A Butterfish!!

Butterfish is classified as a temperate marine stray and is the only member of its family, the butterfishes (Stromateidae), documented for our watershed. They are a marine-brackish water species, ocean spawners, found primarily over sandy bottoms and commonly among floating vegetation where they form large schools over the continental shelf from Nova Scotia to Florida, and into the Gulf of Mexico.

In their Fishes of the Gulf of Maine (1953), Bigelow and Schroeder refer to the species, colloquially, as Dollarfish. They describe them as “rather rhombic-shaped, leaden bluish in color, pale sides and silver abdomen, thin, deep-bodied, with a short head, blunt snout, small teeth, and lacking pelvic fins” Their maximum size is 12-inches (300 mm) and one pound, although most are half that size.

Butterfish are an important forage species for high-end predators such as bluefish, striped bass, summer flounder, marine mammals, and birds of prey. They are found in the lower estuary when the river warms and salinities rise but will frequently linger in the Upper Bay of New York Harbor well into autumn. DEC’s recent Fall Trawl Shoal Survey found young-of-year butterfish (45 mm) around the Battery in the Upper Bay of New York Harbor.

Their common name may, in part, be derived from assessments like one from the Nova Scotian Institute of Science (1939) that describes butterfish as “… one of our best table fish, fat, oily, and of delicious flavor.” – Tom Lake

And This Week’s Wonderful Bird:

The Carolina Chikadee!!

Yes, there were actually some random snow flurries yesterday,

UGS

Eco Fact of the Week:  NYS’s giant and (presently) ever-growing landfill…

Eco Tip of the Week:   Finding those old Christmas tree lights no longer work??  Recycle/send them to Christmas Light Source, Recycling Program, 4313 Elmwood Drive, Benbrook, Texas 76116!!

 

Happy 2023 Holiday Season Activism, UESiders!!

Of course, the Save Community Composting campaign continues in high gear:  

With the totally convenient option of the QR tile click below… 

Great for forwarding to friends and family, too!!
 

Or you could go for the online petition:  https://www.grownyc.org/petition!!

Then there’s…

Wednesday, December 6th:  Save Our Compost Press Conference & Rally
City Hall Park, Broadway & Chambers Street, 1-2pm

Another opportunity to big time show our support for preserving the NYC Compost Project…  With Council Members and other affected parties speaking on the importance of NYC community composting!!  As ever in 21st Century U.S., headcount matter…  So, ALL SUPPORTERS WELCOME!!

Deep breath and then some fun… 

2023 Holiday Tree Lighting

Please join us Sunday, December 3rd5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.86th Street and East End Avenue As has become our tradition,Cantori New York & New York Brass Quintetwill be there to help ring in the holiday season!!       Hot cocolate, candy canes, and cookies included! (Click Here: Download the 2023 Holiday Songbook!)

On to UES Greenmarket/Farmstand updates:

Every Friday:  The Lenox Hill Farmstand
First Avenue & 70th Street, 11:30am-5:30pm

Think a 5 table Greenmarket, each one piled with premier and varied local and largely organic vegs and fruit, along with honey, eggs, bread and more!!  ( Spread the word, especially lower UESide folks!!)  For further Farmstand info…

Every Saturday,  82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket
_{82 Street between First & York Avenues, 9am-2:30pm}

Cherry Lane’s ended its 2023 season, but…  Great winter sub Nolasco Farm will now be back at those back-of-the-market tables…   And joining our friends American Pride Seafood, Bread Alone, Ballard’s Honey,  Hudson Valley Duck and Haywood’s Fresh, Samascott,  Cherry Lane, Ole Mother Hubbert, Valley Shepherd,  Hawthorne Valley and Gajeski Farms!!

Maestra Manager Margaret’s adds this lovely news:

“Dear Greenmarketeers:

Yes, the big news post-Thanksgiving news is that Cherry Lane’s done for the season with excellent Nolasco Farm stepping in to be with us till late spring!!

AND…
 
Big news, too, that hot cider season’s is now here!!  Get  a cup from Samascott’s and stay warm while you shop!!
 
AND…

With winter’s arrival it’s time to start thinking about soups and stews!!

Lots of delicious, hearty options for both still plentiful, but let’s talk soup options…   As in potato leek!!  Green Minestrone!! Carrot Ginger!!  Or how about an iteration  using any or all available veggies on a given week!! 

Just a few of near infinite veggie option!!

Layer up and come on out, 

Margaret“

As for the compost drop-off sites we’re so vigorously defending:

Every Friday:  East 96th Scrap Drop-Off
_{96th Street & Lexington, 7:30-11:30am}

2022 Total:  66,962 lbs.
July-September 2023:  1,851 drop-offs; 43 bins filled, 4,667 lbs.
2023 Total to Date (9/27):  22,396 lbs.

Every Sunday:  Asphalt Green Food Scrap Drop-Off
_{91st Street & York, 7:30am-12:30pm}

2022 Total (from 3/1/22):  46,675 lbs.
July-September 2023:  2,276 drop-offs; 59 bins filled; 12,345 lbs
2023 Total to date (9/29):  35,046 lbs.

Every Day, Any Time:  GPG Compost Drop-Off at 63rd Street
East River Esplanade (under the pedestrian overpass from York Avenue), round the clock

2023 Total  (from 5/2/2023):   Has to be moving toward 3,000 lb!!

You bet, it’s a week of ultra local activism:

As in dropping a line to area CM and Sanitation Committee member Menin asking for her support of the Community Compost Program: District5@council.nyc.gov!!

Then you could put in a call to 311 and leave a message for the mayor…  A message in which you let him know that the city needs both its community composting program and curbside composting outreach team…  And that funding for both must be restored, with further funding also made available for outreach through the $2 million dollar EPA grant DSNY recently received!!  (Well under the 300 word max allowed!!) 

And for the most committed of all, how ’bout also volunteering for the Queens Botanical Garden’s Save Composting Virtual  Phone Banking Event…!!  

Bet you’re more than ready for some diverting diversions: 

2023 NYC Coat Drive drop-off sites…  What our NYS Forest Rangers have been up to of late…  Rediscovery of (ancient, lost color) Tyrian purple…  A new tenant for the soon-to-be-former Sotheby’s building…  Comedy Wildlife Photo winners…  The NYS Bottle Bill Fraud Investigation (scroll down)…  How African penguins tell each other apart…  Why are we not surprised there’s another East Midtown Greenway opening delay…  Check out the newly redesigned NYS Department of Conservation website (and contemplate the bargain subscription to its excellent quarterly magazine!!)…

Then there’s the relaxing, latest installment of the Hudson River Almanac:

11/11 – Bronx, New York City: On October 18, I was working for the Billion Oyster Project as a Restoration Field Technician on an oyster reef installation at Soundview Park in the Bronx. The park is located at the confluence of the Bronx River and the East River. Laying in the bottom of an oyster gabion, among old oyster shells, was a five-inch-long, dead, and quite “mangled,” as one biologist would observe from a photo, fish the likes of which I had never seen. I set about looking for an identification. – Natalie Kim
                                                                           
                                                                                     A Pigfish!!

[Gabion, from the Italian gabbione, meaning “big cage”, is a cylinder or box filled with rocks, concrete, or sand and soil (Mahan 1870)]

At this point, the fish in Natalie’s photo seemed exotic, perhaps tropical, and possibly not on our watershed list of fishes. Unfortunately, we did not have the fish — it was unable to be collected at the site. Fortunately, some diagnostic attributes of the fish were still visible. We began our search with our only evidence: an eye witness and a poor photo, made so due to the extensive tidal trauma the fish had encountered.

After collecting opinions from local experts — Bob Schmidt had a good idea of what it was; John Waldman identified it first as a grunt of an unknown species — we looked south and contacted the Florida State Museum’s Division of Ichthyology, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and the University of Florida’s Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory. The responses were immediate and in total agreement: the fish was Orthopristis chrysoptera (Linnaeus, 1766) or pigfish.

Pigfish is a member of the Haemulidae family of fishes (grunts). Their general common name, grunt, comes from their ability to grind their teeth to make a “grunt” sound. They are rare in the New York Bight at the northern extent of their coastal range. However, the species is on our watershed list of fishes, but from a scant few records, only one of which is entirely validated. Now we have two.

Matthew DiMaggio (University of Florida’s Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory) has authored a Species Profile for Pigfish: Orthopristis chrysoptera (2011). To download the PDF, click on the link below:  https://fisheries.tamu.edu/files/2013/10/SRAC-Publication-No.-7209-Species-Profile-Pigfish-Orthopristis-chrysoptera.pdf – Tom Lake]

11/11 – Hudson River Watershed: For the past two months, monarch butterflies that emerged in the late summer and early fall in the Northeast have been winging their way to the Trans-volcanic Mountains of central Mexico (2,800 miles), where they spend the winter. This week they began arriving at their destination. Later this winter their population will be estimated from the number of acres they occupy.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, monarchs have suffered a sharp population decline and a loss of habitat in the forests where they winter. Last year, the presence of Monarch butterflies in their wintering grounds dropped 22%, from 7 acres to nearly 5.5. This is part of a mostly downward trend over the past 25 years—monarchs once covered more than 45 acres of forest.

While individuals cannot easily affect the challenges monarchs face in Mexico, there is something we can do to counteract the diminishing supply of food for monarchs migrating and breeding in the United States. Agricultural (and thus herbicidal) and urban expansion can be partially compensated for by the planting of milkweed, the one plant on which monarch eggs are laid and which monarch larvae feed.

To find appropriate species in your area go to https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/monarch-milkweed-finder. – Mary Holland

11/14 – Hudson River Watershed: Each autumn most of eastern North America’s population of snow geese leaves its breeding grounds along the Greenland coast and other islands ringing Baffin Bay and heads south to winter along the mid-Atlantic coast. Those of us lucky enough to live near their migratory route experience their presence every fall, starting in mid-October and lasting through the third week of November, when flocks set down to rest, sometimes in concentrations numbering in the thousands. A popular region for seeing snow geese is the Champlain Valley in Vermont, where the combination of Lake Champlain and farms in the surrounding lowlands that provide waste grains and grazing draws many of the migrants. – Mary Holland

                                                              A Bunch of Snow Geese!!

11/15 – Manhattan, HRM 0: As part of the Hudson River Ecosystem Monitoring Program, DEC is funding a Fall Shoal Survey to monitor the status of Hudson River juvenile fish populations. Recently, using a small-mesh beam trawl (net) in the general area of the Battery, a variety of fish species were collected including blackcheek tonguefish, butterfish (45mm), Atlantic moonfish, red hake (65 mm), and oyster toadfish, among others. Sampling will continue until late November from the Battery in Manhattan to the Troy Dam (river miles 0-153) using small-mesh trawls to collect fish for identification. – Hudson River Fisheries Unit

                                                 View from the Stony Brook Beam Trawl!!

11/16 – Town of Poughkeepsie, HRM 74: After years of looking for, and hoping to find, such a shot, I finally came face-to-face with a gorgeous bobcat. – Debbie Quick

                                                                        That Bobcat!!

11/17 – Little Stony Point Preserve, HRM 55: The sun had not yet popped up over Bull Hill (Mount Taurus) and the air was chilled by a stiff southwest wind blowing up through the Highlands. When we reach mid-November, our expectations are limited—the water is getting cold, and the fish are few. It took several hauls of our seine to net just a few young-of-year striped bass (60-100 mm) and 30-40 larval Atlantic menhaden (29-30 mm). The water temperature had dropped to 49 degrees F and the salinity showed a miniscule increase to 2.0 ppt.

On our final haul we became hung–down on a large, old, and well-seasoned railroad tie that threatened to rend our net. Moon tides had carried it into the shallows. After wrestling it up on the sand, we saw that it was studded with bay barnacles—none still alive. The seven-foot-long timber, in silent testimony, told us a story of saltier times when barnacle larvae, carried upriver by favorable currents, had found a suitable habitat. – Tom Lake, Seth Dinitz, Ellie Dinitz
                                                                          
                                                       Some of Those Bay Barnacles!!

[Bay barnacles (Balanus improvisus) are crustaceans related to shrimp, crabs, and lobsters. Their exoskeleton is a calcareous cone-like house made of six small calcium plates that form a circle, within which the animal lives. Four more plates form a “trap-door” that the barnacle can open or close, depending on the tide. They cement their house, using a powerful glue-like secretion, on rocks and other hard benthic material (ship’s hulls, bulkheads …) and permanently set up shop.

When conditions are optimal, they open their trap-door and feed by extending feather-like appendages called cirri that filter for microscopic organisms. While they flourish in salty to brackish water, they can button up for a limited period in times of very low salinity until conditions improve. Although it is unclear exactly how barnacle larvae arrive upriver from brackish water, their method of transport may be flood tide currents in times of low freshwater flow. 

For a real-time treat, not unlike watching the dance of the comb jellies, place a rock encrusted with barnacles in aquaria. Then gently stir the water and watch as the barnacles open their trap-doors and extend their feathery cirri to filter the water. It looks altogether like a water ballet. Tom Lake]

11/17 – Hudson River Estuary/New York Bight: With real winter nearly upon us, a season that will extend through March, please keep an eye out for stranded sea turtles. Those that have not yet migrated south can become victims of paralyzing “cold stunning,” which is like hypothermia. It gives them the appearance of death, but they are really in dire need of recovery and resuscitation. Do not put them back in the water. The Atlantic Marine Conservation Society recently collected two sea turtle (Kemp’s Ridley and Atlantic Green) that had been cold-stunned but rescued in time for them to recover.
                                                                               
                                                      A Cold-Stunned Kemp;s Ridley Turtle!!

If you come upon a sick, injured, entangled, or deceased sea turtle or any marine mammal, immediately call the New York State Stranding Hotline at (631) 369-9829. If you have photos or videos, please send them to sightings@amseas.org. Learn more information at: https://go.usa.gov/xeWTs. – Kim Durham, Co-New York State Sea Turtle Coordinator for the Atlantic Marine Conservation SocietyWith the Fish of the Week being:

11/16 – Hudson River Watershed: Fish-of-the-Week for Weeks 243 is the lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus), number 141 (of 235) on our watershed list of fishes. 

    A  Lumpfish!!

Lumpfish is the only member of its family, lumpsuckers or alternately the snailfishes (Cyclopteridae), found, albeit very rarely, in our watershed where they are classified as a temperate marine stray.

Lumpfish are decidedly oblong and lumpy. While the colloquial or common name “football fish” has already been claimed for a species of deep-sea angler fish, the lumpfish looks remarkably like a small football. There are very few forms of wildlife whose common name is a better fit. Bigelow and Schroeder refer to them as “ungainly.” In their 1953 classic, The Fishes of the Gulf of Maine, they refer to them as “lump,” or collectively, “the lumps”.

Adults are found along inshore waters over rocky bottoms from Hudson Bay in Canada to northern New Jersey, and as a rare stray to Chesapeake Bay. Briggs and Waldman (2002) find them not uncommon in the New York Bight in winter and early spring.

Basically, a solitary bottom fish, they feed on isopods, amphipods, small crustaceans, small fishes, and ctenophores (comb jellies), and have a ventral sucking disc that allows them to hold fast in strong currents. Most lumpfish average a foot-long but can reach 24-inches and weigh 20 lb. While they are rarely eaten, their roe is a good source of omega-3 fatty acids and is marketed as inexpensive caviar.

Bob Schmidt investigated Hudson River lumpfish records at the New York State Museum and found a 19th century report by ichthyologist Samuel Latham Mitchill of two “lump suckers” (C. caruleus, a synonym for C. lumpus), from “the bay of New York,” caught in commercial shad nets on April 11 and May 14, 1815 (On the Fishes of New York 1815).

However, our only recent Hudson River record is an eight-inch lumpfish that we picked out of Ron Ingold’s commercial shad net at midnight under the George Washington Bridge, in May 1992. – Tom Lake

And This Week’s Beautiful but Endangered Bird:

    The Baudo Guan

We UESiders shredded 10 1/2 tons/21,000 lbs. of paper in 2023,

UGS

Eco Fact of the Week:   In 2021, the United States produced a cumulative 40 million tons of plastic waste — enough to fill 16,000 Olympic swimming pools with plastic trash!!

Eco Tip of the Week:  Recycle your unwanted/uneeded eye glasses at AM Seawright’s Office, 1485 York Avenue, between 78th & 79th Streets!!