Happy Green Valentine’s Day, UESiders!!
And our pre-Valentine’s Day gifts??
1. Federal protection largely restored to grey wolves…
2. Mining leases in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters cancelled…
3. $1.1 billion’s going to be spent on Everglades restoration…
AND:
4. A non-rainy/snowy/sub-32 degree Saturday Greenmarket!! Happiness!!
Okay, so Sunday’s going to be a snowy, fairly frigid mess followed by more cold… Tomorrow’s going to be great:
Saturday, February 12th: 82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket
82 Street between First & York Avenues, 9am-2pm
With us 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!!
Yes, and this day of good weather means most if not all of our farmers/fishermen/bakers will be back at their tables!! And if Walnut Ridge doesn’t return this week, there’re still 2 February Saturdays left!!
Oh and as ever, do steer clear of the no parking market zone… Long travel times and setting up is more than enough stress for the folks bringing us all that wonderful food!!
Then there’s this live-and-in person gathering:
Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays from Friday, February 18th: The Swedish Marionette Theater Presents “Wake Up, Daisy”
The Swedish Marionette Cottage Theater, 79th Street & West Drive, Central Park, 11am and 1pm
And we quote, “An update of Sleeping Beauty set on the Upper West Side celebrates friendship, courage and female empowerment. Perfect for families with young children.”
Proof of full vaccination will be required for all guests ages 5 and up. Masks will also be required for all guests ages 2 and up. Tickets $8-$12. For more and to purchase…
Add these great virtual events:
Wednesday, February 16th, 4-5pm: Bird Friendly Maple Trees Webinar
Sugarbushes (forests utilized for syrup production) aren’t just vital for our breakfast tables!! They also provide essential nesting habitat for some of our most threatened songbirds and Steve Hagenbuch is a Senior Conservation Biologist and forester with Audubon Vermont’s Healthy Forests Initiative is ready to tell us all about this tree/bird relationship!! Free. To sign up…
Wednesday, February 16th, 7pm: “Oh Deer” Webinar
Ecologists Dr. Charles Canham of the Cary Institute, Dr. Lynn Christenson of Vassar College and deer biologist Dr. Brendan Quirion of the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation explain how white-tailed deer diets, ‘browsing’ behaviors and mere presence impact forests and wildlife and how those impacts can be addressed. Organized by the Catskill Mountainkeeper. Free. To register…
Thursday, February 17th, 2-4pm: AM Seawright’s Weekly Knitting Social via Zoom
On its way to being a UES classic… A virtual spot for neighbors to meet, chat and share community hopes, dreams, concerns and love of knitting!! (Don’t hang back, guys!!) To RSVP…
Thursday, February 17th, 6-7pm: Save Penn Station & the Penn Station Area via Zoom Join the Historic Districts Council and a panel of experts addressing the urgent preservation issues arising from the proposed Penn Station Area destruction!! (Yes, more destruction!!) Free. To register... (And read testimony at earlier 2 public meetings!!)
Wednesday, February 23rd, 7pm: With Liberty, Justice and Food for All – Advocating for a Better Food Bill For All via Zoom
Join Peter Lehner (Managing Attorney Sustainable Food & Farming/ EarthJustice). NYS Senator Michelle Hinchey (State Chair of Senate Committee on Agriculture), Carol Clement (Sustainable farmer/owner Heather Ridge Farm) and Carol Dimitri (Applied Economist & NYU Professor) for how the latest incarnation of the $100 billion in federal funds would be best spent!! Organized by Sierra Club NYC. Free. To register…
The Nature Conservancy’s Annual “Member Favorite Photo” Winner: A Cedar Waxwing
Cedar waxwings are often found among berry bushes, as the species almost exclusively eats fruit!! (When the Conservancy lets us know the winning photographer’s name, we’ll share it!!)
A brief visit to the You’re Actually Patting Yourself on the Back for This FIle:
As in Coke – the world’s biggest plastic polluter – has just triumphantly announced that 25% of its packaging will be reusable by 2030 (Try harder, guys.)
Then relief with some activism:
Should you believe that insect/pollinator/bird unfriendly neurotoxic insecticides (AKA “neonics”) should be banned in NYState via the Birds & Bees Protection Act, you can let Governor Hochul and AM Seawright know…
Or if you think the number of NYC supertall buildings should limited…
Or of the opinion it’s a poor idea to build a road cutting across Arctic caribou’s migration route…
Speaking of the endangered:
Can our NYC and its multitude of preservation groups have really and so neglected the four remaining, once-upon-a-time magnificent rail stations designed by none other than Cass Gilbert?? (Be good to drop station restoration advocate Rep. Ritchie Torres a note of encouragement!!)
On to the realm of diverting diversions:
Our new Parks Commissioner… Whatever happened to those Apollo 14 tree seeds (they went to moon and came back!)… Meanwhile, America’s primeval forests live… Maine and out-of-state waste… Randall’s Island’s getting shore repair… NYC schools and students and rooftop solar (You go, Solar One!!)… A cat’s brain in 2022 (What?!!)… Lincoln Center’s free and ‘choose what you pay’ spring programming beginning Feb. 27th… The NYS Birding Trail… More UES highrise/sunlight/highrise construction contentiousness… Volunteers and Jamaica Bay trash…
Then there’s the Hudson River Almanac:
1/24 – New York Bight: It was a terrific whale-watching season in 2021 for Gotham Whale, with three dozen new whales added to the New York City Humpback Whale Catalog, and roughly the same number of returning whales. Gotham Whale is New York City’s own Whale Research and Advocacy Organization, a source of education, advocacy, and science for the inhabitants of New York.
A Humpback Whale in Action
Our favorite humpback whale (NYC0011) was seen nineteen times this season. Even more remarkably, we had multiple sightings of a humpback whale mother-calf pair. This is a rare treat in local waters. To the delight of those of us who had the chance to see this mother-calf pair, the calf was seen breaching on more than one occasion. An iconic image of a humpback whale is when it is “lunge feeding” on Atlantic menhaden, mouth wide open and spewing hundreds of menhaden into the air.
There were two dozen minke whale sightings, as well as several fin whales. We also had a few encounters with common dolphins that are not commonly seen in inshore waters. On one outing in late October, we were treated to a pod of common dolphin bow-and-wake riding, so close that you could hear them vocalizing underwater. In late November, we had a sighting of a critically endangered north Atlantic right whale near the Throgs Neck Bridge. – Sarah Ryan Hudson, Paul Sieswerda
[The New York Bight is the geological identification applied to a roughly triangular indentation, regarded as a bight, along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean that extends northeasterly from Cape May Inlet in New Jersey to Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island. As the result of direct contact with the Gulf Stream along the coast of North America, the coastal climate of the New York Bight area is temperate. U.S. Geological Survey]
1/25 – New York Harbor, Upper Bay: The Farmers’ Almanac is an annual periodical that has been in continuous publication since 1818. In the Daily Events section of the Almanac for January 25, 1821, there is a Hudson River reference: “Hot drinks were served on the frozen Hudson River today to warm pedestrians crossing between New Jersey and New York City.” – Cathy Poluski
{In the pre-World War II era, the river often froze over in winter and people regularly crossed on foot. In the first half of the 19th Century, if was often faster to drive an automobile on the river ice to avoid traffic issues on the roads. However, when WWII arrived, the river was used by troopships, submarine tenders, radar vessels, and cargo ships that were essential to the war effort. Ice breakers ensured the river channel was kept open. – Tom Lake]
1/26 – Manhattan: Our Hudson River Park’s River Project staff checked the research sampling and collection gear that we deploy off Pier 40 in Hudson River Park. While there were no fish in our traps and pots today, there were some grass shrimp. – Natalie Kim, Zoe Kim
[Most of the small shrimp we catch in the estuary are genus Palaemon sp., known colloquially as “grass shrimp.” While many field guides refer to them as shore shrimp, the name grass shrimp still holds for many. The name grass shrimp comes from a favored habitat, sandy shallows with a dense crop of underwater vegetation, such as wild celery (Vallisneria americana), that affords them concealment from predation. When wild celery sways in the current, it gives the impression of a “grassy” field. Senasqua (river mile 36), is an Algonquian word that translates to “place of the grass.” During earlier times, the sandy shallows at Senasqua held acres of wild celery or, to the indigenous Lenape, grass. – Tom Lake]
1/28 – Green Island: At Green Island, there is a talus slope of Normanskill shale leading down to the river. The shale bedrock has nodules of chert that, in prehistory, were quarried for utilitarian stone tools such as hammerstones, knives, scrapers, awls, and bifaces. Today, I came upon an ovate scraper (80 x 62 mm), likely a hide scraper, fashioned from red Deepkill chert. These finds are always a reminder of how people have worked and played along the river, here, there, and everywhere, for thousands of years. – Tom Lake
That Hide Scraper
And the most interesting Fish of the Week is:
1/24 – Fish-of-the-Week for Week 157 is the tessellated darter (Etheostoma oldstedi), number 164 (of 230) on our watershed list of fishes.
A Tessallated Darter
The tessellated darter is a freshwater perch (Percidae) one of nine members of the family in the watershed. Others include yellow perch and walleye. Of the nine, three are native to the watershed including northern logperch, yellow perch, and the tessellated darter.
Tessellated darters are short (no more than 90 millimeters long (mm)) and nearly terete in cross-section. They draw their common name from their hunting strategy—ambush predators. Tessellated darters lie motionless on the sandy river bottom they prefer, propped up on their pelvic fins, with a perfectly camouflaged pattern of pale yellow-to-green, with dark X’s and Y’s. Snorkeling over them, they mimic the bottom of the river so well they are practically invisible, dissolving into the sand.
They await their prey such as insects (especially mosquito larvae), small fishes, amphipods, and shrimp. Then, in a blur, they “dart” out capturing their target.
Historical note: Through the taxonomy of the time, J.R. Greeley’s A Biological Survey of the Lower Hudson Watershed (1937), incorrectly lists the tessellated darter as johnny darter (Bolcosoma nigrum olmstedi) and has them present in the watershed. An adjustment of the perch family has since recognized the johnny darter (Etheostoma nigrum) as a separate species, one that does not occur, as far as we know, in the watershed. – Tom Lake
Love This Week’s Bird (All 6 inches of it!!):
Of course, our valentines are green,
UGS
Eco Fact of the Week: Utilizing PlayFair funding, NYC Parks Green Thumb program renovated 24 community gardens in 2021 (as compared to 15 in 2020 and 10 in 2019)!!
Governor Hochul’s proposed budget includes an 80% funding increase for state parks following record attendance in 2021. (So what about our NYC parks?)
Eco Tip of the Week: Compost those Valentine bouquets… On Fridays at our one and only UES site, Fridays, 7:30-11:30 am or at the many locations in neighborhoods nearby!! (For best results, cut the stems into pieces of six inches or smaller, so they’ll degrade more quickly!!)
This Week at The Markets 