Happy Earth Day/Weekend/Week 2022, UESIders!!
And so many ways to experience in our great, ever-more-green-in-spite-of-all-obstacles NYC…
But, first, for all those who haven’t yet voiced their support for restoration of our city’s compost collection program…
Back to Earth Day and its celebration:
FRIDAY, APRIL 22nd: EARTH DAY 2022 AT UNION SQUARE!!
12-7pm
Booths featuring dozens of environmental organizations… Speakers live and virtual… Music and more!! For the complete rundown (where there’re also links to virtual Earth Days 2020 and 2021)!!
Then in, on and about our UESide home turf:
Saturday, April 23rd: 82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket
82 Street between First & York Avenues, 9am-2pm
Does it get any more Earth Day-ish and green than our great Greenmarket?? Answer: It does not!!
As ever and with us and bringing their wonderful regional vegs/honey/ fruit/baked goods/fish/poultry/meat/mushrooms/cheese/flowers (and more) will be the great folks/our friends of American Pride Seafood, Bread Alone, Ballard’s Honey, Hudson Valley Duck, Sikking Flowers and Haywood’s Fresh, Samascott, Nolasco, Ole Mother Hubbert, Valley Shepherd, Hawthorne Valley and Gajeski Farms!!
Then proceed to:
Saturday, April 23rd: Earth Day Everyday with Green & Blue Eco Care
Meet at Mojo Desserts, 177 East 100th Street, 11am-12:30pm
Join G&B Eco Carers and great leader Simone as they tidy UES streets on a route from 100th to the NYC Ferry landing on the Esplanade/90th Street and a possible rendezvous with Billion Oyster staff!! All equipment provided!! To sign up…
Leaving plenty of time to hippity-hop a few blocks to:
Saturday, April 23rd: Carl Schurz Park
All around the Park, 84th-90th Streets & York, 1-4pm
Click on https://www.carlschurzparknyc.org/copy-of-cspc-earth-day-2022 for all great things going on at the park… (And free, of course!!)…
A good night’s sleep then:
Sunday, April 24th: Randall’s Island Farm Day
Randall’s Island, 10am-1pm
Celebrate Earth Day plus two days by volunteering to restore the Island’s farm wetlands and marsh habitats!! Or just bring the kids and enjoy the great, green RI environment!! For more and to register…
More UES earth consciousness/celebration to come with next week’s Arbor Day:
Friday, April 29th: Arbor Day Planting on Randall’s Island
Randall’s Island Park (meeting place forwarded after registration), 9:30am-12pm
And we quote, “Join us as we celebrate Arbor Day by planting native trees in the Park… Trees essential to a healthy environment, vital to our economy and that contribute greatly to our everyday lives.” A garden/natural areas tour (with loads of great tree trivia) follows planting!! To sign up…
And for citywide Earth/Arbor Day happenings: https://www.nycgovparks.org/events/earth_and_arbor_days
Here comes – believe it!! – May and more great live and in-person events:
Sunday, May 1st: AM Seawright’s Spring Shred-A-Thon
York Avenue between 79 & 80th Streets, 10am-2pm
Three cheers!! The CM’s partnering with DSNY to remedy our UESide shredding need!!
But, as ever, classic shredding protocols apply:
NO cardboard or plastic-handled shopping bags.
REMOVE paper clips and spiral bindings.
NO hardcover books. (But paperbacks are fine.)
Tuesday, May 3rd: 67th Street Library Branch Plant Swap
328 East 67th Street, 6-7pm (time tentative)
A neighborhood classic returns!! Bring and share those extra seedlings, cuttings and/or greenery that not longer fits your in or outdoor Eden… And leave with a plant or plants you’ve been yearning for!! Completely free, of course!! More details coming here soon and you can check the Library’s events page…
Saturday, May 7th: Jane’s Walk – Secrets of the East Harlem Waterfront
Meeting location forwarded with registration, 11am
And we quote, “Uncover the mysteries and little-known secrets of the East Harlem Waterfront with Jennifer Ratner, President of Friends of the East River Esplanade and owner of Art GenNYC as she shares anecdotes through the lens of art and history about the waterfront and a vision for its future.” Free. For more and to sign up…
Saturday, May 7th: Highbridge Walking Tour
High Bridge, 2301 Amsterdam Avenue, 11am-12:30pm
Bryan Diffley, Project Manager of the Bridge’s renovation, relates the amazing history of NYC’s oldest standing bridge, an engineering treasure constructed in 1848 that brought water from the Bronx into Manhattan via the Croton Aqueduct until 1958!! . Organized by the great NYC H2O!! Students & Seniors, $10… Rest of us, $30… For your tickets…
Saturday, May 14th: Planting the Esplanade Pollinator Garden 2022
East River Greenway at 100th Street (across from the East Barrio Bait Station, Time TBA
Join Green & Blue Eco Carers’ and Friends of the Esplanade refreshment of the Esplanade/Greenway Pollinator Garden… A green space dedicated to native plants and the hearty NYC pollinators – like our native solitary bee – that nurture them!! Stay tuned for more info…
Sunday, Mary 15th: Flower Moon Walking Tour at Ridgewood Reservoir
Ridgewood Reservoir, 58-2 Vermont Place, Queens, 7:30=9pmFYI, May’s full moon is also a super moon and that that lovely bigger and brighter full moon makes for a perfect spring night to visit Highland Park. Another great event from NYC H2O!! Free but with only a couple spots left… But a waitlist’s available. For more and to register…
Then there’re these great virtual events:
At Your Convenience: “Design You Garden to Attract Pollinators” via Zoom
Missed iDig2Learn’s great live webinar with the equally Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Rebecca McMackin?? Lucky us, it’ll be on YouTube and available until June 15th!! Free. Just click (yes, it’ll work this time!!)…
Thursday, April 28th, 2-4pm: AM Seawright’s Weekly Virtual Knitting Social on Zoom
UES multi-purpose knitting at its finest… Community interests shared… Neighborly bonds formed… And many a cast-on/knit/purl row completed!! To RSVP…
Followed with some Earth Day activism:
Should you support Congress banning poisonous PFA use in our food wrappers…
If you think soon-to-be-purchased new postal trucks should be at least 75% electric…
If you believe NYS should act to limit single-use plastics…
And should you not yet have expressed your wish that the mayor provide 1% of budget funding for our city’s parks…
Time for some diverting diversions:
NYS DEC’s Earth Week diesel truck emission blitz… And new tech to pinpoint NYS’s abandoned, leaking oil and gas wells… Eeek!! Speaking of methane: Newtown Creek and National Grid…Water – maybe – on a Jupiter moon… Congress and recycling legislation… Yet another great addition to our NYStatewide Birding Trail… PBS‘s outstanding Earth Week doc… Boston’s curbside compost debut… Extending the lives of our valiant city trees… Trees as art…
Protection for Nevada’s endangered Dixie Valley Toad…
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History of American landfill (truly interesting!!)… Wombat rescuers… The official DSNY NYS guide to what we can recycle in our buildings… Block Island and wind power… A (female) Roosevelt Island basketball star… A new, green drywall alternative… Fitness equipment coming to the Esplanade… Florida’s manatees… Birding with a purpose… NYS‘s 10th annual Greening of New York State Report… A wildlife-friendly lawn…
Moving on to the Hudson River Almanac:
4/2 – Brooklyn: In mid-morning, from Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, I spotted a small flock of raptor-like birds flying northwest toward Staten Island. The flock included two turkey vultures, a red-tailed hawk, and a bird that looked like a cross between the two. The mysterious visitor had a hawk outline and turkey vulture coloration of black with pale underwings. I sent a photo of the bird to my friends and passed it through a bird identification app. The app suggested it was a zone-tailed hawk (Buteo albonotatus). The bird departed quickly, chased away by one of the cemetery’s resident red-tailed hawks before heading west across New York Harbor. – Angela Panetta
A Zone-Tailed Hawk
[David Allen Sibley (2000) remarks how the zone-tailed hawk is incredibly similar looking, especially in profile, to the turkey vulture, with which it often soars. As serious birders remind us, check every bird; do not assume that a flock of look-alikes, are all alike. Tom Lake]
[This zone-tailed hawk sighting was a first for New York State. They are rare in the Northeast, typically seen only soaring over the Southwest U.S. or Central and South America. However, to some hawk watchers, this record was anticipated. Zone-tailed hawks, in very small numbers, have been documented from Virginia to Nova Scotia in four of the last eight years, as they expand their range in North America. Cornell Lab of Ornithology]
4/3 – Hudson River Watershed: It is that time of year again. Red fox kits are emerging from their dens to explore their new world after being kept inside with their mothers nursing for the first 4-5 weeks of life. The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is one of the most widely distributed members of the order Carnivora. They are found across the Northern Hemisphere including most of North America, Europe, and Asia, plus parts of North Africa. They share their sub-family, Caninae (from Latin canis meaning “dog”) with domestic dogs, wolves, foxes, and coyotes. The males are called dogs, the females are called vixens, and young cubs are known as kits. The species primarily feeds on small rodents, though it may also target rabbits, squirrels, game birds, reptiles, and invertebrates (Pringle 2017). As with reptiles and amphibians, vehicular traffic can represent danger for wildlife. Red fox and their kits may use roads to cross from denning sites to foraging locations. Cautious driving habits can save wildlife, including red foxes. – Tom Lake
4/6 – Manhattan: Our Hudson River Park’s River Project staff, along with two Harbor School interns, checked our sampling and collection gear that we deploy off Pier 40 in Hudson River Park. It was an exhilarating day for us given the meager catches of winter. Our crab pots held a 170 mm-long “blackfish” (tautog) as well as two juvenile black sea bass (55-60 mm). Our minnow traps caught several grass shrimp and isopods. It was an exciting first day on the job for our new high school interns. – Zoe Kim, Siddhartha Hayes, Toland Kister, Demolyn Ramirez, Juliet Wiley
4/6 – Manhattan: Rainy weather is sometimes a bummer, but it does bring out a lot of the birds on the Island. Our Randall’s Island Park Alliance Staff spotted six egrets today at the Little Hell Gate Salt Marsh Inlet, including two great egrets and four snowy egrets, the most we’ve seen together in a long while. – Jackie Wu
4/8 – Manhattan, New York City: Our Randall’s Island Park Alliance Staff went seining today at the Water’s Edge Garden on the Harlem River. We were assisted by high school students from Repertory Company High School for Theatre Arts. We didn’t catch any fish, but that did not matter! We caught many invertebrates including eleven comb jellies about the size of a peanut M&M and a colony of star tunicates.
A Lion’s Mane Jellyfish
Among true jellyfish, we caught at least 40 lion’s mane (Cyanea capillata) in three hauls of our seine. Their bells (umbrella) ranged from roughly the size of a half dollar to about the diameter of the lid to a pint of ice cream. These are the largest jellyfish in the world with some reaching more than a meter across with tentacles that stretch more than 75 feet, although those of that size are rare. Water temperature was 48 degrees F, salinity was 16.0 ppt, and the dissolved was 9.0 ppm. [Note: Ken Gosner’s Guide to Identification of Marine and Estuarine Invertebrates (1971) is the best source for taxonomic identification for the Lion’s mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata). Tom Lake]
Not forgetting our Earth Week Fish:
4/4 – Fish-of-the-Week for Week 167 is the longnose gar (Lepisosteus osseus), number 16 (of 236) on our watershed list of fishes.
A Longnose Gar
Gar have lived in North American waters for 50 million years. Fossil gar found in rocks from the Green River formation of western Wyoming are so like gar found today in New York waters that they are thought to be members of the modern genus Lepisosteus. Longnose gar is one of two species of their family, Lepisosteidae, found in the Hudson River watershed. The other is the nonnative alligator gar (L. osseus).
Longnose gar is a primitive-looking, extremely well adapted fish, whose evolutionary journey began several hundred million years ago. With a fusiform body, armor-like ganoid scales, long narrow jaws full of very sharp teeth, growing to six-feet-long, they have been described by zoologist Archie Carr as having a “Paleozoic leer.”
Found in eastern North America from Quebec to northern Mexico, longnose gar are primarily freshwater fishes although they can live in coastal marine waters (their type site, where first described, is Virginia). In New York State, they occur in relatively large lakes such as Lake George and Lake Champlain, as well as both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. They are a voracious lie-in-wait predator, essentially piscivores (fish eaters) but have been known to eat blue crabs in brackish water. The New York State longnose gar angling record was set by Michael Gatus in 2018, in South Bay of Lake Champlain, with a 14 lb., 10 oz, 52.25-inch-long fish (they are known to reach 72-inches and 50 lb).
A unique characteristic of gar is their ability to assimilate atmospheric oxygen allowing them to live in low dissolved oxygen conditions such as warm, shallow freshwater habitats. This is likely an evolutionary adaptation for survival in an aquatic world far different than today.
Their presence in the watershed is supported by a single 30-inch fish found impinged on the intake screens at the Roseton Power Generating Facility (river mile 66.5) in Orange County and recovered by Tom Lake in 1989. That gar was believed to have been a canal immigrant from Lake Champlain via the Hudson-Champlain Canal. In our watershed, longnose gar is designated as a nonnative, freshwater, Mississippi refugium, canal immigrant. However, given their present proximity to our watershed to the north, west, and south, it is not beyond the realm that longnose gar may have once been native to the watershed in the long-ago Pleistocene.
On May 13, 1994, five dead longnose gar were recovered from an outwash area on the Saw Mill River in Yonkers (eight dead gar were reported there the day before). While it was possible that longnose gar were resident, albeit never reported there before, we viewed the likelihood with a great deal of skepticism.
On June 1, 1994, a day-long investigation of the Saw Mill River watershed was conducted by fish doctors C. Lavett Smith and Bob Schmidt, as well as Christopher Letts, and Tom Lake. Using gill nets, dip nets, and seines, the exhaustive sampling resulted in a collection of eight rather unremarkable resident species, but no evidence of longnose gar.
Subsequent analyses of the stomach contents from the five longnose gar, conducted by Norma Feinberg (Ichthyology Department, American Museum of Natural History), revealed partially digested striped bass and white catfish. In trying to contemplate where the gar may have encountered these species, we considered several possibilities: Sawmill River, Hudson River, Lake Champlain, Lake Erie, and the Chesapeake Bay system.
After much consideration of the various physical and chemical components of each system, the conclusion was that at least five of the eight longnose gar were likely dumped in the Saw Mill River by an angler returning from a trip to the Chesapeake Bay area, possibly the Potomac River where longnose gar are common (Hildebrand and Schroeder 1928:78). In the end, they were not from the watershed, but their appearance gave us a wonderful mystery to unravel and a memorable educational journey. – Tom Lake
And the gorgeous Earth Week Bird is:
As we green our wonderful earth and great Upper East Side,
UGS
Eco Fact of the Week: Nearly 50 billion pieces of litter are estimated to exist along U.S. roadways and waterways today, meaning each U.S. resident would need to pick up 152 pieces of litter to collect it all, according to the Keep America Beautiful 2020 National Litter Study.
Eco Tip of the Week: Turn those paper egg cartons into a seed starter trays!!
This Week at The Markets 