'sighted'
On a visit to Hunts Point Riverside Park, I decided to try my luck in the water with a seine net. I could see the small fish flashing along under the surface, but I was not sure that I would be able to sample any since they seemed to sense my presence well before I approached the river’s edge. But one short walk parallel with the shore brought up the bounty of the sea.
These silversides (maybe Rough Silversides?), also known as sand smelt, are one of the most abundant fishes in our coastal waters. As Tarleton Hoffman Bean in his 1903 work Catalogue of the fishes of New York writes, these fish are not of great importance as a human food source, but they are a food source for the larger fish that inhabit local waters, as well as the wading birds that are regular visitors.
Silversides begin to spawn in May and, after a gestation period of just eight days, their young begin feeding on zooplankton before graduating to detritus, algae and even small fish and insects. The schools follow the tides up the river to feed in the salt marshes or other protected river banks, swimming in tight shoals that serve as a form of protection against predators. Over the summer the populations swell, creating a migrating energy source that will move out to deeper water in the fall, sharing the productivity of the estuary and the salt marsh with the greater oceans.
Unfortunately the picture below did not turn out as planned, but the jellyfish shown, most likely a comb jelly, also came up in my net. One of 90 species in phylum Ctenophora, some are able to glow with a slight phosphorescence as this example shows. The color that appears in the photo was not visible to my eye at the park, but appeared when I cropped the shot. Comb jellies are all carnivores and, though they have no tentacles, have tremendous mouths under their bell and can even eat prey larger than themselves.
August 11th, 2009
On Wednesday morning, Josue, Cici and I introduced a group of students involved in the creation of a school mural to the Bronx River Forest and the Bronx River. On our reconnaissance of the area just prior to the walk, we came across an egret foraging while standing on a pile of recently accumulated detritus. The newly expanded island in the s
tream caused eddies and small ponds that offered great hunting grounds for the egret. As we watched, the egret moved its long, muscular neck almost imperceptibly before jabbing it into the water and coming up with a slender fish about 3 inches long ( a tessellated darter?) Egrets and herons differ from storks and flamingos in that their necks are hunting tools. The powerful muscles allow them to thrust down into the water in search of prey. You can best note the difference when in flight as the birds with the stronger muscles coil their necks back while those that just use their necks to reach down and filter the water fly with their necks stretched out straight. We kept as quit as possible and left the egret to finish its fishing somewhat in private.
But what kind of an egret was it? A Snowy Egret? A Great White Egret? The answer is in the beak and the feet. While the Great White Egret is larger than the Snowy Egret, size sometimes depends on perspective. This is a Great White Egret due to the fact the beak is yellow and the legs and feet are black (not the best view of the feet here), while the Snow Egret has a black beak, black leg and yellow feet. They can also be distinguished by hunting style. The Great White is patient, waiting for prey to come into range while the Snowy will actively kick up the bottom in an effort to stir up game. Makes you wonder if there is some connection between the Snowy’s style and the natural selection that gives it its yellow feet.
DG
July 9th, 2009
Thinking about beavers does not conjure up images of urban areas. Quite to the contrary, as a matter of fact, and people do not often associate the Bronx with beavers, but we do have one: at least one.
Since the first bite marks were noticed over two years ago, the now named Jose the Beaver has been little seen but his presence has been noticed. In the section of the Bronx River that stretches between the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo, trees ave been gnawed and felled, and two lodges and a burrow have been identified has beaver housing. Being largely nocturnal, Jose works while the two establishments are closed and he (she?) is out of sight of the casual passersby. Photographs were taken with trip cameras by WCS, and a writer for Outdoor Magazine claims to have infrared photos but nobody has seen them. A staffer at the Bronx Zoo did see Jose one morning and placed Jose among the biggest beavers he had ever seen. Running between 30 and 70 lbs, the guesstimate weighs him in around 50 lbs.
If you put yourself on the list of those who have not seen Jose The Bronx River Beaver, you may now remove yourself from that list. On the morning of June 12, 2009 Jose put in an appearance at Drew Gardens as the participants in Bronx River Crossing made preparations to launch their watershed representation. Chris Kannon was able 
to take a series of shots as Jose swam leisurely upstream before lumbering out of the water to walk under East Tremont Ave. Some of us noted that he seemed sluggish or even disoriented. Of course, having never seen a beaver, maybe they always look that way. On more than one occasion the same has been said about me. Maybe it was the salty water where he was swimming? Drew gardens is at the top of the estuary and has been found to have levels of salinity up to 8 parts per thousand (oceans are 30-35 ppt and freshwater is usually < 0.5 ppt) When the dying beaver was found last year in the East River on the day of the pope’s visit, it was reported that, while that beaver had already been sick, it was probably the brackish waters of the East River that finally did him in. Could Jose be on his way to a similar fate? Could the stresses of life in the zoo and the garden be such that he is being chased down stream and into a perilous situation?
Jose came up again in a discussion that our Executive Director had with a local fisherman on Saturday in River Park, just south of the last dam on the river and the zoo. When she mentioned the beaver having been seen just to the south, the fisherman nonchalantly replied, “Oh yeah, I see that beaver all the time down here.” Could it be that Jose is putting himself in danger on a regular basis? Why would he chance forays into brackish water unless he has a death wish or is suffering from dementia?
In May of this year, W. Gregory Hood, Ph.D. of the Skagit System Cooperative published a research paper entitled The Overlooked Ecosystem. Dr. Hood had set out to study the distribution of Sweetgale (myrica gale) in the estuarine section of the Skagit River in Seattle. While he did find the sweetgale, he also found that the estuary was frequented by beaver from the fresh water section of the river. Dr. Hood explains that beavers are known to make use of estuarine areas with salinity levels as high as 10 ppt. Being true vegetarians, they are in search of those trees that will fulfill their appetite while providing the needed nutrients. If the trees in question are along the banks of brackish water, the beaver is prepared to go there. Beavers rarely forage more than 100 yards from the stream they call home which makes upstream and downstream travelling the normal event. Jose is probably in search of food and a quiet place. In most land conflict events, beaver will look for new foraging areas. This explains Jose’s “bizarre” behavior. It was our lack of understanding of normal behavior that made his acts seem bizarre.
But Dr. Hood also raises some questions that are pertinent to our river. Hood makes the connection between the salmon that use the river for spawning and the beaver that rework the habitat in the estuary and beyond. Being tidal, some estuary sections can become quite shallow at low tide. While the beaver may be in the area to forage, an effort may also be made to dam up small areas, causing tidal pools that will provide safe harbor when the tide runs out. Perhaps coincidentally, these tidal pools also provide a safe zone for salmonids in the area. Being that the beavers prefer somewhat deeper water, the pools are deeper than the areas where wading birds generally will hunt. By providing for personal needs, the beaver helps a multitude of other organisms. While we do not have salmon on the Bronx River, the return of the alewife herring and the catadromous eels fill a similar niche. Both would benefit from a tidal hideout at low tide.
And just what is Jose feeding on in the estuary? It will mean some kicking about in the area, but while beavers preference is for aspen and poplar, they will go for whatever is available when necessary. In that area there are willow trees which are always a part of the diet, but perhaps this new understanding of the range of the beaver and its possible utility can become a part of th present converstation about the soon-to-begin construction in Starlight Park, just south of the Cross Bronx Expressway. From drew Gardens south, the river is armored on both sides with rip rap, leaving the banks barren and lifeless. Dr. Hoods research found that trees growing along the banks of the river did so above the tidal zone, though they did not grow in soil. Instead the trees were able to take root in the woody debris that washed down from upstream and became lodged on the bank at high tide. Perhaps a consideration in the lower Bronx River would be to provide such woody debris. At the present time most woody debris cannot make it down stream due to the dams that block the river at certain point. In some upstream areas, logs have been cabled to the banks as a form of bank stabilization. The Section of the river between Drew Gardens and the south end of Starlight Park needs little bank stabilization due to the rip rap, but taking the same simple idea may provide a landing zone for seeds that can then provide a food source for beaver and create habitats for other unexpected guests.
DG
Cool links:
http://books.google.com/books?id=-xQalfqP7BcC&pg=PA295&lpg=PA295&dq=beaver+favored+diet&source=bl&ots=XOlaFu5796&sig=kBq_s3ePD5K2dJ2eg1exkObBNUE&h
l=es&ei=IdRKSufeIofCNu7v4KoB&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1
http://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/Wildlife/Wildlife_PDFs/Beaver_control.pdf
http://www.skagitwatershed.org/rpapers_overlooked.html
July 6th, 2009
If I am in my neighborhood but not within sight of my apartment building, and I hear a fire truck wailing, I am sure that I have left the kettle or a pot on the stove and those trucks are now rushing to extinguish the fire I have caused. With that in mind, consider how I felt when I heard about the beaver that was dragged from the East River just before the cutting of its thread of life. Not only did I believe that that beaver was the José from the Bronx River, but as the person that is somewhat responsible for keeping an eye on the health of the river, I felt that I had killed him. “The police pulled him from the East River,” Warren from the Friends of the (Bronx) Zoo (FOZ) said, “but then he died.” What I heard coming from his lips was, “You did not sufficiently administer the Bronx River Stewards; your negligence allowed him to die.” If the beaver leaves or dies on my watch without my being able to show why, then I have failed the river, the Bronx, and the world.
When a body is found, it must be identified. I have never met José (Josefa?) So I could not physically identify the body, but I have seen signs. It seemed rational to me to want to know for sure, so I threw out the suggestion that the beavers incisors should be measured for width and I could compare that width to the evidence I could find along the river, and possibly eliminate José from the list of possible victims. My inquiries, however, went unanswered. I can only imagine that the people and institutions that received my e mails believed that I was just a crackpot, but the exit of the animal whose arrival last year was touted as proof of the river’s revival, should also be seen as raising questions about sustained improvement. Recent finds and anomalies raise just that issue as they do the importance of regular monitoring.
On Monday, May 5, 2008, as I met with the FOZ for their weekly water quality monitoring. I decided to wander upstream. I checked first some of the signs that I had seen early last winter, and found no changes. I’ve come to believe that José is a juvenile, an adolescent, like my son. There is nothing scientific in this just that like my son, José prefers a buffet to a sit down meal. He snacks, sometimes heavily, and then moves on. At the known snack stops, I didn’t notice anything new. Then I saw a few new, white chew areas. And then a few more. Finally I found an area that still had some bits of fresh chips clinging to the tree, chips that would have been washed away in the previous night’s rain. Walking down to the bank of the river, I was also able to find tracks in the mud. There were various small prints, and some that looked like goose tracks. I learned that those “goose tracks” were most likely the back, flipper-like feet of the beaver. The combination of evidence seems to point towards life, not death.
I feel better knowing that I have not had to bear witness to such a tragedy at this stage in my stewardship. José lives. I am still sad for the beaver that did pass away, and feel that it is very important to discover the reason for its mortality. I pledge, before all, to do my duty, to the river and the Bronx, to keep as close an eye on the river as possible, to better serve the amazing stewards that volunteer their time to gather data about the river, and work towards a better river for all.
May 8th, 2008
