The Ethical Culture Fieldston School will be taking a trip down the Bronx River in October as a part of their interdisciplinary Bronx River 
Biography unit. One section will look into the health of the river, and in preparation, my son and I got out and placed leaf packs into a couple of different places along the Bronx River. The expectation is that macroinvertebrates will make their home out of the leaf packs and we will be able to remove them, count and classify them before replacing them in their old neighborhood. The group will be supported by Bob Ward, and part of the hope is that such studies will become a regular monitoring procedure upon the river.
September 19th, 2009
The Water Pod has arrived at Concrete Plant Park helping to mark the return of public access to
this incredible site. It quickly has become a normal feature of the area, harkening back the original function of the site that gives the park its name. But while the pod might spark memories for past employees, the monarch butterflies that are migrating through the Bronx River Corridor have quickly decided that the plants aboard the pod are a good choice of nourishment. several pupae have also attached themselves to plants on board.
Did I mention the parrots? Yes, several pairs are nesting at CCP in what I believe is a choke cherry bush. I first heard there call a couple of weeks ago, and then my daugther and I were greeted by them this morning as we left CCP.
Rocking the Boat and Pete Seeger…
September 5th, 2009
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
