Advocacy

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Fragile Magic

After a month of rain and cold winds interrupted by occasional warm spells (and earthquakes and eclipses!), spring has finally come to Croton Point Park.

The signs are everywhere. Picnics and enthusiastic multi-generational soccer games spill out across the mowed fields beside the river, where the smells of barbecue from a dozen cultures provoke hunger pangs in those not invited. Near the entrance, shouts ring out from cricket games, inexplicable to the novice but intensely exciting to those in the know. The RV lot, empty in February, is now nearly filled with everything from tiny Airstreams to massive vehicles that look like their owners have brought entire apartment houses on vacation. Even the tent campground is hosting its first intrepid campers.

And it’s not just the people. Nature has noticed the change of seasons, too.

American Robin singing. Photo: Ethan Gosnell
American Robin singing. Photo: Ethan Gosnell

Take a walk away from the crowds, especially early in the day, and you’ll notice that the air is filled with birdsong. Much of it comes from species that have been here all winter—robins, cardinals, woodpeckers—that are newly active and vocal as they pair up and establish territories. Nesting season is so short and demanding that there’s no time to waste.

But the newcomers, the species that have just arrived from as far away as Central America, are even more vivid signs of spring. Eastern Phoebes, a kind of flycatcher, call out their names in nearly every corner of the park. Tree Swallows swoop gracefully overhead or vie for ownership of the nest boxes set up in the park’s fields. Even the first warblers have shown up: Pine, Palm, and Yellow-rumped, all providing heartening flashes of yellow after the long gray-brown winter.

Pine Warbler. Photo: Ryan Schain.
Pine Warbler. Photo: Ryan Schain.

These arrivals are just the beginning of a flood to come. Nearly two dozen warbler species, vireos, orioles, Scarlet Tanagers, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, and so many more are currently on their way from South America and other distant lands. It amazes me to realize that these tiny packages of energy and willpower (a Ruby-throat weighs about a tenth of an ounce!) are currently in the midst of flights of hundreds or even thousands of miles.

White Oak flowers.
White Oak flowers.

But signs of spring go far beyond the birds. The park’s gnarled willows are covered in yellow-green flowers and early leaves and the oak trees are starting to bloom. (Keep an eye on the oaks during the coming weeks—their blossoms attract hordes of bugs, making them a favorite spot for migrating orioles, warblers, and other insect-eating birds.)

Meanwhile, a different kind of botanical spectacle is taking place at ground level. In the less disturbed, even hidden parts of the park, this is the season for spring ephemerals—fragile and threatened native wildflowers whose subtly beautiful blooms appear in the early spring and vanish just as quickly. Look carefully, and you can find Dutchman’s Breeches, Trout Lilies, Spring Beauty, and others. Don’t miss your chance!

Dutchman Breeches grow in Croton Point Park. Photo: Anne Swaim
Dutchman Breeches grow in Croton Point Park. Photo: Anne Swaim

As the season goes on, the quickening of life is visible everywhere. Gray Squirrels and White-tailed Deer were around all winter, of course, but only in the past couple of weeks have I started being scolded by chipmunks again. And I just saw my first Groundhog (aka Woodchuck), recently emerged from hibernation to graze on one of the park’s expansive lawns.

These mammals can be seen throughout our region in this season, of course. But there are others, rarer ones, that show once again how much of a treasure Croton Point is. Recently, a keen-eyed visitor came upon a set of tracks in the sand of one of the park’s beaches. Large, with five-clawed toes, the tracks could only have come from a member of the family Mustelidae, the fascinating group of small- to medium-sized carnivores that includes weasels and minks.

Possible Fisher Tracks at Croton Point. Photo: Ryan Gerbehy
Possible Fisher Tracks at Croton Point. Photo: Ryan Gerbehy

But the size of these prints and the animal’s bounding gait point to one of two spectacular species. It might have been a Fisher, a forest-dweller that can grow to more than three feet in length and weigh more than 10 pounds. Could the park host a small population of this rare predator? It’s possible.

Or the tracks could have been left by a North American River Otter, a species that uses the Hudson River and its bays as highways. Just to think of one choosing Croton Point to rest and explore is exciting…as is the prospect of looking down at the shore and seeing one, or perhaps a whole family of them playing on the beach.

Eastern Phoebe. Photo: Armindo Barata
Eastern Phoebe. Photo: Armindo Barata

Picknickers, campers, Eastern Phoebes, Great Horned Owls, Dutchman’s Breeches, Woodchucks, and River Otters: There are few places in the region (on earth?) that show more vividly how it’s possible for humans and nature to successfully coexist, even in a mere 500 acres of grassland, coastline, and scrubby forest.

But as is inevitable in today’s world, it’s a delicate balance. If it tips over, it’s the wild things that suffer, as always. So as you enjoy your spring walk, picnic, barbecue, or cricket match at Croton Point or one of your own favorite parks and preserves, please take a moment to appreciate how precious this all is.

And, when you’re back home at the computer, share your feelings. Tell your friends—or better yet, bring them along on your next nature walk. And let your representatives, park officials, and other decision-makers know both how much you appreciate the work they’re doing and how important it is that they keep going. (Please also feel free to let them know where they still need to improve—I certainly do!) To make that easier, here are some phone numbers and email addresses for some Westchester County officials:

New York State Senator
Pete Harckham
914-241-4600
harckham@nysenate.gov

Westchester County Executive
George Latimer
914-995-2900
ce@westchestercountyny.gov
 
 Westchester Parks, Recreation,
and Conservation Commissioner
Kathleen O’Connor
914-231-4504
parksinfo@westchestercountyny.gov
The fragile magic of these places is in their hands, and ours.
________________________

Copyright © 2024 by Joseph Wallace

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Activism in the Age of Climate Grief

The stories are everywhere. Wildfires transforming the landscape of Australia and threatening the Amazon rainforest. Warming ocean waters helping create mega-storms that devastate vulnerable communities. Politicians who not only ignore the clear threats (and the supporting science) but seem to glory in ignoring them.

In the face of such a relentless assault of sad, infuriating, and frightening news, many people turn away Or, at least, choose to learn only the broad outlines of an issue, not the details. For many of us (for I plead guilty to doing this), the only way to stay politically and socially active at all is to fight off the feeling of helplessness—even of despair—that all the details on the news can bring.

But what of the young people who are turning toward these stories, wanting to learn more, not less? Who are majoring in environmental studies, marching in science marches, fighting to change their schools’ environmental policies and investments?

As a writing mentor for many years, I’ve met countless such young people—strong, determined, undeterred. For many of us (again: guilty as charged) they provide our hope for the future, the generation that will finally begin to clean up the ecological messes every previous generation has made.

But that is asking so much, requiring them not only to reckon with an ever-mounting problem but also to overcome the emotional and psychological challenges that accompany the effort. How do they do it? Is it even possible to balance activism and health in the era of climate grief?

I recently talked this over with Delia Walz, a 2018 graduate of Croton-Harmon High School who is now a second-year student and Environmental Studies major at Oberlin College in Ohio. After joining efforts to transform CHHS’s policies on paper use, sale of plastic water bottles, and other issues, she chose to take on the new challenges college’s bigger stage provided.

In making that choice, she came head to head with the emotional cost of doing so. Climate grief is real and ever-present among the students she knows, she says. “It identifies an existential sadness people feel,” she says. “We see students leave the Environmental Studies major because they don’t want to be experiencing these feelings every day.”

On a larger scale, studies show that anxiety about the future is rampant among young people today. A 2017 report by the American Psychological Association said that, alongside the immediate psychological impacts of climate-related disruption due to storms and other threats, “gradual, long-term changes in climate can also surface a number of different emotions, including fear, anger, feelings of powerlessness, or exhaustion.”

Delia has learned that it helps not to take on the burdens alone. At Oberlin, she has become part the school’s branch (called a hub) of the nationwide Sunrise Movement, which advocates and demonstrates for initiatives (including the Green New Deal) to battle climate change and other ecological threats.

A big part of the Oberlin hub’s goal, she said, is to break out of the college “bubble” and work closely with Ohio’s Senator Sherrod Brown, other elected officials, and—crucially—workers who may be suspicious of what such efforts will mean for their jobs. “We have to connect with the unions,” Delia says, “and discuss the safe, well-paying jobs that will be available to them with the development of new technologies through green initiatives.”

In addition, on a college-wide and personal level, Delia says, “We have to work to give support to those who most need it.” One way Oberlin students have done this is to successfully advocate for the establishment of a human-resources position at the school’s Sunshine hub. Its purpose is to help students address their emotional needs.

Other, and timeless, ways of surviving include bonding with other students without talking about the issues at hand. “If you always look directly at the sadness you feel,” she says, “you won’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. But you also can’t succumb to a feeling of guilt if you’re not always looking at it directly.”

Simply taking a break, turning one’s brain off for a little while with TV or another distraction, can make all the difference. “To keep yourself from burning out,” Delia says, “sometimes you just need an hour to be mindless.”

(Among her current escapes—and mine—is “The Good Place,” a TV show with the encouraging belief that people are essentially good, and can change their behavior to improve.)

Yet despite all the challenges they face—both without and within—Delia and so many others remain steadfast in their desire to stay on the path they’ve chosen, to bring about essential change. “I can’t imagine not working together with others towards our common goals,” she says. “They’re too important.”

For the rest of us, those are heartening words, providing strength and determination as we confront our own climate grief.

© 2020 by Joseph Wallace

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If You Plant It

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Many years ago, as a child in Midwood, Brooklyn, I decided to set up a sunflower-seed feeder (in reality just a tin-foil tray hanging on our magnolia tree) in our postage-stamp backyard. Every day after school I’d check to see if it had attracted anything beyond the usual sparrows, House Finches, and Grackles.

Joe's childhood backyard bird list
Joe’s childhood backyard bird list.
Photo: Joe Wallace.

I didn’t hold out much hope—after all, ours was just a tiny patch of green in an enormous city—but, amazingly, it worked.Soon less familiar birds began showing up in the feeder and surrounding bushes, including some my Peterson informed me didn’t even eat seeds. One day it might be an American Redstart fluttering amid the magnolia leaves, the next a Brown Thrasher staring at me from the lilac. A Black-throated Blue Warbler, a Wood Thrush, a pair of Baltimore Orioles.

Watching these unexpected visitors, I began to see something about migration that I’d never truly understood before. I knew that the passage of birds each spring was like a great river flowing overhead…a river I couldn’t really see or hear. Yet somehow the birds streaming past could see me, or at least my yard—even my homemade feeder. They’d noticed.

This precious memory came rushing back to me this past weekend, as my wife and I walked over the top of the mostly shorn grassland hill in Croton Point Park. (It’s undergoing an important restoration to eradicate encroaching invasives and replace them with native grasses and other bird-and pollinator- friendly native vegetation.)

This site didn’t always host 100 acres of grassland, of course. Not that long ago it was a toxic landfill, a Superfund site that took years and countless millions of dollars to clean up. Now capped, it has been transformed into the kind of habitat that has long been under intense pressure across the country. (It’s easy to see how grasslands are good candidates for tilled fields, monoculture crops, harsh fertilizers and pesticides. As a result, this kind of native habitat has vanished in many areas and is besieged in most others.)

There’s plenty of green in Westchester…but there aren’t many grasslands, wild meadows, or unmowed fields. Migrating birds that rely on such specialized ecosystems have long since kept on flying as they search for the habitat they need. And yet they were keeping an eye out, ready to notice if anything changed and to take advantage of it.

Eastern Meadowlark.
Photo: Frank Shufelt.

It didn’t take long. Nearly as soon as the dump was capped and grasses were planted on the hill, the grassland birds began to appear…some only rarely seen in Westchester County for many years. On our recent walk there, we spotted at least seven Eastern Meadowlarks, their odd, stuttering flight making them easy to identify even before we raised our binoculars. A group of five Horned Larks foraged across the newly turned earth. A flock of American Pipits pinwheeled past, letting loose with their sweet flight notes.

In spring and summer, the hill echoes with the bubbling song of nesting Bobolinks and the insect-like buzz of Grasshopper Sparrows. And all seasons bring an array of raptors that have noticed the increase in prey species: American Kestrels, Red-shouldered and Cooper’s Hawks, Northern Harriers and others. (Some years have even seen Short-eared Owls, a diurnal hunter that could be seen quartering the hilltop on silent wings.)

The connection between this expansive grassland and my tiny Brooklyn yard made me think about something else: Not every important environmental effort needs to be on a scale as grand as the reclamation of the Croton Point grassland. Even little actions can have an outsize impact, just as my filling a tinfoil tray with seed did at a time and place where few people set up bird feeders.

Learn more about Pollinator Pathways: http://www.pollinatorpathway.com/

Here’s one example: We can replace the non-native plants that fill most of our gardens (and are useless as food sources to most birds and insects) with native species. Even a small patch, winterberry instead of flame (aka burning) bush, butterfly weed in place of tulips, can make a real difference. (More on the growing “Pollinator Pathway” movement, which spearheads such efforts, can be found in this article from Teatown Reservation and many other online sources: https://www.teatown.org/pollinator-pathways/.

Whether on Croton Point or in our own backyards, we can all use the heartening reminder: If you plant it, if you provide that food, safety, welcome, the birds will come. As they pass by in that great river every spring and fall, they’re always keeping an eye out, and they’ll notice.

I’m certain of this, because the beautiful, unexpected visitors to my Brooklyn backyard so many years ago showed me.

Joe Wallace

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Get Climate Smart This Fall

“We’re not waiting for Washington” is the tagline of the film Paris to Pittsburgh which looks at the growing responses of cities and states to climate change across the United States. Regardless of the current political troubles in Washington, we’re not waiting either at Saw Mill River Audubon.

This fall, we are offering two different important climate change events, in partnership with six other area Audubon chapters, the Federated Conservationists of Westchester County and other partners. Our thanks especially to SMRA Vice President Tom Ruth for coordinating our 2019 climate change outreach and to Audubon New York for grant support.

click image above for more information and reservations

Climate change can seem too complex and overwhelming, leaving us feeling powerless and discouraged. But we’re not powerless and we’re not discouraged.

Here are two antidotes we are offering this fall. First is a free screening of Paris to Pittsburgh, Wednesday, September 25, 6:30 pm for a reception and 7:00 pm film start, held at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center. Come get encouraged and inspired by how people like us are taking action to combat climate change. We thank the Town of New Castle for providing this wonderful venue and Films on Purpose for co-sponsoring and arranging a brief panel discussion after the film about what’s being done locally.

click image above for more information and reservations

Second is a “Climate Change Boot Camp,” the morning of Saturday, October 26 at the Westchester County Center. Get up to speed about what climate change effects to expect here in the lower Hudson Valley and hear more about state, county, and local actions to prepare for climate change and help mitigate it. Event support from Audubon New York. Venue provided with assistance from the Westchester County Executive’s Office for Energy Conservation and Sustainability.

Click the event images above for more details and registration for either event. Come join us for these climate change events this fall to get climate smart and find out how you can take action with us to make a difference.
Valerie Lyle, President
Saw Mill River Audubon

See also Audubon New York’s response below
on recent New York State climate change legislation:
ny.audubon.org/news/new-york-passes-strongest-climate-act-nation

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How eBirding is helping Grasshopper Sparrows at Croton Point

An April 2016 article in the journal Biological Conservation considered how birding data collected in eBird can be a valuable tool in the conservation of birds and their habitats. One example cited is the effort by Saw Mill River Audubon at Croton Point Park to encourage the nesting of grassland species, including Grasshopper Sparrows. More

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New York Audubon Council Update

SMRA President Valerie Lyle and Board member Richard Saravay participated in the semi-annual meeting of the New York Audubon Council in October. At this gathering of New York Audubon chapters, two important issues, each with a specific relationship to climate change and carbon emissions, were discussed.

Clean energy using off shore wind power is in the early planning stage on a site proposed about 11 miles off the coast of southern Long Island. Producing energy with little carbon emission is clearly good, but the proposed development of about 175 rotating wind turbines more than 400 feet tall poses a threat to migrating birds as reported in earlier wind turbine projects on land. Audubon seeks to ensure that an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), including public comments, be part of the initial steps, with a goal of highlighting bird migration pathways and, if required, seeking to relocate the development to sites which mitigate the threat.

Hudson River anchorages have been proposed to be built in the middle of the river at seven locations from Yonkers to Kingston. This proposal is intended to permit significant growth of oil transport both up and down the Hudson night and day. Locations near us would impact the Lower Hudson Important Bird Area, Bald Eagle breeding and roosting sites. Audubon New York and SMRA will provide public comments to the U.S. Coast Guard prior to the December 6th deadline highlighting the environmental threats in this proposal.
The Council’s legislative resolution passed at the fall meeting also noted the need for an EIS for the proposed anchorages.

Richard Saravay

For more about our shared advocacy efforts with Audubon New York, visit ny.audubon.org/conservation

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Bird-Safe Buildings – What Can You Do?

On a recent walk around the New York Life Insurance Building in Sleepy Hollow, I found seven carcasses of birds.

This is no anomaly: bird strikes are a major factor in declining populations. Each year in the U.S. an estimated 365 million to 988 million birds die from collisions with glass (Audubon magazine). The birds most often affected include Wood Thrush, Hermit Thrush, Painted Bunting, and hummingbirds.

Birds hit commercial buildings, houses, sliding glass doors, and bay windows: any glass surface larger than a hand, under the right lighting conditions, because windows reflecting the surrounding habitat may look like a flight route to a bird.

What can be done about this problem?

  • Buy bird-safe window materials. American Bird Conservancy rates certain products as “Effective” and “Highly Effective” in preventing collisions.
  • Currently there are three commercial products rated as Highly Effective and six as Effective; all are intended for application on existing windows.
  • If you work in companies that have large glass expanses, discuss with your building engineering department the value of installing bird-safe modifications to windows.
  • Lobby for tax breaks for companies that are willing to install new bird-friendly windows or apply bird-friendly tape, especially if they have multiple large buildings.
  • Apply household glue to outside windows and add sparkles in wavy lines less than 6 inches apart.

Valerie Heemstra
To find out more, visit www.abcbirds.org/program/glass-collisions

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