HomeMy WebLinkAboutApril 26, 1979 - Natural DisasterStoutenburgh Society has dulled many of us so we
now take for granted the daily slaughter
of wildlife on our highways. It's almost like
the human accident rate we take as part
of living in today's modern world. There's
not a day goes by that some rabbit,
squirrel, raccoon, opossurn, fox or turtle, snake
or bird is not flattened on-man's highways.
Yet this is only one facet of the problem
the natural world faces in the ever-
expanding technological system we
produce. My first realization of other disasters
was an electrocuted osprey I found that
had taken its early morning meal of
freshly- caught menhaden to the top of a
telephone pole to eat. What happened was that the
wet feet and fish had clasped onto one of the
hot electrical wires and, in landing its
great wing, also wet from the dive in the water
to capture its meal, had touched the other
high tension wire. The circuit was completed
for its execution.—When we found the great
bird beneath the pole, I could plainly see
the burnt marks on its feet. And alongside it
lay the freshly caught
menhaden. Another Osprey
Saved Just a few years ago. right in
Mattituck, an osprey accident occurred that could
have led to another_ fatality of this
endangered species. had it 001 been for fast action of
a spirited local citizen. A young bo\ had
been flying a kite, a good healthy sport for
a young boy to be doing. The problem
came when he used his dad's monofilament
fish line for kite cord. This was very thin
and transparent and so when the osprey,
intent on fishing, flew into the area it came
in contact with the invisible line. Round
and round it tumbled as it caught deeper
and deeper in the line until it finally landed in
the water. It surely would have drowned,
but the quick action of the man, rowing out
and scooping it up, saved its life. I ,vas
alerted and went down to see if I could help.
Well, you've never seen a more sorry sight.
With I much patience and care the line had
been taken off and the bird put on the roof of
the house to dry. Thank goodness it
survived and took off. The.nice part of this situation
is that it was one of the pair that nested
in Husings Pond north of the Mattituck
Yacht Club and I am happy to report the birds
are it back there again this
year. Not all stories of man's gadgetry and
our technology wind up so well. A few years
ago, while driving to school Greenport,
I noticed what appeared to be a kite caught
in a high tension wire running north of Route
25 by Mil Creek bridge. Each day it
bugged 110,me as I drove by, for it just didn't look like
a kite, and besides, who would be flying a
kite out over the marsh in the
winter? The ne4,day I brought my
binoculars along to check it out and to my horror it
was a great blue heron entangled in the
wire! How it ever got there we'll never know
for jf. the wires are far apart and the bird
seemed pinned to just one. Of course it was dead
and all winter it hung as a grim reminder of
how the innocent fall prey to the progress
of man. It's like the old story goes, if you
gain on one end you on the
other. Gull: Encounter ?
roblems Our good friend the gull is having all
sorts of problems with his job of scavenging in
our advanced world. If it's not dying
from ingesting some plastics or poison, it's
being caught in some form or another of
plastic throwaways. You can see them up at
the dump almost any time. Usually the
most obvious is the plastic six-pack holder. It
gets a-caught around the necit, bill or leg of
the bird and in time semi-strangulates it,
which eventually leads to a slow death by
star- vation. These freak happenings
are becoming so common that again W2.I'
e starting to be led to the situation of
just shrugging our shoulders and passing it
by, just as we do the flattened rabbit or turtle
on our highway. We've become insenstive
to such
things.Many of the problens'
canbe eliminated. For instance. the flip top on the
coke or beer can has caused many.a. fish's
death, in some secluded spot after finding
one of these glittering tops and taking it
for food. After all, don't we catch fish
on bright shiny lures? The single act of
not discarding
the top overboard would solve the problem
and that fish might just
be on your line instead. Another
example whereckve could have prevented an accident from happening was
a few weeks ago when I was
called to the Island's End Golf Course
in Greenport, where an owl was reported crippled. I
im- mediately went up to see what was
going on and drove out to where the
accident oc- curred. Sure enough there _was the
owl, a beautiful big barn owl, semi-crippled
on the green. It had gotten caught in
an abandoned kite cord. Someone had been flying
a kite,
the kite went down
and the person aban- doned it. Kite Line
Traps Owl • The owl, flying low during the night in
search of food, ran in: o it and was trapped. In
this case, had the p,Tson taken
up the old kite line this would
never have happened. The crippled bird, with
its one wing damaged, could barely fly and therefore I
gave it a 40-60 chance of
survival. Whether it will hold out during its recuperation
period, we'll never know. But
birds need food and owls have to fly to
feed. We could go on and on about the
problems of the natural world and today's society, but
I will bother you with only one more tale of
woe. One we'd never think of,
but one that shows everything, from the smallest to
the
largest of God's creatures, is involved in
this plight. I was alerted that a
whale had come ashore over in Westhampton. One had
come ashore only a few months ago and I was unable to
get over to see it, so I didn't
want to miss this opportunity to see
one of these great mammals of the sea.
Sure enough, there was a forty-foot whale. wallowing
in the surf, a great crowd around_ it
and man with his great machines attached to its tail
trying to pull it up out of the water. Nothing
worked. It was much too big. Inch
and a half nylon line snapped like a
rubber band. This is a rather rare whale
today, and what made it especially sad and even
more rare was that it was pregnant. This
was the great sperm whale of Moby Dick
fame. The sperm whale probably did more to start
this nation off
in the world of trade than almost any
other endeavor. The usual whale seen along our shore
is the right whale, which is a filter feeder.
but the sperm whale is a flesh cater with
geeat teeth it uses in battle with ilie
great squids and oetupuses of the deep. What had hap-
pened to this whale was that it
had
gotten a half-inch yellow
plastic line tangled
its lower jaw. It could not
dislodge it and therefore slow
death from starvation came to
it and its baby. Sele-ritists-
S:axiv Carcass A crew of
scientists front Yale, Southampton and other colleges
were busy studying it, measuring it and dissecting it. The
great hulk was being put to
use. When I arrived they had already removed the
almost full-grown tv.,eive-foot baby. It
lay high up on the beach. coverad with
blankets like sortie body at a roadside accident. It
was sad, yet it was a rere opportunit.,
for
study :in these days of a diminishing whale population.
The loss of the whale to some-plastic rope was bad
enough. but to lc:se a baby was too
much. The ride home was quiet as
we
all pondered the future fate of the natural
vorld. Al one time death came by natural means.
today there is the added problem of
trying to cope with the many intrusions
man has made on their world. Perhaps there is
something we can all do about it.
though. to ease the pressure We must become
aware and keep a sharp lookout for
the possible problem areas and knowing them and what
our wildlife is up
against. we must make
the corrections for their
survival enin g
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