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July 28, 2005 - A tale of sadnessThe Suffolk Times • July 28, 2005 tale of sadness hung grow. Then the unexpected happened. One of the two young was seen on the ground below the nest, and here is where I came in. My friend called to tell of the disaste and asked if I could give him some ad- vice on what to do. We've put young os. preys back in their nests when they've been found tangled in monofilarrient fish line or found out of the nest for some other reason. I explained it was really quite simple, but now my wife says no more climbing ladders — leave it to the younger ones to do the climb- ing — and so I went on to tell him to cover the bird in a towel or something so it would stay calm as the climber went up to the nest and then just put Ithe bird back in. Now all my friend had FOCUS ON NATURE by Paul Stoutenburgh IFYOU CAN'T STAND a tittle saaness, then this is not for you. All is not the way we would like to have it in the na ural world. Just recently a good friend of mine called and said one of his young ospreys was on the ground. He and his wife had watched this family of ospreys through a scope in an upstairs window from the day they first arrived in March. I'm sure many of you have done the same thing in one way or another. Up to a day ago, it had been a delightful pastime to peak into the private lives of this ncnrev family and watch Suffolk Times photo by Paul Stoutenburgh & survival Suffolk Times photo by Joe Dlhopolsky, courtesy of RFMRP to do was find someone with a sturdy extension ladder and a will to climb. Within a few hours I received a call from Richard to say they had followed my suggestions and had successfully put the young osprey back in the nest, but in so doing had scared the other young osprey, which flew away to a nearby tree. Ev- erything looked like luck had been on the young osprey's side; soon it looked like things would go back to nor- al. Not so, and here comes he hard part to understand. It is not that unusual in the amily of hawks for a larger and stronger young to become very aggressive and often viciously attack he weaker one, which this one began o do once he flew back to the nest. The )arents flew in and just sat nearby and vatched big brother or sister literally ieck away at the weakened young os- irey until it killed it. At no time did the parents stop, or even make any attempt o stop, the harassment. This is hard for us humans to un- lerstand. Could it be that the parents ound fish scarce and there wasn't nough food for both young, and the lder, stronger sibling solved the prob- ;m by pushing the weaker one out f the nest? This might have been the :ason in the beginning that the weaker Trey was found on the around be- Sentiments play no part in the world where only the strong and the healthy survive. low the nest. Remember, there was no attempt by either parent to stop the stronger one's actions. The weaker os- prey couldn't fly to get away so it had to suffer the consequences. Perhaps the bigger osprey had hatched fast, mak- ing it stronger and more aggressive and thus able to take more of the food, and the one that didn't live had just never been able to keep up. Once again, I have to repeat that this action is quite normal in the hawk fam- ily. It helps guarantee that at least one . strong, healthy hawk will survive. In our world, we would have tried to help the weaker one, but not so in the natural world, where survival is all that counts. Sentiments play no part in the hard -to- realize world where only the strong and the healthy survive. It's like. so many telephone calls I get from very concerned and thought- ful people who ask what to do with a baby bird that's lost its mother et tell them to leave it alone and the mother will find it, and if she doesn't, that's nature's way of weeding out the weak, the slow�tthhe unqualified. It sounds e to us, but it's been worg since time began. The next heartbreak is about a baby seal. I got a call from Linda that there was a baby seal on the beach and would I like to see it. Well, that surely was something we would like to see, fo baby seals are not usually born this far south. Their nursery and home is far- ther north along the rocky coast where the water is colder and the environ- ment provides better protection than our hot, sandy beaches. In no time Barbara and I were off to the appointed location, which was on the beach west of 'New Suffolk. This was going to be a first for us, for the only seals we had ever seen this far up in the bay were spotted during the win- ter, when they would be seen on a rock off New Suffolk proper. . When we got to the location, Bar- bara met some friends who told us it was farther up the beach, so I drove with one of the men to the spot farther :o the west while Barbara walked the )each with her friends. When we got :here, sorrow filled the air. A small group of people huddled over a dead baby seal that still had its placenta loosely wrapped around it. We felt awful to see this dead pup in front of us. As we all looked on in sadness, the waves gently rocked the little body back and forth, almost as if it were trying to revive it. But then there I go, trying to attach human feelings to the animal world. They don't belong there, I know, but it's hard to separate our feelings. Barbara had her cell phone and for 20 minutes tried to reach the research team at Atlantis in Riverhead, where we knew the people would be inter- ested in picking up this baby seal for study. They are interested in live or dead seals in our area, as they all, alive or dead, give researchers data to build their studies on. None of our telephone numbers worked, so we did the next best thing — we took the seal to Riv- erhead.They were apologetic about their tedious telephone answering system but glad to have the seal to exam- ine. We found out that the best thing to do if you find a seal or turtle anywhere along our beaches is to call their hotline at (631) 3 59 -9829. They are profes- sionals and know how to handle such situations. ey told us they had recovered two live seal pups born this season on Long Island. These recoveries are the first confirmed documentation of "pup- ping" on the island; one was found at Smith Point County Park on the south shore and the other one was farther west. Both pups are both doing well at the center. The first pup was recovered on May 28 with the umbilical cord still . attached. They figured it was just seven days old. All at the research complex in Riverhead are looking forward to soon releasing the pups back into their natu- ral environment. Kimberly Durham, the Rescue Program director in Riverhead, said we could see a video of the first pup if we logged onto their website at www. riverheadfoundation.org. Hopefully the video of this live pup will make us all feel better after having read about some of the heartbreak we experi- enced this week.