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April 23, 1998 - Spring: the sweetest time of the year6A • The Suffolk Times • April 23, 1998 Spring: the sweetest time of the year I'm sitting in front of our picture win- dow looking out over our ever- green- ing pasture. So far our two cows have been able to keep up with the new growth, but as days grow longer FOCUS and the tempera- ture becomes ON more seasonal, they'll lose the NATURE battle and the pasture will by Paul become over- StoutenbuMh grown. Then, like kids at a party, the cows will eat only the sweetest and the best. Just beyond the window I've dug out a section so I can put in one of those prefabricated plastic garden ponds. It will act as a king -size bird bath. When I dug out the area there were many fine root hairs in the debris and there have been a pair of the blue jays perched on the dirt checking it over. The female seems a bit smaller than the male, who is now busy collecting the root hairs, I assume, for a nest. The female doesn't do any collecting but merely stands around as if giving instructions as to what she wants her nest to be made of. In between the male hops to the feeder and collects sunflower seeds, which he promptly flies over to the female with, and then feeds her. It's sort of like the box of candy one would bring a girl- friend. I watch where the male flies to with his beak full of building material. It's to the big evergreen out in the gar- den. I'll have to check on it later. As expected, The devilish bits of seed fall actions of the from the hanging cowbird are feeder and spill on the ground. That's So devastat- fine with me for it ing that some Provides food for the ground feed - bird species ers like the doves could face and sparrows of all extinction. sorts. The ever - present house sparrows are here along with a few white - throats that haven't left yet for their northern nesting grounds. These white - throats are coming into their prime plumage, with the whitest of white throats and head markings along with a bright yellow spot on their cheeks. They make a handsome spar- row. A new arrival from the south has just turned up at the feeder. It's the little chipping sparrow. This small, gray - breasted sparrow with the rufous cap and black eye streak will be with us throughout the summer around our homes and gar- dens. It builds its little cup nest in your rosebush or other shrubs. Unfortunately, it's often found out by public enemy No. 1, the cowbird, who deposits her egg in the chipping sparrow's nest. It then leaves the raising of the young to the chip- ping sparrow. The disturbing part comes when you find out the cow- bird's egg hatches first and therefore is the first to be fed and grows the fastest and biggest. Sorry to say, in the bird world some of our feath- ered friends aren't too bright and here's the perfect example. The mother bird does not seem to know the difference between the eggs and when the young hatches she feeds the noisiest and biggest first. Of course, the cow- bird has the jump start on all the others. It grows so large, and I really mean large, that it crowds the others out of the nest to their destruction below or it overwhelms the young by its size, caus- ing them to starve to death. These dev- ilish actions of the cowbird have become so devastating that some species of birds, it is feared, may become extinct. The little prefab pool I'm putting in under the big window will have one drawback and that is that it might attract mosquitoes. To eliminate the problem I'll have to add a few goldfish. I have a much larger cement pond down our driveway which I stock each year with goldfish to keep the mosqui- toes down. Each year I drain the pond at the end of the season and collect the the whole beach had changed. Gone was the rocky beach I remembered from last fall and in its place was a wide, smooth beach without any of the usual rocks. I couldn't believe it. I wondered if this change had occurred all along the Sound shore. While I was there I could see a few ducks diving not too far off shore. They were our red - breasted mergansers, who by now are all paired off for nesting. Soon they, too, will be leaving our waters for the cool north- ern lakes and ponds and, unlike the hooded mer- ganser, they build their nests on the ground, not in a hollow tree. They are a far - reaching duck found as far south as Florida. The only other species of duck we saw was a lone white- winged scot- er. Most of their kind should be leaving our waters, leaving no ducks but the common mallard and an occasional black duck to nest locally. Our swan, like so many others in our local creeks, has built its nest out on the marsh. It looks so stately sitting amongst all the marsh brown of winter. It is now that the male becomes quite protective and will challenge anyone and anything that comes too close to its nest. I remember years ago paddling a canoe up in the Yaphank ponds when one charged as we approached and I can assure you it didn't take long for the canoe to leave the area. Photo by Paul Stoutenburgh The cowbird deposits her speckled egg In other birds' nests, thereby shirk - Ing all responsibility for bringing up Junior. The young cowbird outgrows all the rest and often Is the only survivor. LG r7 I.rVV!'1 D14 V1% 75 Years Ago April 20, 1923 17 -year locusts on the way: Long Island locusts will stage their septendecium concert in the open fields from May until July. "The 1923 brood will return in greater hordes than ever before," said Dr. William T. Davis of the Brooklyn Entomological Society. "Long Island farmers had better raise hardy crops [and] had better hire a Pied Piper to call crows, chickens, squirrels and other animals who have locust diets to help rid them of forthcoming pests. The region to be invaded by the winged army will lie, generally, north of the main line of Long Island Railroad and south of the railroad to Eastport." Greenport sees the light: The Board of Trustees has voted to follow the lead of New York City, the Long Island Rail Road and other towns on the island and adopt Daylight Saving time as the official time of the village. Sunday morning, April 29th, is the time to set the clocks one hour ahead. 50 Years Ago April 23, 1948 Advertisement: Rose bushes for the garden. Red, white, yellow, Talisman, pink. 85 cents each. Six for $4.75. 12 for $9.25. L.J. Kalin, Greenport. Too few farmhands: Suffolk Farm Bureau officials stat- goldfish in a five- gallon plastic bucket and move them into the garage, where they won't freeze. They go into a sort of hibernation. When we got back from Florida one of the first things I checked on was the goldfish in the garage. There they were asleep in their bucket ready to be transported back in to their favorite pond. I needed a few flat stones to lay around my new king -size bird bath so we went up to the Sound to see if we could scout any, but when I got there ed that about 600 extra hands must be brought into the county in addition to colored migrants from the South to help with the 1948 harvest. The need may be filled by bringing in Jamaicans or Puerto Ricans, and the possibili- ty of securing American workers of Mexican extraction from the Southwest is being investigated. The war emer- gency farm labor program came to an end last year and the farmers, rather than the government, must pay the passage of workers brought in from the British West Indies. 25 Years Ago April 19, 1973 Shoreham nuclear plant gets AEC OK: Long Island Lighting Company has announced that the Safety and Licensing Board of the Atomic Energy Commission has authorized issuance of the construction permit required to build the utility's long - planned 820,000 kilowatt nuclear - powered electric generating plant at its Shoreham site on Long Island Sound. There were 71 days of hearings held over a period of three years, the longest proceedings for a construction permit on record before the agency. "No similar facility has received so close a scrutiny and been subjected to such a questioning," said LILCO board chairman John J. Tuohy. "We plan to begin full -scale con- struction immediately in order to meet our 1977 target date for the operation of this most - needed facility." Ambushed by a swan Just this winter while down in Florida we had stopped to watch ducks and geese being fed in a nearby pond. I was resting my elbow on the fence that sep- arated the pond from the lawn nearby when all of a sudden I got this terrible jab in my elbow. It was a swan who wanted to make sure it was noticed and wanted to be fed. Did I let out a yell! I swung around to see this huge bird with its knobbed beak standing there. I checked my arm and found the nip had broken the skin and bruised the mus- cle. Later it would turn black and blue. I only wondered what would have hap- pened if it had been some small child standing there unprotected. It surely is good to be back home. The lawn finally got raked, which reminds me: While I was raking I saw the multitude of little piles of dirt from the earthworms below. It was their waste material that had been brought to the surface and deposited there, one nature's ways of fertilizing the plant world. Perhaps we could call it "Nature's Miracle Grow." The peepers are down in the pond calling their cheery call, which tells me another part of the cycle is again working. The pussy willows have passed and are now flow- ering to catch the first flying insects to help pollinate them. It's a good time of the year.