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April 24 1997 - Nature's Scents and Sensibility6A • The Suffolk Times • April 24, 1997 Nature's Scents and Sensibility After searching the records from Orient to Albany last week for information on beavers here on Long Island, I got a call from a neighbor just up the lane about his boyhood memories of a beaver, when one was found out on Nassau Point in FOCUS the early '30s. It proved to be a big Qa attraction, for Bill remembered the Nature many cars that flocked with their by ftW curious spectators StO11tADbMh to the home of Pete Wojenski on the North Road to see his unusual find. Speculation was that it came from a game preserve over on the south shore, but this could not be con- firmed. It just goes to show how much untapped information there is out there and a great deal of it is in our own backyards. While we're on the subject of animals I received a call from Carol Taylor of Orient, who said she saw a weasel running across her lawn in hot pursuit of a small rodent that she thought might have been a vole. She had the right description, tannish brown above and light colored underneath, about the size of a big rat but with a much more dignified look. Weasels have that inquisitive face with their big eyes and alert ears. They are ferocious hunters and often tackle foes much larger than them- selves. Many a chicken owner can vouch for this. Thirty or 40 years ago weasels were much more common than they are now. The last one I remember seeing was about 10 years ago killed on the road just west of Moores Woods in Greenport. I'm sure they are still there in those magnificent wet woods, for it's their ideal habitat. Weasel After a Meal Years ago a group of us always went birding over at North Sea on the south shore during the spring migration of war- blers. There was a spot that never disap- pointed us. Fifteen or 20 different warblers would be seen on those memorable days. I mention this because on just such an out- ing I had the best view of a weasel in its aggressive pursuit of a meal. What attract- ed us to this ever - moving little predator was the clamor of birds ahead of us. Upon investigating we found robins, thrushes, catbirds, red - wings, towhees, blue jays and five or six kinds of spring warblers all call- ing and darting in and out of the bushes. We knew there was something going on. For a time we couldn't see what was mak- ing all the commotion. Then we saw it it was a weasel climbing a tree toward a catbird's nest. Catbirds don't nest very high and so somehow the weasel found out where the nest was and thought he'd investigate. In the meantime the alarm went out and every bird in the vicinity came to lend their voice of alarm and harass the intruder. Usually I try to let things take their own course in the natural world but the plight of the catbird and others gave us cause to chase the weasel away and thereby quiet the mob. I'm sure as soon as we passed, he was back to claim his prize, hecklers or not. We humans have lost much of our smelling senses; like so many things in this evolutionary world of ours, things not used will gradually be discarded or abandoned. It's part of the corrective process. If the sense of smell is important in finding food or a mate then the animal or fish or insect that uses this sense will improve it by its continual successful use. So it probably was that the weasel sniffed the nest of the catbird and merely followed his nose to what he thought would be his next meal. Reminds me of years ago when John Cryan stopped by to ask if he could leave a moth cage in our woods. He was con- cerned about luna moths, those glorious, big, light -green moths with graceful, long, almost tail -like wings that took such a beating after years of DDT spraying. His method of testing for their comeback was to put a small cage with a female luna moth in it and leave it overnight in hopes it would attract a male. Seems that the male's scent glands can pick up the odor of a female from over a mile away and then he will fly to her. Well, true to nature's hibernate during the winter but are more or less alive clustered inside the hive to keep warm. Here they eat their stored honey. This cluster is continually shifting so that all have their turn on the outside of the cluster to face the cold. It was a mild winter for the bees so they moved about inside the hive more than usual and there- fore burned up more energy, which required more food. Because of the mild winter their food supply was heavily drawn upon. Some- times when there's much activity and the food supply is used up, the bees lit- erally starve and the hive is lost. To over- come this the bees' food supply can be supplemented by given them sugar water. When it comes to using the sense of smell, I think some of our fish take the prize. Take, for in- stance, the common eel or the alewives that find their way up our freshwater riverlets here on Long Island. The most famous is the Peconic River that each spring, when the shadblow blossoms, lures the bunker -like fish, the alewives, to their ancestral freshwater ponds where they'll spawn and then return once again to their saltwater home. They find their homeland by scent. Our common eel also uses its sense of smell to find the freshwater riverlets and the Peconic River for their return but this time it's in a reverse order. Their birthplace is in the `flowers Sargasso Sea, south of Bermuda, where were the adult female designed eels go to spawn and then die. The With eggs then drift to wonderful the top warm waters of the Gulf fragrances, and tiny transpar- ent eels emerge. In time these juvenile for us.' eels (elvers) some- how, through their scent glands, find their way back to the original ancestral waters. I've seen these now -dark juvenile eels that have grown to two to three inches working their way up the slime of the spill- way just inside the park area in Riverhead. Once up the spillway they mature in fresh water until the time comes for them to move to the next stage of growth in our bays and creeks with a vastly different salinity. After years of wandering and growing in these brackish waters, the females then return to the Sargasso Sea to start the process of rebirth all over again. Scent is what draws them to their destina- tions. And it is the sense of smell that directs these strange and almost impossible jour- neys each year. So when you sense the fra- grance of lilacs this spring or the first delightful smell of a rose, remember we, too, in our ancient past had the ability to sniff the air, not for the fragrance of a rose, but for the essence of life and its various meanings. Suffolk Times photo by Paul Stoutenburgh LUNA MOTH —These large, handsome, light- green - colored moths, along with untold other species of insects, were almost exterminated by the early widespread use of DDT. Today they are slowly moving back into our East End. i w69w ■ wwiM nw..IL. YWIL iia MitY1M 75 Years Ago April 21, 1922 War Memorial Unveiled: The large, rough granite monument, bearing a bronze plate, that has been erected at Southold by citizens as a memorial to the Southold men who fought in the World War, was unveiled Saturday with appro- priate ceremonies. The memorial stands on the high ground in front of the Southold Savings Bank. Want Column: For sale — Ford Touring Car, good run- ning order, three new tires. $90. 50 Years Ago April 25, 1947 Chamber Plans Information Center: At the monthly meeting of the Greenport Chamber of Commerce it was voted to accept the recommendation made by the public- ity committee for a Chamber of Commerce headquarters. According to the committee's plans, a small portable build- ing, suitable for the use of the Chamber as an information center, will be erected at the municipal parking site on Main Street. The approximate cost of such a building is estimated at $500. Classified Ad: Because I am moving I have no further use for one Kalamazoo range, Imperator model, grey enamel finish with bright top, with Quaker oil bumers and hot water heating coil. Also grey enamel floor sheet, price $75. One ways, the next morning we found a moth clinging to the cage that held the female, proving that after 20 years of no DDT the luna moths were slowly but surely reestab- lishing themselves once again here on the East End. Flowers Are for Insects Flowers, of course, were designed with wonderful fragrances, but not for us. Their fragrance was designed to lure insects. They get the reward of nectar and pollen and in so doing pollinate the flowers as they move about. Already my bees are car- rying bright orange - yellow baskets of pollen back to the hive. I stood' over the hive the other day when it was warm and watched them fly in carrying this precious food supply. As you probably know, bees do not space heater, circulator type, to burn coal, large size, to heat three rooms, price $25. One secondhand violin, would be right for anyone taking lessons, price $15. One secondhand mandolin, not so good, price $10. 25 Years Ago April 27, 1972 Pair Trains for Olympics: Joe Townsend Jr. of Greenport and Dick Curtis of Canaan, Conn., are training in Greenport for the Olympics. Their event is pair without coxswain rowing. Joe was captain of the Boston University crew in 1967 and Dick was co- captain in '69. They rowed in the same eight -man shell there in 1967 which was seeded third in the east. The Olympic trials this year will be July 21- 24 in Kent, Conn. Teachers Forgo Raise: Southold School teachers made educational history at the school district's budget hear- ing Tuesday night when they offered to swap salary raises for an educational development fund. The suggestion, contained in an open letter read to 500 or more residents gathered for what was expected to be a fairly controversial hearing on increased budget costs, won them 500 new friends. "We want to clear the air of contention over teachers' salaries in order to focus on the larger issues facing the direc- tion of the school," the president of the Southold Faculty Association, Art Wilks, read to the audience.