gloomy morning with flowers

It was a gloomy, overcast, foggy morning. With all the reports about the health of the western half of Shinnecock Bay, I was rather alarmed to see green algae and suspicious-looking white foam in the pond this morning. However on looking back through old records, I see that both the algae and the foam have appeared every year -- usually around the time (or slightly thereafter) of the Pitch Pine pollen. The tide was low but coming in fast and there were no birds in the pond but, curiously, a couple of thin whistles in my ear, turned out to be a pair of Cedar Waxwings sitting right over my head on a bare branch. Cedar Waxwings are notable for their late nesting habits but perhaps, like everything else this year, they are getting an early start. A flying apparition appearing overhead out of the mist and then disappearing back into the miasma was an unlikely Great Blue Heron -- unlikely for this time of year when most of the local Great Blues have gone north to breed.

On an incoming tide, the open area in the middle of the marsh takes longer to fill up than the pond. Thanks to Hurricane Irene (or subsequent high tides), I can now walk a wooden plank that takes me right to the edge of the open water and mud flats, a perch from which I can look for those otherwise well-hidden marsh birds. Straining to see what I could see, I was moving right to the edge of the plank when it tipped up and I stumbled backwards into the marsh grass. The noise and sudden movement kicked up a Green Heron, previously invisible in the grass.

I was worried that Hurricane Irene, which caused so much damage near the shore, had obliterated our small stand of Starflower so I was happy to see a few of the seven-pointed stars emerging from the grass. The big floral show though is the one currently being staged by the Big Leaf Magnolias. My neighbor calls it the Jurassic Park tree and in a way she's right. Magnolias are an ancient type of flowering plants; ancestor magnolias have been dated back as far as 95 million years (as far as I know, only the Gingko is older and it's not native). When magnolias appeared on the scene, there were no bees and to this day their flowers, which lack recognizable sepals or petals, are pollinated by beetles. Magnolia macrophylla is said to have the largest leaf and the largest flower of any North American plant -- big, white, floppy inflorescences lighting up the gloom. This plant is described as rare and even endangered in much of its southern range but it is doing just fine in a light woodland just off our backyard with a whole thicket of self-sprouting and flowering trees (see below).


Eric Salzman