slow-up

After a couple of good warbler days, things slowed up a bit -- perhaps affected by the fog that rolled in last night. I joined Eileen Schwinn and a group from Quogue at the Quogue Wildlife Refuge this morning for a pleasant foggy morning. Not quite birdless -- there were singing Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Eastern Towhees, Baltimore Orioles, House Wren, Common Yellowthroat, Pine Warbler and a few other warblers heard off in the misty distance. A Ruby-crowned Kinglet was present and there were at least three species of swallows -- Barn, Tree and Rough-winged -- over the pond. Back in East Quogue, there was a Black-throated Green Warbler, a Yellow and a Northern Parula but nothing like yesterday's level of activity.

"A View From Lazy Point" by Carl Safina, one of Eastern Long Island's best writers on natural history, biology and environment, has just won the Orion Magazine award for the best book of the year that addresses the relationship between humanity and nature. It deserves it! Lazy Point, if you didn't know, is just east of Amagansett between Napeague Harbor and Napeague Bay. Carl Safina, if you didn't know, is a biologist and environmentalist with a popular and poetic touch in his writings about the natural world and the human impact thereof.

Eric Salzman