SOFO Silver

Saturday night was the 25th anniversary celebration for SOFO, otherwise known as the South Fork Natural History Museum. It was a lively pleasant event, appropriately marked by the low flights of the SOFO Purple Martin colony weaving in and out among the guests. The high point for me was during the presentation of the awards which went to Michael Gerrard, an environmental lawyer, Eric Goode, the founder of the Turtle Conservancy, and the late Peter Matthiesen, the great writer and environmentalist (and Zen Buddhist) from Sagaonack who died in April. The awards took place in the open in the museum's backyard and, as SOFO founder Andy Sabin was introducing Peter's son Alex to receive the award, a gorgeous rainbow appeared in the sky over the proceedings! This rainbow remained in view during this phase of the presentations and then disappeared. I don't want to make too much of this but it certainly appeared as though nature (or, if you prefer, the heavens) were acknowledging one of her favorite sons!

Out on the creek yesterday morning: Black-crowned Night Heron, Green Heron, Great Blue Herons, many Great Egrets, Common and Least Terns, Osprey, noisy Willets. The marsh edges were almost empty of blackbirds with only Crows left to uphold the banner of blackness. It was actually rather eerie. Except for the occasional twitter or chirp of swallows and martins, the whistles, konk-ker-ees, chucks and screeches of the Redwings and Grackles -- so dominant all spring and summer -- were silenced in a matter of a day or two.

This morning (Monday), many of the blackbirds were gathered at the head of the marsh in the dead trees killed by Sandy. I suspect that this is the beginning of the gatherings that will create the great fall flocks of these birds.

Eric Salzman