Abundant Ospreys on Long Island, Thank You Dennis!

Hello my little birding friends! Hope you are all well and enjoying nature. As I write this, it is spring, and most of the summer birds are here. The forsythias, daffodils, crocuses, and pink flowering trees are blooming. I love spring as it brings color and a smile to my face as everything is coming alive! I’m sorry to see the colorful Winter ducks leave though. But they’ll be back next winter. I remember as a little girl, walking down the street to Annie Meyer’s house to get pansies. She had a half acre and grew them in her back yard. My mom would bring my sister and me and the wagon down to her house to buy them. My mom lined our very long side walk to the front door with them. There were so many colors and they looked beautiful. To this day I always plant pansies in the spring.

We did a bird walk on April 5th to the Coast Guard Station and the Nature Center on Ocean Parkway. We saw 29 species of birds. A female Harlequin Duck, scoters, a Red Breasted Nut Hatch, a Coopers Hawk, Yellow Rumped Warbler, Eastern Phoebe, Golden Crowned Kinglet, Brant, Oyster Catchers, Eastern Meadow Lark, Northern Gannets, Ospreys and the usual everyday birds. We also saw some seals but no Snowy Owl as they have gone back up North. Thank you Jack Carlson and all who came on the walk.

I have loved birds and nature since I was a little girl. We had a half acre with woods behind our house. A few houses down were fields in which vegetables were grown. I was always asking my grandfather, who was a carpenter and lived a couple of doors down, for scraps of wood to build tree houses in the woods. To my mom’s dismay, I was always climbing the trees too. I remember the first time I saw a Baltimore Oriole nest in one of those trees. I couldn’t imagine how they made that nest. We had a long driveway and when we came home, sometimes at night, we would see quail and rabbits run away into the woods. One time my Dad pointed out a Screech Owl in a tree next to our window. Of course, as time passed, the woods turned into apartments. A horse farm that my grandfather would bring us to for a 25 cent pony ride turned into King Kullen. A big old country house turned into a restaurant, another farm turned into 7/11 and other stores, and the field that ran behind the apartments turned into Nichols Road. There were a lot of horse farms, one turning into CVS. Luckily Bayport Flower House is still there!

We will finally be having our June program at Brookside County Park. Look for the information on our news blasts. As summer comes, don’t forget to clean your bird baths and enjoy the birds! Happy birding! Jody!