This Morning’s Bulletin — 1.10.14

January 10, 2014January 13, 2014 East End Beacon 0 Comments

Sadie the Rag Tag Swan with her new friend Henry J. Heron | Courtesy Rick Kedenburg

Good morning!

The Tale of Sadie the Rag Tag Swan of Peconic continued on Thursday, after birders Rick and Linda Kedenburg found the swan stuck to the ice outside Goldsmith Inlet. The two experienced wildlife rehabilitators took the swan home Wednesday to keep it warm through the deep-frozen night. They didn’t think it would live to morning. When it did, they spent Thursday looking for an open body of water to return the swan to the sea. But both Goldsmith Inlet and Richmond Creek in Southold were still frozen over, and they didn’t want to release the swan, which they believe is a “hatchling year bird” born in 2013, in an area it was unfamiliar with.

“It’s living in a diorama of potted plants, two big troughs of water, food caches and its new friend, Henry J Heron, our life size plastic Great Blue Heron from our fish pool,” said Mr. Kedenburg. He’s hoping they’ll release the bird, whom they’ve named Sadie the Rag Tag Sawn, as soon as the waterways begin to thaw.

• East Hampton paddleboarder Evelyn O’Doherty lets out secrets to stand-up paddleboarding along the ocean shore from Ditch Plains to Montauk in this article published yesterday on paddleboarding website SUP Connect. The scenic highlights of the eight-mile round trip journey are worth a read.

• Stony Brook Southampton professor Chris Gobler and his graduate students and colleagues published a paper on Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, documenting the dangerous effect of the combination of low ocean oxygen levels and acidification on hard clams and bay scallops, which appear to have a negative synergistic effect, meaning the combination of both factors is worse than either factor taken by itself.

“Low oxygen zones in coastal and open ocean ecosystems have expanded in recent decades, a trend that will accelerate with climatic warming,” said Dr. Gobler of his study. “There is growing recognition that low oxygen regions of the ocean are also acidified, a condition that will intensify with rising levels of atmospheric CO2 due to the burning of fossil fuels causing ocean acidification. Hence, the low oxygen, low pH conditions used in this study will be increasingly common in the World’s Oceans in the future.”

The paper is available online here.

• Tonight brings several music, film and theater offerings to the East End. Riverhead High School’s Blue Masques will perform a live radio play of “It’s a Wonderful Life” for three weekend performances beginning tonight at 7 p.m. Nancy Atlas continues her Fireside Sessions at Bay Street Theatre with guest Andy Aledort at 8 p.m.. Northeast Stage will hold a Masquerade Fundraiser at Brecknock Hall in Greenport beginning at 6:30 p.m. “White Reindeer,” the first film the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center’s winter film series, will be screened several times over the weekend, beginning with a 7:30 p.m. show tonight. For more information on these and other events on the East End this weekend, visit The Beacon’s event calendar here.