A Hopping Town

Jackrabbit at JFK Airport by Robert Horvath

Beavers might be honored by the city seal and mosaics at Astor Place, but bunnies know where the fun is. Coney Island derives its named from konijn, the Dutch word for rabbit. It’s fitting that this energetic and fertile creature (rabbits can get pregnant while already pregnant) would define the playground of our city. Today they, and other lagomorphs (they aren’t rodents) might serve as a model for our citywide recycling plan…or maybe not.

One thing is certain, however: the Easter Bunny belongs in New York City. Not only was the East Side once significantly German (Germany is the homeland of this myth), but nobody would question the self-identity of an egg-laying bunny dude named Peter around here.

Rabbits and other hares are indigenous to New York City, but the species seems to have evolved in Asia. The earliest fossil evidence for the emerging species, dating back 55 million years, was unearthed in Mongolia.

New York City’s section of Long Island’s southern edge is still hopping with rabbits and hares, especially on Jamaica Bay. At the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge you’ll spot eastern cottontails while JFK International Airport boasts a back-tailed jackrabbit population, which escaped from a cargo hold long ago.

Eastern cottontail.

Other rabbits of the more cuddly bunny kind, and therefore far less able to adapt to the wild, are irresponsibly and inhumanely abandoned in our parks and green spaces. Please consider adopting a rescued rabbit, or supporting or volunteering for the New York City chapter of the House Rabbit Society’s Rabbit Rescue and Rehab group. As herbivores, rabbits are a great eco-pet choice, giving you a far smaller carbon footprint as well as tons of love.

Before Summer Haze, Spring Azure

When you see a Spring Azure butterfly, imagine a covetous Cleopatra.

The ancients cherished this brilliant hue of blue with a hint of green, so like the sky on a clear day.  The word azure comes to us by way of Lazheward, the Persian name for the region of Afghanistan where lapis lazuli has been mined for over 6,000 years.

The world’s first synthetic pigment may have been “Egyptian blue“, but artists from that African empire carved sacred scarabs and other symbols of royalty and eternal life from imported lapis lazuli. The stones are prominent among burial gifts. Cleopatra mesmerized Caesar and Anthony with eyes shadowed with powdered lapis lazuli.

Lapis lazuli.

What if Cleopatra, seeing this magical creature flashing the color of life and nobility in mid-air, had the vain and devious thought to capture and powder it for her adornment? Nature has an answer for such hubris! The scales of the butterfly’s wings would grind down to a translucent white glop. You see, the Spring Azure has not a bit of its namesake pigment.

The iridescent dazzle of the Spring Azure comes from nature’s nanotechnology. The Spring Azure boasts a “structural color,” meaning its wing scales have an elegant microscopic architecture that reflects very specific wavelengths of color. Textile manufacturers have already mimicked this trick to make fabrics that never fade or dull, while bankers are weighing how structural colors might make currency harder to counterfeit. And yes Cleopatra, “photonic cosmetics” is an emerging industry. The most exciting prospect, however, is a new information revolution that takes cues from nature to create transistors based on light rather than electricity.

The following video is a great introduction to this field of research:

While Spring Azures are easy to spot across a field, they’re pretty rare in the big city. Seek them in woodlands and open fields in our parks, or in gardens. Females often deposit their eggs on dogwood tree flower buds and lower to the ground in blueberry bushes and New Jersey tea. Males hang out near mud puddles and the mucky edges of stream banks and ditches. Both sexes feed on the nectar of rock cress, winter cress, dandelions, buckeyes, and violets.

If you’d like to boost your chances of spying a Spring Azure, please consider volunteering for the Butterfly Project NYC, donating to the organization, and going on field trips.

The Value of a Tree

President Theodore Roosevelt Plants a Tree. Collection of the TR Library, Harvard University.

President Theodore Roosevelt might have intuited the value of a tree, but economists must lay aside sentiment and assign a value.

Sunning a Shark Bite in NYC

Survivor. Photo by Barry Masterson of Kayak Staten Island.

Sharp-eyed Nature Calendar reader Christopher Johnson spotted this seal casually sunning its shark bite wound on rocks near Swinburne Island, in a gallery published at SILive.com (Staten Island Advance, photo by Barry Masterson, co-founder of Kayak Staten Island).

The question is whether this bite occurred in local waters or if the seal is healing up from an attack out east. Breathe a little easy, for now, says Paul Sieswerda, a shark expert and seal watching guide (and fellow Frisian). Paul has kindly written about sharks for Nature Calendar before, and was profiled in The New Yorker for his seal trips. I got to know him when I broke the story of seals returning to New York Harbor a decade earlier in the New York Times. That discovery was made by fellow kayakers (I joined for the confirming trip), who have now gotten familiar with porpoises.

It seems inevitable that larger sharks will return to our waters as the estuary grows cleaner and more bountiful. Prospects for that are good, if unnerving, with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Seascape Initiative fostering the process. Last summer a NYC beach was closed in the Rockaways after a thresher shark sighting, but sadly the specimen was found dead the next day. A series of attacks in New Jersey became the stuff of legend nearly a century ago. Several sources report large sharks being caught off of lower Manhattan before the 20th century, perhaps attracted by rotting meat scraps tossed into the Hudson River. It also seems the Narrows were then, as now, a hot spot for finding larger creatures. A fun exploration of this topic by Tom Vanderbilt was published in the New York Times a few years ago, bearing this gripping image from the New York Historical Society.

Chaos in the Narrows (circa 1880). Collection of the New York Historical Society.

If you see a shark, please report it to the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Seascape Initiative. If you see a marine mammal or turtle, even in good health, please report it to the Riverhead Foundation. If you have the urge to get out there among the big fish, please volunteer at a community boathouse on the NYC Water Trail.

Be the E! Celebrate With Earth Day New York

Earth Day New York events are a great way to celebrate our planet with performances, a street fair, exhibits, arts, green innovations and product demos! Wander over to midtown for happenings in Times Square and Grand Central Terminal, from April 21-23.

June 5: Cannonsville Adventure Triathlon!

On June 5, race across a pristine lake and then drink it from your tap!

New York City’s drinking water comes from a vast system of reservoirs and lakes stewarded by the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. They’re as picturesque as any scene you’ll find pasted across well-marketed bottled water, nestled in green ancient mountains and fed by spring thaws. Photographer Dick Bower has shared the beauty of the reservoir and lake system, and the region in which they rest, extensively in his online gallery.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries the municipal government and nonprofit partners purchased vast acreages of forest to naturally filter the water. The system is so effective that NYC tap water needn’t be artificially filtered at the source, which saves taxpayers billions of dollars (home filters primarily address deposits from old building pipes).

Recently public awareness of this precious resource has been raised by controversy over the demand for natural gas drilling in the same region, which is hurting economically while sitting atop a vast expanse of gas-rich shale deposits. In particular, the practice called hydraulic fracturing (or “hydrofracking”) has alarmed environmentalists because of its record of contaminating water tables and damaging wildlife habitats. Specialized groups have formed to object to the practice, and established organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council have taken up the cause.

Cannonsville Reservoir by Dick Bower.

The Cannonsville Adventure Triathlon educates people about the New York City water supply in a brilliantly apolitical way. This event features a 10k run, 4 mile paddle, and 12 mile bike set amid the crystal waters of the Cannonsville Reservoir and rolling Catskill Mountain forests in Delaware County, NY. Whether you’re inspired to compete or would enjoy cheering the athletes through their course, you’ll have a blast getting to know each other and your water. Camping over the weekend is encouraged!

Count Down Your Carbon!

The first step toward fixing a problem like global climate chaos resulting from CO2 buildup is to identify and quantize it. The Count Down Your Carbon website helps you achieve measurable results through simple actions.