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Mar 30, 2025

Bob Henke starts today’s newsletter answering reader questions…

Outdoors Tomorrow: Q&A

By Bob Henke
Journal & Press

This week has been a series of unexpected results.

I definitely did not start it although I apparently got caught up in the stream of strange energy that pervaded the universe. I presume it will come as no surprise that one of the Twisted Sisters started the process.

Her life involves a relatively continuous stream of fund-raising events for the school, youth athletics, various normal as well as weird organizations, and a range of curious endeavors only she could generate.

One of the latest adventures involved strawberries.

She understood the child in question was selling strawberry plants so she ordered 40, planning on filling a flower bed with them, picking succulent strawberries all summer with her granddaughter, and engaging in all manner of other idyllic berry hoorahs. Imagine her surprise when the child delivered 40 baskets, two full flats, of actual strawberries. I made the mistake of saying,”who the heck bought that many strawberries?” I immediately got a full litany of how much work it was going to be to take care of all them that night, what she had planned to do instead, and what would happen to me if I laughed. It was truly hilarious and, once out of reach, I did laugh, not knowing this was just the beginning of a more universal series of happenstance.

I was still giggling about the strawberries when I left the Town office, heading for the second part of my workday at the County office, when the phone rang. Caller id said it was the Post Office so I pulled over and answered it. Someone said, “Guess what?” and I heard the sound of baby chickens peeping. I opined that someone had a box of baby chicks. She said, “Yes—YOU do.” I said no I did not, she said my name and phone number were all over the box.

My neatly-planned workday went totally askew because, sure enough, I had a box of fluffy chicks. This was unfortunate because I figured to not ever do that again and let all my chick-raising paraphernalia go along with a brooder I sold. So the babies and I rode down to the feed stored for chick rations, feeders, and a drinking fount. After I got the little striped buggers installed in an old aquarium with a heat lamp, I called the source of my aggravation, a poultry farm in the Midwest specializing in rare poultry breeds. I had ordered 6 hatching eggs to put under one of the hens that had gone broody. Apparently, there had been a slip-up in the shipping department. I got someone’s chicks and someone got my eggs however, unless the egg guy calls to complain, they had no idea whose chickens I have or even what kind of chickens they might be. With a continual lilt of chicken noise coming up through the air duct, I may as well get to work on the questions, especially because a couple this time relate directly to hatching eggs.

I know where the great horned owl nest is in Fort Miller. I have not seen the parents yet this year but I was sure I was hearing babies screaming right in the coldest weather last week. Why would the parents start a nest so early that the babies would be killed by the cold?

I wish you had told me where it was. They seem to move it around every year. However, with regard to your worry, do not be concerned. This is not early for great horned owl broods, in fact, this is the tail end of the hatching season. Great horns start their courtship activities in December. There are many tales about why the owls are hooting on Christmas Eve but the real answer is prurient. Most pairs have eggs in the nest by late January and chicks by the end of February. It takes 30 to 37 days for the eggs to hatch. Since to avoid freezing the embryos, the female cannot leave the nest once she has laid the first egg, the eggs all start incubation at a different time. This yields a brood of up to four chicks that may vary in age by as much as a week. In many cases, this means the smallest chick or two becomes a nourishing meal for the elder siblings. The babies stay in the nest for about six weeks, typically leaping out well before they can fly. Whoever coined the phrase “wise old owl,” did not know much about owl behavior.

In any event, the fuzzy babies, often weighing more than the adults struggling to feed them, hop about on the forest floor, followed by the parents feeding them, for about another two weeks before their feathers grow in enough to support flight. Surprisingly, few are taken by predators owing to the vigilance and ferocity of the parents.

When do bluebirds start nesting?

It depends on the nature of the Spring season and the nature of the male bluebird. In many cases, males with return very early in the year, sometimes not migrating at all. If there is any available food (I put meal worms and dried cranberries inside the nesting boxes from about Christmas time on to help out these hardy souls,) you may have males guarding a nest site before the snow is even gone. Females make a more leisurely trip, stopping often along the way to feed in order to support the huge energy expense of egg production. When they get here, they may find some males have already begun gathering grasses for the nest. Typically, they will begin in earnest by early April. Bluebird eggs hatch in 11-19 days and parents typically raise more than one brood, some having as many as four.

I found part of a carcass of a rabbit. It had been killed and partially eaten but the head and one shoulder were left, very cleanly separated. Any idea who left that little present?

Cottontail rabbits are prey for a huge range of predators from tiny weasels to bald eagles. Your example is interesting because of the choice of cut. Many birds of prey, when capturing anything from mice to rabbits, consume the prey’s head first. The brain is extremely nourishing with lots of energy to get the hunter through cold weather. In many cases, when prey is abundant, the head may be the only thing eaten, the rest of the carcass taking more energy to digest. The same is often the case with members of the weasel family.

Starting from the rear and working forward tends to favor a mammalian predator, foxes and coyotes might be a first guess, however, any of the canid tend to be a bit messy, doing much of the butchering with their molars, leaving ragged edges and crushed bones. Cat species are far neater, using their incisors to, well, incise off discrete chunks of the carcass for consumption. Quite often they will clip off edible pieces of the innards, leaving such things as the gall bladder and lower intestines laying neatly on the ground. I suspect your culinary visitor was a bobcat who was carrying off a portion of its meal as a gift to its mate when it was either surprised and dropped it or dropped it when the cat encountered something even more delicious to hunt. Somewhere on its back trail is a neat pile of guts which is missing the heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver (although the gall bladder will be left in the pile.)

So, we have answered some of the questions, including one that has plagued mankind for eons, because it is now clear that the chickens come well before the eggs…

Contact Bob Henke with your sightings or questions by mail c/o The Greenwich Journal & Salem Press, by email at outdoors.tomorrow@gmail.com, on Twitter at @BobHenke, or on Facebook.

From the Stacks: Trash Talk

By Sarah Murphy
Special to Journal & Press

In ninth grade, I broke up with my first boyfriend. We had attended Homecoming together, we ate at the same lunch table, and he gave me a bracelet for Christmas. But we never talked on the phone. Or, really, in person. So I was a bit surprised by how hard he took the break up. His retaliation–I hadn’t expected retaliation–was to make a public show of throwing several Snapple bottles into the cafeteria trash bin. How dare he? I remember thinking, I can’t let him win, and so I marched over to the trash and resolutely removed the glass bottles (this was back when Snapple bottles were glass) out of the trash and placed them into the big blue recycling bin. In my self-mythologizing, I was the earth-conscious hero who did not let some insecure boy get me down. In the eyes of my schoolmates, I was a trash-picking weirdo.

I share this anecdote to demonstrate how far back my garbage obsession goes, and to fess up to being the kind of person who has long believed that my individual actions matter. My interest in trash has never waned, and nor has my fundamental belief that our earth deserves preserving. But it’s harder and harder to believe that individual actions towards a greater good have any effect. My formative years were full of Earth Day TV specials and two environmental success stories: mitigation of acid rain and the gradual healing of the ozone layer. But as much as I would like to take some credit for the latter, having published the scathing “Murder in the Lunchroom” op-ed in my 7th-grade newspaper, which demanded that my Middle School eliminate styrofoam, a move they have by now surely made, it was regulation and legislation on a global scale, the likes of which we are not likely to see again in my lifetime, that were responsible for those successes.

But even on my most cynical days, you can still find me picking through trash. At the library, I spend a nonzero part of every day removing cans from the garbage bin, fishing plastic packing materials out of the recycling, and saving banana peels from the trash, tossing them vigorously into the compost. My goal at the library and at my home is simple: send as little waste as possible to the landfill. This is why I read the recap of a recent Village board meeting with a heavy heart. Results of a survey indicated that many Greenwich village residents support doing away with our current trash collection system in favor of a “convenient” subscription service, more akin to the monthly fees many neighbors pay to private haulers. The village’s current system is a pay-as-you-go sticker system, which incentivizes trash reduction. My small household pays between $3 and $9 a month for our waste. Because we make as little of it as possible. Because we try hard to eliminate single-use plastic. Because we bring our own glass containers to restaurants for leftovers. Because no matter how dismal the outlook is for real nationwide legislative action, I’ve never stopped being that kid who believes that individual choices must mean something. Oh, and because we compost every single shred of food waste that comes through our house.

The Environmental Protection agency estimates that 24% of all municipal landfill waste is food waste. They also claim that, “Each year, the emissions caused by wasted food in the U.S. are greater than the emissions for all domestic flights within the U.S. plus all international flights run by U.S. airlines.” Food waste is a large-scale systems problem that cannot be solved by me or you or any individual (but we are lucky that our neighbors at Comfort Food Community are putting great efforts towards that problem). But if all households across the country diverted their kitchen scraps to compost, that would undeniably reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We can’t control private jet usage. But we can absolutely control where our egg shells, cheese rinds, and chicken bones go. And if yours are going to the landfill, you’re not just contributing to climate change, you’re also wasting money, stinking up your kitchen, and attracting black bears, who are just about to wake up hungry, to your plastic curbside bins.

Many in our community compost in their backyards or on their farms, or simply feed livestock with a lot of the kitchen scraps that would otherwise be landfilled. But home composting can be difficult to start, and most backyard systems can’t accommodate meat and dairy. Is this the part of the column where I tell you that the library is here to solve your problems? Indeed it is! Collect your food and organic waste, all the moldy leftovers, fruit rinds, bread butts, spoiled pet food, old fish, stale crackers, flowers that have turned, paper napkins, pet hair, dryer lint, and all those shells, rinds, and bones. Stop letting it all fester under your sink, stop tempting those hungry hungry bears, and just dump it into the library’s big green bin. Every week, our pal Bill from Adirondack Worm Farm collects the waste you’ve dropped off and keeps it out of the landfill.

Remember that bracelet ninth-grade boyfriend gave me? I still have it. It’s engraved with my name, and frankly, I love it. But it’s also a little source of embarrassment for me because my Christmas present to him was a book. A paperback copy of the 1990 bestseller, “Fifty Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth.” His retaliation makes a bit more sense now, huh? While gift-giving has never been one of my strengths, my heart really was in that one. And it still is. I challenge you all to do, not fifty simple things, but one simple thing. Reduce your trash by getting food waste out of the landfill. If you live in the village, try seeing how low your sticker budget can go. And if incentivizing minimal trash makes sense to you, ask our village board to consider keeping a sticker option for those who want it.

Sarah Murphy is director of the Greenwich Free Library in Greenwich, NY.

Greenwich Scout Troop 6027 has a busy weekend

Despite the cold temperatures and gusty breezes, members of the Troop camped and hiked in the Town of Jackson this past weekend. Younger Scouts practiced setting up their tents and preparing camping locations. Cooking and cleaning chores were shared. During a hike through Lake Lauderdale Park, scouts learned to identify 10 plant varieties as well as some common usages for these plants. While warming up, the Scouts worked on a Merit Badge and the final evening was capped off with a movie. Plans are being made for future outdoor adventures as the weather improves. If anyone is interested in joining the Troop, they should contact Scoutmaster Jeff Conkey at troop27greenwich@gmail.com.

Easter egg hunt for dogs at HCP

Get ready for a tail-waggin’ good time at Hudson Crossing Park on Saturday and Sunday, April 19th and 20th, 2025 for the annual K9 Easter Egg Hunt!

From 8 a.m. until the last batch of eggs is hidden in the late afternoon, four-legged friends are invited to sniff out colorful plastic eggs filled with tasty, dog-friendly treats generously donated by Lazy Dog Cookie Company. Eggs will be regularly refreshed by our amazing park volunteers and “hidden” throughout the Play Garden and along the Sensory Trail, giving pups and their humans a fun-filled scavenger hunt with beautiful views of the Hudson River. If you visit and don’t find many eggs, don’t worry— volunteers will be back to put more out until all the eggs are gone, so please come back and try again.

All friendly, leashed dogs are welcome. Please be courteous to other participants, both two-legged and four, and follow all local leash laws.

A suggested donation of $10 per dog can be made at www.HudsonCrossingPark.org/support to support park programming and upkeep.

Birding Backpack for loan at Easton Library

Easton Library now has a Birding Backpack, courtesy of Southern Adirondack Audubon Society (SAAS), to loan out to patrons for free! SAAS created this Birding Backpack initiative to donate to all Southern Adirondack Library System libraries in an effort to encourage their patrons to spend time outdoors, explore new destinations, pay attention to birds and the little things in nature to ultimately become more interested in protecting our environment.

SAAS was inspired to create this project for our region based on inspiration from Saw Mill River Audubon's Mr. Lunetta Explorer Bags, and with the assistance of Laura Burrows at Lake George Caldwell Library, created the template for SAAS' first round of Birding Backpacks to donate in 2022.

The birding backpack includes two high-quality binoculars for adults and children to practice using, and a number of educational materials. These include: laminated & foldable Birding 101 Beginners Guide, laminated and foldable Birds of New York Identification Guide, nature Bingo Cards for each season with erasable markers, Birding Adventures for Kids book, birding locations menu to explore around and beyond Easton, waterproof birding journal to record your bird and nature sightings, and lens cloths to clean the binocular eyepieces properly.

SAAS also donated the children's book Bird Count by Susan Edwards Richmond to our library collection. Learn how a young girl counts birds and grows as a citizen scientist by participating in an annual bird count. We encourage you to check out this new book, and our new Easton Library Birding Backpack to explore the natural world around our library and beyond! Thank you, Southern Adirondack Audubon Society, for encouraging the exploration of birds, nature, and protecting our environment with the generous Birding Backpack donation.

Cambridge Pantry receives donation

The Cambridge Food Pantry received a $1100 donation from the Stewart’s Holiday Match Grant. It will be used to support the pantry’s food backpack program which serves 150 low-income students at Cambridge Central School. The program gives supplies for two weekend meals per student.

The Stewart’s Holiday Match program has allocated over $39 million since the program’s inception. This year they had over 1,807 requests with $1.7 million raised from customers’ generous contributions. All the funds for the program support children under 18 years of age.

For more information about the Stewart’s program, check out stewartsshops.com/community-giving. For more information about the Cambridge Food Pantry go to cambridgefoodpantry.com.

Photo Caption: Pictured Volunteer Janet Klaneski; Student Volunteer Sam Woffenden; Executive Director of Cambridge Food Pantry, Sarah Harrington; Board Member Sue Preece; volunteer Geri Cramer, and Pantry Treasurer Sally Eddy.