The East River Is Cleaner Now. The Water Birds Say So. (So did rotting wooden piers a decade ago.)

NY Times ^ | June 2, 2006 | TONI WHITT

[neverdem]

An archipelago of sorts, a collection of rock formations dotted with scrub brush, has been home to New York's mental institutions, quarantine hospitals and some of the city's most famous residents. Long abandoned by people, some of the islands have now become home to migratory birds that have flocked there in numbers not seen in decades.

The Audubon Society of New York, in partnership with New York Water Taxi, took visitors on a tour of the islands yesterday to showcase the bustling wildlife on display just a short boat ride away from asphalt, concrete and steel towers of Manhattan. Cormorants, egrets, herons and American oystercatchers are just some of the species not usually spotted in New York that have congregated on the islands, which include North and South Brother Islands, between Rikers Island and the Bronx, and Mill Rock, just north of Gracie Mansion.

The tour passes the mouth of Newtown Creek, a gritty industrial area along the Brooklyn-Queens border where the Rockefellers built their first Standard Oil refineries in the late 19th century and where an oil spill in 1950 larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster polluted the soil and waterways in Greenpoint. For the past two decades the Audubon Society has been working to help clean the waters around New York and bring birds back to the area.

That effort has been so successful that the organization now operates scheduled boat tours for close-up views of wild birds that have become hugely popular with birdwatchers. Yesterday's trip, from South Street Seaport, was a preview. The summer tours begin tomorrow.

"Look! Oystercatchers," said Gabriel Willow, a tour guide who works as a teacher and naturalist at the Audubon Center in Prospect Park, almost breathless as he interrupted his story about the history of South Brother Island, where Babe Ruth...

[neverdem]

Richard Lee for The New York Times
Egrets on South Brother Island in the East River have grown in numbers, as have other birds on two other islands near Rikers Island.

The New York Times
Some migratory birds are flocking to three islands in the East River.

P.S. The polluted waters had acted as a preservative to wooden piers around NYC. I remember a story in the Times at least a decade ago which stated that the pollution had been reduced so much that biological organisms were making wooden structures in the waters around the city rot again.

[AnAmericanMother]

The excursion ship General Slocum grounded on North Brother Island after it caught fire and burned to the waterline in the East River.

Over 1,000 people perished in this 1904 disaster.

[norraad]

Same "problem" happening along the Delaware River, even after a Greek Tanker was allowed to dump 225,000,000 gallons of Asphaltic crude before docking at a Citgo refinery.

[mollynme]

Interesting article but the author needs to research a little better.
She wrote that Flood Island was the home of the author of "The Birds" which was the basis for the Hitchcock film. That short story was actually written by the British author Daphne du Maurier.

[martin_fierro]

It's finally safe for the Wiseguys to go swimming there again.

[neverdem]

One of those veterans wrote a short story that was turned into the screenplay for the classic Hitchcock film, "The Birds."

"Interesting article but the author needs to research a little better. "

Evan Hunter, a bestselling author who sold more than 100 million books under his own name and the pseudonym Ed McBain, died on July 6 of cancer of the larynx. He was 78.

Born Salvatore Lombino, the native New Yorker was studying at the Cooper Union Art School when World War II interrupted his education. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy and began to write while serving on a destroyer in the Pacific. Upon his return to the states, Lombino majored in English at Hunter College in New York. In 1952, he legally changed his name to Evan Hunter because he thought publishers would be less likely to accept books from an author with an Italian moniker.

To make ends meet, Hunter taught English classes at inner city high schools, sold lobsters to restaurants and worked as an editor for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, but he never stopped honing his writing skills. Under the names Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins and Richard Marsten, he wrote dozens of magazine stories. Once he had enough credits to his, well, many names, Hunter published his first novel, "The Blackboard Jungle." The harrowing tale of big city school violence became a 1955 film starring Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier. Hunter later penned the second revision of the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock thriller, "The Birds."

The research wasn't so bad. The error was calling the guy who wrote the screenplay as the author of the story.

[neverdem]

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Goats given human cells

Gene silencing directs muscle-derived stem cells to become bone-forming cells

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.

[finnman69]

I could point out a few areas of the Hudson that would make everyone go EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWW!

[bert]

god only knows what you might catch from the birds on Rikers isalnd.

[Clemenza]

I'll see your oystercatchers and raise you some Blue Claw crabs and oysters that have reappeared in Newark Bay over the past 10 years.

Just think: Maryland style crab shacks in Bayonne, Newark, and Elizabeth!