A Project of the Hudson River Estuary Program
Compiled and edited by Tom Lake, Consulting Naturalist
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Overview
This was a week of fascinating, but wildly unconnected entries. They included a story of one of the world’s premier gamefish, a seashell that was 3,000 miles out-of-place, mysterious dates on a plaque honoring Pete Seeger, and a massive incursion of a beloved crustacean into the New York Bight. Winter bird counts filled in the spaces.
Highlight of the Week
 1/9 – Newburgh-Beacon, HRM 61: It was dead low tide in late afternoon on May 16, 2020. We were striped bass fishing in the Hudson River just south of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge. The river was calm and 56 degrees Fahrenheit (F). We spotted a fish that seemed lethargic swimming alongside our boat, and we scooped it up with our landing net. Laying it down next to a scale, it measured 21.5 inches long. We thought it was a brown trout, a delicate fish not fond of being handled, so we released it quickly back into the river.
Recently, John Vargo, a writer for Hudson Valley Boating magazine, contacted me to ask what the strangest thing is that I have encountered while fishing on the Hudson River. I told him about the fish we caught in May 2020, that may have been a trout or salmon, and sent him a photo. (Photo of Atlantic salmon courtesy of Chris Palmer)
- Chris Palmer, David Fenner
[Chris also sent us the photo and his story. It may have never generated more than casual interest until we recognized the fish as a male Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Our immediate question was, where did the salmon come from?
The presence of Atlantic salmon in the Hudson River estuary is a long and complex story beginning with initial prospects that they were a native, but then extirpated, species. There are questionable sightings from Henry Hudson’s 17th century voyage and then the failed 19th century attempts by the New York Fisheries, Game, and Forest Commission and the United State Fish Commission at establishing a lasting spawning population. Nelson Cheney asserts (The Hudson River as a Salmon Stream 1898), that Atlantic salmon were never native to the watershed due to a lack of suitable spawning habitat and summer water temperatures that would be too warm for immature salmon (smolts).
As for Chris Palmer and David Fenner’s fish, Tim Wildman (Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection) believes this Atlantic salmon was a hatchery-reared fish that passed downstream in the Naugatuck River past Kinneytown Dam, into Long Island Sound, and then made the rather short journey to the Hudson River.
- Tom Lake]
Natural History Entries
1/8 – Fort Edward, HRM 202: We birded the Washington County grasslands this afternoon. Raptors were few, but we did end up with an American kestrel, a rough-legged hawk, three short-eared owls, and a snowy owl on the roof of a building along a busy highway.
- Scot Stoner (Hudson-Mohawk Bird Club)
 1/8 – Saratoga County, HRM 200: I came upon a large flock of several hundred horned larks that included at least one Lapland longspur and two snow buntings in a field in Northumberland. (Photo of horned lark courtesy of Tom Grey)
- Gregg Recer (Hudson-Mohawk Bird Club)
1/8 – Town of Saugerties, HRM 102: We conducted our 17th annual Esopus Bend Nature Preserve Winter Bird Count today. Beginning before first light, and continuing to late afternoon, one field party surveyed the 160-acre preserve and recorded a total of 602 birds representing 45 species. This year's total abundance was in the average range for this survey. Species diversity was above average, tying our previous high count in 2020. Our ten-year average for this survey is 38 species/539 individuals, and our historical average is 37/552.
 We counted a record three great blue herons that appeared rather forlorn as they stood motionless side-by-side on a sun-drenched shoreline surrounded by iced-over water. White-throated sparrows were tallied in record high numbers (112) surpassing our previous high count of 76 in 2020, well above our ten-year average 42 per survey. A total of three swamp sparrows eclipsed our previous counts of 1-2 in years when they were present on count day.
Two species inflated our abundance number disproportional to the overall population. A conservative estimate of 114 American goldfinches, predominantly spotted foraging on an exceptionally large eastern hemlock cone crop, established a new record high count for a species that has averaged 18 per-count historically. Although it was impossible to accurately tally all the goldfinches, foraging sight unseen high in the tops of tall dense conifers, we did witness the remarkable sight and sound of cone fragments raining down to the forest floor.
Small groups of female red-winged blackbirds were scattered throughout the day, eventually flocking together in a treetop where we were able to obtain a single accurate count of 52. Only one wild turkey was located, roosting up high at first light. Three black vultures and one adult bald eagle were seen soaring in the blue sky over the Preserve. A male Cooper’s hawk perched low on an exposed tree branch in a meadow. A great horned owl was heard hooting in pre-dawn darkness, and a pair of barred owls silently flew in and perched overhead just after dusk.
Hermit Thrush, a species significantly dependent on fruit mast, was not detected for the third consecutive year following fifteen plus years of reliable wintering in the Preserve, at times in double-digit numbers. Our thanks to Alan Beebe, Allan and Lynn Bowdery, and Mark DeDea for assisting with this year’s count. (Photo of American goldfinch courtesy of Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
- Steve Chorvas
1/8 – Town of Wappinger, HRM 67: It was barely first light. What light there was, could not make it through the dense forest of a north-facing ridgeline. The air was a frigid nine degrees F, and a north wind had dropped the windchill to fifteen below zero. Two adult bald eagles were perched in a hardwood 300 feet to the west of their nest (NY459), facing the river with that implacable look of eagles. I assumed they were adults. In the absence of morning light, they were black silhouettes. It is on mornings like these that we renew our admiration for their resiliency.
- Tom Lake
1/9 – Cold Spring, HRM 54: In the last Almanac (see 12/23), we mentioned a plaque on a bench on the Village of Cold Spring’s Hudson River Dock. The plaque states, In Memory of Pete Seeger. Underneath are the dates 1943-2013. We questioned Almanac readers for their thoughts on the significance of the dates.
So far, we have had 24 responses. All of them suggested that the dates represented when Pete and his wife, Toshi, were married (1943), to the year when Toshi died (2013). That seemed to solve the riddle, even if it would be not obvious to visitors to the bench on the dock. The Village of Cold Spring does not know who fastened the plaque on the bench, so there is no one we can ask the next question: Why is Toshi Seeger’s name not on the plague?
- Tom Lake
1/10 – Hudson River Valley: The sun rose at 7:19 this morning, one minute earlier than yesterday. This was the first day of additional morning light since June 18, when we lost one minute of sunrise.
- National Weather Service
*** Fish of the Week ***
 1/11 – Hudson River Watershed: Fish-of-the-Week for Week 155 is the whitefin sharksucker (Echeneis neucratoides), number 174 (of 236) on our watershed list of fishes. If you would like a copy of our list, e-mail: trlake7@aol.com.
The whitefin sharksucker is one of two Remoras (Echeneidae) documented for the Hudson River estuary. The other is the live sharksucker (E. naucrates). They are both categorized as temperate marine strays. The whitefin sharksucker is an ocean species that is found from Massachusetts to the Gulf of Mexico and through the Caribbean. They can reach three feet in length. They can be a free-swimming fish but will frequently attach themselves with an adhesive disc on their heads to large fish such as sharks and sturgeon. By hitching a ride, they can often feed on scraps of food (leftovers) discarded by their hosts or feed on ectoparasites that attach to the skin of their hosts.
The story of the whitefin sharksucker in the Hudson River is filled with drama, intrigue, and mystery. The species was originally recorded from New York Harbor by Samuel Latham Mitchill (1817) and James Ellsworth DeKay (1842). One record noted as occurring a “considerable distance up the Hudson River.” Since the taxonomy (classification) of the remoras at that time was unsettled, doubts about the identification of Mitchill’s and DeKay’s fish did not make our species list.
The story of its addition to our fish list begins in the autumn of 1864. Abraham Lincoln was the president of the United State and Horatio Seymour was governor of New York State. Lincoln had granted Yosemite Valley to California for "public use,” and Congress passed the Coinage Act, mandating the inscription “In God We Trust” to be placed on all coins (currency) minted as United States. America had just endured the Civil War Battle of Atlanta and Union general William Tecumseh Sherman would soon begin his infamous 285 mile scorched-earth march to Savannah and the sea. Typhoid fever was claiming thousands of Americans.
In September 1864, a fisherman at Sing Sing, a village in Westchester County that would have its name changed to Ossining in 1901, captured a fish in the Hudson River that seemed different to him. We have speculated that this sharksucker was attached to, or had recently dropped off of, an Atlantic sturgeon. The fish finally ended up in the New York State Museum collection as catalog number 11429, where it stayed for 151 years.
In 2015, New York State Museum Curator Dr. Jeremy Wright came upon catalog number 11429 (specimen) while going through the museum’s fish collection. Jeremy and Dr. Bob Schmidt identified it as a whitefin sharksucker (Echeneis neucratoides). Thus, after 151 years, the whitefin sharksucker became species number 225 on our list of Hudson River Watershed Fishes. (Photo of whitefin sharksucker courtesy of CB Cox)
- Tom Lake
 1/12 – Town of Wappinger, HRM 67: My feeders had been a ghost town so far this season, until today. I had been getting a few chickadees, tufted titmice, juncos, and the occasional white-throated sparrow. But then, in midday, like a door had been opened, hundreds, maybe thousands, of “blackbirds” came surging through the woods. I reasoned that they had been prodded by ice and snow to the north. The noise was deafening. One 10-pound bag of mixed seed had just been emptied after five weeks. Today, a new 10-pound bag was gone by sundown. The blackbirds included common grackles, starlings, red-winged blackbirds, and brown-headed cowbirds, both males and females. (Photo of brown-headed cowbird courtesy of Robert George)
- Tom Lake
 1/12 – Manhattan, HRM 2: Our Hudson River Park’s River Project staff checked our sampling and collection gear that we deploy off Pier 40 in Hudson River Park. Winter hauls had shifted our expectations from quantity to quality, as it was today when we found a young-of-last-year black sea bass (65 millimeters (mm)) in our fish trap. (Photo of black sea bass courtesy of Peter Park)
- Toland Kister, Anna Todd
[One inch = 25.4 millimeters (mm)]
 1/13 – Columbia County, HRM 127-124: I'm surrounded by farmland in Stuyvesant and often have many field species. Yesterday, I noticed 40-50 common grackles at my feeders—very unusual for this time of year. Then I went outside to see 400-500 grackles covering my half-acre—very Hitchcockian! Later, I caught sight of an adult bald eagle departing with a perch downriver near Nutten Hook. (Photo of bald eagle courtesy of Sean Cummings)
- Sean Cummings-Hudson-Mohawk Bird Club
 1/13 – Yonkers, HRM 18: Robert Hothan recently came upon a different kind of seashell laying on the beach at the Sarah Lawrence Center for the Urban River at Beczak. Taking a good photo, Beczak Naturalist and Educator Jason Muller, with assistance from Bob Walters, began an inquiry as to its identification and where it may have come from.
On the face of it, the shell did not look “local” in any way; it resembled an out-of-place tropical mollusk. However, given the relatively recent appearance of tropical fishes in the estuary (Atlantic tarpon and lyre goby), dismissing such finds was not good science.
Our go-to expert on such aquatic questions is Kathy Schmidt. Kathy’s best guess for the shell was Turritella sp. a genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks, in the family Turritellidae. The most likely species was T. leucostoma, most often found in the Gulf of California. Our collective opinion was that someone’s shell collection was “released” on the beach. (Photo of marine gastropod mollusk courtesy of Jason Muller)
[Coming upon out-of-place items on Hudson River beaches has a long and storied history. It has not been rare to find ocean sharks and other far-away marine fishes left on beaches either by anglers returning from off-shore charters, or even by pranksters.
Commercial vessels that use the river arrive from ports all over the World. It is not at all uncommon to find items on the beach such as coconuts and food packaging with origins in the tropics of Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, perhaps even the Gulf of California, having been jettisoned by the crew. That may be a bit of a stretch in this instance, but it is also good scientific policy to never say never.
- Tom Lake]
1/14 – Town of Poughkeepsie: The female of the adult pair of bald eagles at nest NY62 brought a huge branch back to the nest today. This is their season to refurbish their nest, even if it is not necessary. It seems to be a way of reestablishing the nest as a shared responsibility. They will do this until mating time, which will be very soon.
- Bob Rightmyer
1/14 – Town of Wappinger, HRM 67.5: I watched a “changing of the guard” today at bald eagle nest NY459. Each of the adults spent time in the nest while the other was out hunting or possibly just loafing in a sunny tree. They are playing the roles of a mated pair, but for now it is just theater. Soon they will mate followed by the laying of eggs in early March. Then it will become serious business.
- Judy Winter
 1/14 – New York Bight: A recent article in the Chesapeake Bay Journal mentioned an unusually large intrusion into the New York Bight of brown shrimp (Penaeus aztecus). While the presence of these commercial shrimp is not news, the numbers would appear to be without precedent. Thus began an investigation of the increased presence of this species in waters adjacent to the Hudson River.
Brown shrimp can reach nearly nine inches long and are found along the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts to Texas, as well as along the Atlantic coast of Mexico. According to the most recent stock assessments, there are two stocks of brown shrimp: South Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. Almost all of the brown shrimp harvested in the United States come from the Gulf of Mexico, mainly from Texas and Louisiana. In 2020, landings of brown shrimp totaled 67 million pounds (NOAA).
John Waldman contacted the captain of the Stony Brook Marine Sciences vessel who said they were trawling loads of brown shrimp this summer, for the first time ever, in Shinnecock and Peconic bays. A regional survey reported the shrimp to be “thick” at Cape Cod in September, where they had caught just one in 40 years. Biologist Neils Hobbs (University of Rhode Island) reported that during this past summer-fall (2021), brown shrimp were found in huge numbers in the salt ponds of southern Rhode Island. Reflecting on the potential effects of climate change, Hobbs added, “One wonders if the “Ghost of New England Future,” in terms of our crustacean fisheries, might be brown shrimp and blue crabs, with lobsters being the “Ghost of Christmas Past!”
Brown shrimp seems to have been a semi-regular visitor in the New York Bight and southern New England waters for a long time, as are many other southern species that wander up in small numbers, but inevitably fail to negotiate the historically cold New England winters. Questions abound: Is it a permanent climate-driven expansion or the result of an extraordinary recruitment? And what are the food web implications? What does this 2021 “surge” of Penaeus aztecus represent?
Finally, we investigated records of brown shrimp in the Hudson River, in part, by searching the archives of the Hudson River Almanac. Volume VII (2000) reported a single Penaeus aztecus (80 mm) caught on September 18, 2000, at Nyack Beach State Park (river mile 31). The next day, seventeen miles downriver at Englewood, NJ, we caught one more. The two shrimp were identified by New York State Museum ichthyologist Bob Daniels.
More recently, from Hudson River Almanac Volume XIV (2007), we found, “While seining though wild celery beds at Nyack Beach State Park on September 21, we caught a single Penaeus aztecus (>100 mm, antennae-to-telson).”
Additionally, Boyce Thompson Institute’s, An Atlas of the Biologic Resources of the Hudson Estuary (1977), notes encountering Penaeus sp., in the estuary with no further details.
Collectively, these records indicate their presence in the estuary, but as an extremely rare occurrence. (Photo of brown shrimp courtesy of John Waldman)
- Tom Lake
Winter 2021 Natural History Programs and Events
Sustainable Shorelines: Tools for Engaging Communities and Resource Managers
Thursday January 27, 2 p.m.- 3 p.m.
This webinar showcases new outreach tools for resource managers and community scientists engaged in flood and shoreline resilience work. The program expands upon our Sustainable Shorelines webinar series, adding to a repository of resources and strategies available to designers, practitioners, and community decision-makers. Register now for the January 27 webinar. Please join us regardless of whether you have attended any of our previous webinars. Click now to check out other events in the Sustainable Shorelines Webinar Series.
Presentations:
Hudson Dynamic Shorelines Story Map: A New Educational Resource About Flood & Shoreline Resilience - Jessica Kuonen, New York Sea Grant
MyCoast New York: Piloting a New Tool for Statewide Community Monitoring of Shorelines
Jessica Kuonen, New York Sea Grant
Hudson River Miles
The Hudson is measured north from Hudson River Mile 0 at the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan. The George Washington Bridge is at HRM 12, the Tappan Zee 28, Bear Mountain 47, Beacon-Newburgh 62, Mid-Hudson 75, Kingston-Rhinecliff 95, Rip Van Winkle 114, and the Federal Dam at Troy, the head of tidewater, at 153. The tidal section of the Hudson constitutes a bit less than half the total distance – 315 miles – from Lake Tear of the Clouds to the Battery. Entries from points east and west in the watershed reference the corresponding river mile on the mainstem.
To Contribute Your Observations or to Subscribe
The Hudson River Almanac is compiled and edited by Tom Lake and emailed weekly by DEC's Hudson River Estuary Program. Share your observations by e-mailing them to trlake7@aol.com. To subscribe to the Almanac (or to unsubscribe), use the links on DEC's Hudson River Almanac or DEC Delivers web pages.
Useful Links
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration online tide and tidal current predictions are invaluable when planning Hudson River field trips. For real-time information on Hudson River tides, weather and water conditions from sixteen monitoring stations, visit the Hudson River Environmental Conditions Observing System website.
DEC's Smartphone app for iPhone and Android is now available at: New York Fishing, Hunting & Wildlife App.
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