February Hudson Quadricentennial Countdown

This special monthly feature to The Tidal Zone blog recounts the highlights that led to Henry Hudson’s sail past the tidal marsh of what is now Yonkers’ Beczak Environmental Education Center on September 13, 1609.

Petrus Plancius map from 1599.

Sky blues and sunset purples bring a calm beauty to Petrus Plancius’ map of the world, drawn just ten years ago in 1599. Henry Hudson traces the routes he has sailed with his finger, remembering the utter whiteness of the frozen sea. He and Plancius, the freethinking Dutch astronomer and cartographer, are in Hudson’s Amsterdam apartment. Speaking in Latin—their common language—they discuss the route Hudson should take when he sails for China in two months. The Dutch United East India Company has hired him to find a northeast passage. But is that possible? No one has succeeded yet. Open books and unrolled maps cover the table, telling the discoveries of Ferdinand de Soto, who claimed a new world for Spain, George Weymouth, who claimed another part for the English, as well as Hudson’s friend Captain John Smith of the English settlement of Jamestown in the colony of Virginia.

A Lenape man sitting along the river Muhheakantuck, over 3,650 miles away, is equally lost in his thoughts. The previous evening, in the Meeting House, he heard a startling prophecy from a tribal elder. “A big boat is coming on the horizon. Those on it will change our way of life forever.”

Lenore Person
Marketing and Communications Manager

Beczak's New Residents

If you recently visited Beczak, you may have met the newest additions to our aquaria collection: 3 red-eared sliders. Compared to Gloria, our snapping turtle, these sliders are very docile. In fact, they are easy to handle and won’t try to bite your finger off!

Red-eared sliders live in fresh water, meaning they would not be found in the brackish Hudson River water here in Yonkers. While sliders like to spend most of their time wading, they also enjoy basking in the sun. When it is time for dinner, I feed them a balanced diet of yummy fish, veggies, and reptile pellets.

Many visitors wonder if our sliders are males or females. Here are two clues I tell them to look for. Once the turtles mature, the females will be larger than the males. Yet, males have much longer nails on their claws. This is an adaptation which is used during mating. The males will wave their long nails in front of the females as a way to get their attention. Now that you know how to tell the difference between male and female sliders, stop by Beczak and help us name our new residents!

Jason Muller

Educator/Technology Specialist

Tortilla Chips and Hotdogs for Bait!

The fish and turtles in Beczak’s indoor aquariums eat every other day. We feed them fish from the Hudson River. Mummichogs and Atlantic silversides are caught during our seining programs and stored in the office freezer. However, this week we ran out. Time to go fishing! Beczak educator Jason Muller ventured out into the snow last week to set fish traps in the marsh. He filled the traps with hotdogs and tortilla chips. “I thought the oil and salt would attract fish,” he explained. In just a few hours, about ten mummichogs nibbled on the chips and were trapped! We put them in a zip lock bag and placed that in the freezer. Today is feeding day. We will chop up almost all of our catch for our white perch, striped bass, and crayfish. The blue crabs, red-eared sliders and common slapping turtle will eat the thawed mummichogs whole. The hungry animals will have a great lunch!

Vicky Garufi
Education Program Manager

January Hudson Quadricentennial Countdown

This special monthly feature to The Tidal Zone blog recounts the highlights that led to Henry Hudson’s sail past the tidal marsh of what is now Yonkers’ Beczak Environmental Education Center on September 13, 1609.

2009 is the Quadricentennial, or 400th anniversary, of Henry Hudson’s 1609 voyage up the Hudson River. It was Hudson’s third attempt to find a shorter trading route to the Orient—the existing route, around the southern tip of Africa, was lengthy and dangerous with piracy.

In January 1609, Henry Hudson signed a contract with the Dutch United East India Company to find a northeast passage to Asia. His fee for leading the expedition was 800 guilders; his wife would get an additional 200 guilders, plus more, if he failed to return in a year. The contract was quite specific as to where Hudson was meant to explore. He was told to leave about the first of April and sail around the Arctic Ocean north of Russia, into the Pacific and on to the Far East… contract terms that Hudson would soon ignore.

Lenore Person

Marketing and Communications Manager

Beczak’s Visitor

At 9 AM today, while I was opening up the Beczak Environmental Education Center, I found a small brown bird lying in a ball on the ground. Its feathers were puffed up, which is what birds do to conserve their body heat. I picked it up and checked its wings and feet to see if the bird was hurt. Everything seemed fine except one of its eyes wouldn’t open. I tried to warm the bird by rubbing it gently between my gloves. When that didn’t seem to work, I fetched a piece of felt to wrap the bird in, and brought it inside.

I put the bundle in a shoebox on my desk and took a close look. Its bill was yellow and black, and it had a rusty-colored eye line and crown. There was a small dark spot on its chest. These arks identified it as an American Tree Sparrow, or Spizella arborea, which I double-checked in National Audubon Society: The Sibley Guide to Birds. This common Hudson Valley bird winters in small flocks in brushy habitats alike the Beczak marsh.

In a few hours, the bird began to move around. I could tell it had defrosted, and I released it back to its winter home.

Dorene Sukup
Educator

How Low Can it Go?

After several years of mild winters, the Hudson Valley has been blasted by an arctic air mass. This frigid air blew out of Alaska where temperatures fell as low as -69 degrees! While we didn’t experience those types of extremes around here, Yonkers has not seen temperatures near zero in several years. Areas up and down the Hudson saw wind-whipped snow and temperatures falling below zero. Large sheets of ice now cover the river.

Saturday’s temperature of 3 degrees begs the question, how low can it go? Well, all we have to do is take a look back into the record books. On February 9, 1934, Central Park fell to an all-time record low of -15 degrees. Moving upriver, Albany saw the temperature drop all the way to -28 degrees on January 19, 1971. Will we ever see temperatures that low again here in the Hudson Valley? I think that is a question which will be debated for some time to come.

Jason Muller
Educator/Technology Specialist

Winter Tides at Beczak

Cold weather and water bring new sights to the Hudson River. Occasionally I even spot eagles on ice floats or soaring above the Palisades! So upon my return from the holidays, I took a walk down to Beczak’s riverfront at low tide. I saw small pieces of flat ice along the shoreline, and a giant, flat piece of ice lodged in the marsh’s channel.

The stranded pancake of ice in Beczak’s marsh is a result of the Hudson River’s tides. Because the Hudson is an estuary—which means that the salty tides of the Atlantic Ocean regularly rise and flood the river—the Hudson River has a high tide and low tide. It takes about six hours to go from high tide to low tide.

As the last tide fell and water drained from Beczak’s marsh, the ice float sank to the mud and was left behind in the channel.

It was truly a beautiful scene to bring in 2009.

Vicky Garufi

Education Program Manager