Pandemonium On the Hudson
Spring is busting out all over New York’s Hudson River this week. Trees are leafing, wildflowers are blooming despite the mostly dry weather, and lilacs scent the air. Sit on the riverbank for a half-hour and you might hear the calls of rose-breasted grosbeaks, wood thrushes, northern orioles, and scarlet tanagers. This is also the time when newly hatched eagle and falcon nestlings get their first taste of river fish, delivered to their tree-top nests by attentive parents.
Peregrine falcon and nestlings
Shad, herring, striped bass, and Atlantic sturgeon are coursing up the Hudson by the millions this week, each seeking its preferred spawning habitat. The fish become fast food for ospreys that float over the water surface until they spot the silver flash of scales, then dive-bomb their way to a meal. The water travelers include blueback herring, which swim all the way up to Albany, turn left at the Erie Canal, change lanes into the Mohawk River, and continue nearly to Rochester before they spawn — an inland journey of more than 300 miles. Lower down, you can still find a few aquatic monsters. Atlantic sturgeon can grow to ten feet or more and weigh more than 400 pounds. They are now coming in from the sea to their spawning grounds in the deep water above the Hudson Highlands. For reasons unknown, these strange fish occasionally leap clear of the water and then reenter with a monumental splash.
Commercial shad fishing on the Hudson peaks and concludes in May as the fish make a 150-mile run from New York Harbor to above Albany. Shad eggs are hatching on the river spawning grounds north of Kingston, and the lucky adults who evade a gauntlet of hooks, nets, teeth, and talons will return to the sea. Some of the less lucky ones become the property of the Hudson River Foundation, which has been sponsoring public shad bakes along the estuary for nearly 20 years. They’re having one this Sunday, May 20 at Croton Point Park in Croton-on-Hudson, NY. For more information, check the Foundation’s web site or call (914)739-3222. And if you want regular correspondence from a careful observer of the river, check out Tom Lake’s Hudson River Almanac, from which this post is adapted.