Two bird-watchers moved camera-ready through the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge last week, grateful that the first ospreys had arrived at their familiar nests after flying 2,600 miles from winter roosts in South America. The fish hawks hungrily plied the bay's resources as jetliners traversed the horizon across the way at Kennedy Airport. But the birders were more intent on investigating worrisome breaches in the refuge's earthen walls caused by Hurricane Sandy. Would that affect the comings and goings this year of the multitudes of aquatic and meadow birds that favor the 13,000-acre preserve?
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Relax, life continues well, was the authoritative diagnosis from Don Riepe, the refuge's longtime sage with the title of Jamaica Bay guardian for the American Littoral Society. The refuge's high ground, at 18 feet above sea level, was in far better shape than his own home just up the bay which took in 6 feet of surge water. "I didn't see one dead critter in the refuge after the storm, not even a feral cat," Mr. Riepe reported.
The 73-year-old naturalist was first beguiled by nature as a boy in nearby Ozone Park, chasing butterflies and snakes on an old farm where Aquedeuct racetrack came to be. He earned the title and task of bay guardian after more than 40 years of first helping to build the refuge from scratch in the '50s when it was a stark wasteland of sand, to managing it after it became a national park — a modern spectacle of fauna and flora at the Atlantic's edge.
For all its natural beauty, the refuge is basically a concoction built by dedicated humans like Mr. Riepe. He recalls introducing the first marsh grass and trees, and importing the proper toads and snakes from Brooklyn and Queens to attract birds. He built osprey nests and they came, and barn owl nests, too. He guards the mass arrival of horseshoe crabs every May from commercial scavengers so that birds can feast. "And I get paid for this," said Mr. Riepe, one of the happiest creatures at the refuge. FRANCES X. CLINES
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