THURSDAY, MARCH 1.187»

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SEA ISLE CITY’S Steve Conti and Robert lannone. both sixth graders at St. Joseph’s Regional School, are here performing their monthly task of dismantling the corridor bulletin board. A different class sets up the board each month, but Steve and Robert always see that the decorations are taken down.

-PM* by CkarlM GHtopfe

My apologies to that two faced Groundhog and so much for an early spring. The snow is drifting deep across the marsh and this writer is for all intents and purposes a captive of the storm. Only dire need would drive me out today and although the pipes are frozen and the electricity is off (ditto the heat) the situation is not dire enough. My thoughts cannot help but turn to the hardships that our wintering waterfowl have suffered of late. The unmerciful cold weather of the past two weeks has taken its toll, sapping sorely taxed energy stores as it covered critical food under a sheath of ice. All last week, lines of sea ducks could be seen heading south. Brant, Oldsquaw. Goldeneye and Greater Scaup hugged the coast while farther inland Canada and Snow Geese moved in counter rhyme. The flocks had been tempted by the unseasonably warm weather of December and January to remain farther north. As the long lines of south bound birds attest, the gamble had not paid off. At Bamegat Light, the number of ducks crowding the 8th Street jetty, a favored feeding (and birding)spot, increased by the minute. The ice strewn shoreline was punctuated, at intervals, by the frozen bodies of Buffleheads and here and there Brant. As I scoped through the press of birds, searching for an Eider or Harlequin Duck, a fema.e Goldeneye or Whistler, as it is known to the gunning crowd, left the flock and headed for shore. She clambered ashore (a difficult task for a diving duck) and wedged herself beneath an overhanging ice shelf, out of the wind and out of the sight of the predatory Black-backed Gull. I tend to be rather a hard liner when it comes to wildlife rescue. This is to say, I don’t give it too much credence. This laissez-faire attitude has its roots in several dozen lessons learned as a insult of childhood experiences *with “adandoned birds”, not a few wildlife rescue efforts and a number of well intended but futile attempts to salvage the lives of well oiled sea birds. I have come to realize that dying is just as natural as living, only different. It is not a defeatist attitude, merely a realistic one and just because I don’t like it doesn't mean that I cannot accept and understand it.. .most of the time. So the Goldeneye was wedged between the ice and "professional interest” prompted

me to capture the bird (an easy task) and examine it. A long, raw gash on the left flank of the bird did much to explain the bird's sorry state. Winter, as they say, weeds out the sick and injured. It was late and it was snowing. It was apparent that the binT wasn't long for this world. As thoughts of "balance of nature", "natural selection” and several other euphemistic equivalents ran through my mind, I tucked the bird under an arm and headed for the car. Hie Avian Rehabilitation Center was on the way home, I reasoned; hardly out of the way at all. Contract Goes To

Center

Sea Isle City Mayor Dominic C. Raffa announced that the resort

plans to award a $4,100 contract to the Jersey Cape Diagnostic Training and Opportunity Center for the manufacture and supply of more than 100,000 beach tags

for this summer.

Raffa, head of the city’s beach tag sales program, said the center was the low bidder on

furnishing and delivering the plastic tags for the seasonal and

weekly purchasers.

"We are pleased to be able to award this $4,188.45 contract to Jersey Cape Diagnostic, Training k Opportunity Center, Inc., because it will help us help the handicapped people working at that facility and will keep the money the city spends for this purpose in the county because some 70 handicapped persons from Cape May County will work and earn a salary on this job,”

Mayor Raffa said.

Center Director George Plewa said the center personnel will do all the work from raw material.

They will cut, print, pin, inspect, bag and ship the beach tags, 40,000 seasonal and 65,000 weekly for the 12 week period June 16 through the week of September 1,

1979.

This will be the first contract awarded to the center by Sea Isle City although the city has asked for. bids previously. At those times, the personnel were too busy to handle any extra jobs, according to David Edwards of Ocean City, production manager at the center. The center produced beach tags for Beach Haven, Cape May and Dover Township, as well as tags for swim and tennis clubs.

Ganie and Wildlife News

Flying Foxes

Flying foxes are not foxes with wings, as their name suggests. In fact, they are not really-foxes at

all.

What they are, according to the current issue of Ranger Rick’s Nature Magazine, is big, smelly, quarrelsome bats with foxy faces. There are about 35 different kinds of flying foxes in the world, the National Wildlife federation monthly for children reports, but because they feed only on tropical fruits and flowers, none live in the wild in the United States. They are found in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, New Guinea, Australia, and islands in the Indian Ocean and western Pacific. Like all bats, the so-called flying foxes have thin sheets of skin - rather than feathers - for wings. "Their arm, leg, and finger bones stretch the sheets tightly, like sticks in a kite,” the magazine says. One species has a MUA OK s 17M To Build Ocean Gty Plant The Cape May County Municipal Utilities Authority unanimously approved the borrowing of $17 million at its regular meeting. "This is a rolling over or reborrowing of the project notes that are outstanding,” Chairman John Vinci explained. "It will enable us to build the Ocean City plant and operate. The notes will come due again on March 1, 1980.” In other action, Vinci made public the estimated increased cost to the taxpayers for the appeal made by CAPE against the CAFRA permit issuance at the site of the proposed Cape May plant. "We figure the delay will cost an estimated $1,315,780 million more,” Vinci said. The state hearing officer determined on February 26, there was no evidence to suppocf CAPE’s argument and that the CAFRA permit should stand. At a recent municipal meeting by the MUA, Cape May City Councilman J. Fred Coldren suggested that towns adversely affected by the failure of Wildwood and Wildwood Crest to join the Cape May County Municipal Utilities Authority file a class action suit against the City of Wildwood, the Borough of Wildwood Crest and West Wildwood to recover costs that have escalated over the 18 month delay. Although the group took no formal action, MUA Chairman John Vinci estimated the increased cost to be between $8 to $10 million. The proposed regional wastewater treatment plant, pumping stations, and force mains for the Wildwoods-Lower Region are expected to cost $85 million. The cities of Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and West Wildwood were ordered by Superior court Judge Philip Gruccio to sign service agreements with the MUA but have so far failed to do so.

wingspan of up to four feet - making it the world’s biggest bat. When awake, these fox-faced bats are so noisy and smelly they are hard to miss. Screeching at each other, with the young clinging tightly to their mothers' fur, they skim along the surface of a river or lake, scooping up occasional swallows of water with their tongues. When the colony sniffs out an area of ripe fruit - bananas, plums, mangoes and guavas are favorites - they settle down for a clamorous night of eating. Hiey push, shove, and quarrel over the food all night long. Often they slash out at each other with sharp thumb claws, or bite savagely with their needle sharp front

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In the morning, back at their roosting trees, the bats crowd together, clawing, biting, and bickering over warm and comfortable places to hang for their day of sleep. Only then are they silent, according to Ranger Rick. Conservation Stamps If you see an out-sized stamp bearing the four-color likeness of a polar bear, a desert bighorn, or a loggerhead turtle on a letter this spring, it won’t mean that the Postal Service has again'Taised its rates. It will mean that the National Wildlife Federation, the nation’s largest nongovernment conservation organization, has-for the 41st consecutive year-issued its conservation stamps. There are 36 different mammals, reptiles, insects, birds and fish depicted on the 1979 sheet. Contributions received for the stamps, miniature replicas of paintings by nationally-known wildlife artists, provide some of the money with which the NWF conducts its conservation education program. Collectors buy them for their albums and other contributors paste them as ornaments on

letters, books, packages, and other objects. President Franklin D. Roosevelt bought the first sheet of conservation stamps at the White House on March 20, 1938, kicking off a fund-raising campaign that netted $16,000 for the then nearly-bankrupt NWF. Ten years later contributions passed the $400,000 mark and last <year they reached almost $2 million. Three animals who live in widely varying habitats are among those pictured on this year’s stamps: The desert bighorn lives in the arid mountains of the Southwest. Like other wild sheep, the desert bighorn is well-adapted to Hfe on an incline. Its hooves have special non-skid pads, its shoulders are shock-proof, its forearms are powerful, and it has fantastic natural balance. The desert bighorn can survive long periods getting water only from the plants :t eats, but eventually, it must find water and salt or die. The loggerhead turtle once shared primeval beaches with dinosaurs. This sea turtle grows * to be four feet long and can weigh up to 350 pounds. It swims the warm coastal waters of the western Atlantic, often following the pull of the currents as far north as New England or as far south as Argentina. The polar bear, one of the largest and most carnivorous of the bears, lives in the Arctic regions of the world. Among its “equipment" to cope with a life on ice are elongated eyes insensitive to snow blindness, a thick layer of fat for buoyancy and insulation, non-skid soles for traction, and partically-webbed * paws for long distance swimming. For information concerning the 1979 stamps and NWF stamp albums which contain descriptions and biological data on each of the animals pictured - write the National Wildlife Federation, 1412 16th St., NW, Washington.

D.C. 20036.

MIKE'S FISH AND SEAFOOD'

MARKET

RETAIL & WHOLESALE FRESH FISH DAILY.

263-3458*

4222 Parti RMd

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May 1979 Be Your Year GOLDEN (OPPORTUNITY! Stores for Lease in Avalon Call 967-4651

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